The Dangers of Outsourcing Document Imaging

Outsourcing document scanning and imaging to a third-party firm can be a great business decision. Often, the cost savings, efficiency, and expertise provided by outsourced document imaging services are more than worth the affordable cost.

However, there are dangers that business decision-makers must remain aware of.

First and foremost among the dangers of outsourcing document imaging are the security concerns. Document imaging outsourcing, after all, entails outsourcing documents. Some of the heaviest users (and beneficiaries) of outsourced document imaging are doctors, lawyers, and accountants. The documents handled by such people can be highly sensitive.

The second major danger of outsourcing document imaging is more vague but no less threatening. When a document imaging service does not understand the business processes of the company that has hired them, effective document management is impossible.

You are wise to ask about security and explain how your business works in detail before outsourcing a document imaging project to a third-party company.

Document Imaging Industry Building for Big Workload

We have blogged repeatedly about the Obama Administration's push towards electronic medical records and what this means for the document imaging industry. Namely, it means that the document imaging industry is about to get a lot bigger.

But bigger not only in terms of revenues and numbers of companies offering third-party document scanning and imaging service, but bigger, too, in terms of machinery capability.

Business users are starting to see this enlargement in the new round of high-capacity Multi-Function Printers, some of which are built to process literally hundreds of thousands of documents per cycle. Truly, these new MFPs are fully futuristic.

Currently, such machinery is pretty well-confined to large corporations like insurance companies. However, third-party document imaging providers themselves are increasingly purchasing these high-end MFPs and offering high volume service to smaller clients.

Over time, this enlargement in capacity at the input level should make it cheaper to scan all documents, rather than just the really important ones.

Will Electronic Health Records Result in Actual Cost Savings? Ask Businesspeople

In the real world, theory can be dangerous thing. President Obama is running up against this paradox as he pushes for healthcare reform. In particular, the Obama Administration's claims that measures such as electronic healthcare records will save real dollars is facing challenges.

Document imaging thus finds itself at the heart of a national controversy.

At issue, as outlined in this electronic health records cost savings analysis, is the question of whether more information will result in more care. If so, the cost savings of cutting paperwork could be overwhelmed by the fact that patients and doctors who have better access to information will want more treatment.

This is a difficult matter, to be sure. Perhaps business users of document imaging technology can provide some assistance to a medical field desperately seeking to discover a balance between cost and performance.

Business users, after all, must confront this dilemma daily.

Microsoft Focusing on Document Imaging as Future Profit Center

Apply may be getting all the great press because of cool consumer electronics gadgets like the iPod and iPhone, but Microsoft continues to plug along satisfying business user needs. One area where Microsoft is focusing, and succeeding, is document imaging.

Microsoft SharePoint has been the crown jewel of this push into document imaging, establishing itself as the premier (arguably the only) platform for storing scanned documents in a way that allows full file sharing and manipulation. Many innovative document imaging solutions offered by third-party document imaging services use Microsoft SharePoint as a cornerstone technology.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has also pushed into the lower end of the document imaging spectrum, by including more document imaging functions in Microsoft Office.

By using "vertical integration"--i.e., making sure that every step of the document imaging process includes use of a Microsoft product--Microsoft is staking a strong claim to a promising territory.

Document Imaging Capture Here, There, Everywhere?

Some of the most exciting--and confusing developments--in the document imaging industry are occurring in the realm of document capture. That is, the means and methods by which paper documents are digitized.

Optical Character Recognition is the technology headline in this area, allowing the document capture process to operate on autopilot without data entry workers needing to manually input and correct document data.

However, Optical Character Recognition is still a highly inexact science.

Meanwhile, distributed capture techniques such as mobile document imaging are entering the realm of possibility, when once they were science fiction. The ability for sales road warrior types to actually image documents from mobile phones or PDAs could be revolutionary.

Again, though, this looks like the second inning of a nine inning game.

Document Imaging & Workflow: Talking Touches

Many business decision-makers realize the importance of streamlining work processes in a theoretical sense, but are uncertain what specific metrics to apply to their particular processes. Since every business is different--one requiring speed, for example, while another needs near perfect quality--there is no universally applicable process re-examination criteria.

One informal but very helpful measure, however, in terms of evaluating information-intensive workflow processes, is to count the number of "touches" per document. If a document is faxed, mailed, emailed, or otherwise handled by more than two to three people, chances are that these processes could be streamlined.

Often, just the exercise of counting the touches will bring a new perspective to thinking about new technologies such as document imaging, records management, and content sharing.

Document Management Vendors Must Find Ways to Service Small Clients as Well as Large

We've all had the experience of walking into a store, being treated like a king, and then being treated like a dog when it becomes clear that we're only going to make a small purchase.

All too often, small business owners and/or IT staff have this experience when working with a document imaging or management service. Part of this is due to the history of this industry. Enterprise Content Management has been the domain of giant corporations since its infancy, and is only now moving down the so-called "food chain."

However, that's no excuse for subpar service. Small businesses need--and deserve--the same high level of service that huge companies receive.

If you are a small business member considering working with a document imaging or management service, make sure to ask about their previous experience working with small businesses. Get a couple references and call on them.

Eastman Kodak Stock Surges: Document Imaging to Blame?

Owners of Eastman Kodak stock (symbol: EK) have taken a brutal beating over the past ten years. On October 8, 1999, EK sold for $74.75 per share. Today, the stock sells for less than $3 per share.

Not much less than $3 per share, though, thanks to a seven percent jump in the share price just today. Although many traders are attributing this sudden stock price rise more to a technical "short squeeze" than improved fundamentals at EK, it's worth considering the fact that Kodak has made good inroads into the document imaging market.

EK management has aggressively moved into the imaging and scanning market, even to the extent of cannibalizing their prime business over the years, which has involved selling the inks and paper and printers necessary for producing physical rather than digital images.

Today, digital images are not only the future but the present. Document imaging services are multiplying daily and document scanning is commonplace in offices large and small.

Credit Eastman Kodak for facing those facts and moving in the right--digital--direction.

Document Imaging Makes Random Notes (Potentially) Valuable

Anyone who's ever worked in an office has been in an office meeting, and anyone who's ever been in an office meeting has doodled something brilliant on a notepad.

Then that notepad goes onto a desk, gets buried under other papers, and eventually thrown into a trash can. That brilliant idea, even if it was only half-brilliant, is lost forever.

Document imaging technology, as it penetrates further and further into the business world, may increase the value of those random notes by storing them and sharing them in the digital world. Over time, the retention of random notes could add up to something within a company.

What else is the blogosphere, after all, except a collection of retained random notes?

Of course, scanning random notes, let alone storing and sharing them, does not make sense if the scanning cannot be done at extremely low cost and decent quality. Optical Character Recognition technology, then, may be the most important factor in making such projects feasible in the real world. When computers can read handwriting, those random notes may finally something.