Imaging - are you ready?

If your organization is thinking about, or is currently involved in an imaging program, this presentation will be helpful in ensuring the program’s success. It

wasn’t long ago that less than 50% of imaging initiatives were successful! While those numbers are getting better today, at TAB we continue to see failed or stalled attempts to move from paper to electronic images. And we can help!

The Benefits of Imaging

Faster and more efficient RM processes:

– Indexing– Retrieving– Storing– Sharing– Maintaining

So what should you consider when developing your imaging project plan?

Imaging your records is a great way to become more efficient, because it can speed up almost every business process. With that said, it isn’t always easy to do, and we speak to a lot of organizations that are either bogged down in a conversion or are hesitant to start one because of the anticipated challenges.

The reality is the success of any conversion project is rooted in the planning stage. We will cover steps that you can take to help you put the right plan in place and make your document conversion a smooth one.

Obtain Executive Support

First, do you have executive support? The cost, time, resources and outcomes of an imaging project will be challenging at times and without executive support for the initiative it will lose steam, lack

adoption and often fail!

Start with knowing your Audience

Storage Environment

Document Workflow

User Needs

Clearly define what the storage, use and retrieval requirements are for the documents you will be scanning.

User’s Needs

External content that starts a workflow process:

• Forms• Mail• Email• Electronic Forms

Created Content• Correspondence• Checks• Contracts

How do documents support your end user’s work?

• Post Process versus In Process?– File/Section = Image– Document = Image

• Imaging Center versus Desktop Scanning?• Day Forward or Back Scan?

Workflow Questions to Address

Change Management is most effective when the change improves and simplifies business processes for the user. How will your imaging project improve departmental activities?

A great example of this can be found in the scanning of Accounts Payables documentation. Often AP files are scanned after processing and stored as individual voucher packets. This is great for historical lookup of old processed invoices, but scanning documents at the time of their receipt may allow you to automate workflow processes and reduce time and effort in approving and paying bills.

Storage EnvironmentEqually important to the end user’s need is the Storage Environment. The destination for your images will determine the types of image output and data that needs to be captured during the imaging process.

Data structure can include metadata arranged in tables, or images stored in meaningful folder structures with images identified using consistent naming conventions.

What type of environment are you storing images in?

Media and Shared Drives require that each image have a unique name that identifies it from all others. Electronic Document Storage Solutions generally use metadata to find an image. Software Applications require an import utility to attach an image to the appropriate page within the application. Whichever storage and retrieval method you take will require you define the image type and linking of critical data.

Complete a document assessment

InventoryRetention PeriodsDuplicate Material

Once we have evaluated and planned for the use case and the environment that we will store our images in, its time to look back to the current storage structure. We do this through a document assessment.  You can save significant time and money during your project by properly examining and identifying what documents need to be converted to electronic files. Analyze your retention requirements before the imaging project starts, to determine the requirement to continue storing or ability to destroy documents as scheduled. This analysis will also prevent unnecessarily scanning documents that are ready for destruction. You can also purge out of date, duplicate and non-record material.

What to look at when examining documents

• File Structure– File Order– Sections– Documents– Labeling– Folder Sequence– Date Ranges

• Document Types• Size

– Letter – Legal– Other

• Volumes– Folders– Sections– Documents– Pages

The document assessment should capture key attributes and statistics that will determine the time, cost and method required to scan documents. Quantities, document size, file structure, system sequence and labeling and document identification are all important to the planning and the cost assessment of the conversion

Retention Periods

During discovery we also want to apply retention periods. Capturing date ranges in the file room will often allow you to reduce the quantity of documentation that you will scan. On a recent discovery at a local junior college, 40% of the paper in their storage room was past its retention period. While it wasn’t immediately destroyed it also wasn’t scanned.

Get rid of duplicate material

As we all know over time, files may come to contain several copies of the same document or material. This duplicate material needs to be identified before the conversion starts.

At that point you can either destroy these documents, or separate them from other documents in the file that need to be imaged. Purging files of all unnecessary information reduces the volume of paper that needs to be stored as well as the overall cost of your conversion.

To recap, here are the steps to take in putting your document scanning plan in place:

Obtaining executive support Know your audience and their

storage and document use requirements

Understand the end user’s needs Determine the document scanning

workflow Choose the scanned images’

storage environment Complete a document assessment Apply retention periods Purge duplicate material

Thank you!For more tips on how to design and

implement a document imaging project at your organization, visit www.tab.com/imaging.