Slowly But Surely, Mobile Document Imaging Becomes Reality

Mobile document imaging has seen considerable excitement over the past year, as new products intended to facilitate "distributed capture" enter the marketplace. Distributed capture refers to the idea that documents can be scanned from anywhere, at any time.

Did you know there's an iPhone app for mobile document scanning?

Canon, meanwhile, released today a nifty little machine called the FORMULA P-150, a personal document scanning device meant for the "road warrior."

Set to retail for $295, the P-150 seeks to capitalize on the growing realization by road warriors (and their ilk) that scanning documents while on the road and shooting them back to a centralized database is something a road warrior could really get used to.

The accuracy of mobile document scanning, up till now, has not been on par with full-scale office scanners. But with each new product that comes out, mobile document imaging takes another strong step towards the status of the coolest technology most people don't know exists.

Mobile Document Imaging Dependent on Cell Phone Camera Improvement

Mobile document imaging is not far away from being a real tool used by professionals who do a lot of work on the road or in the field. Some professions that may especially benefit from an increased number of mobile document imaging applications might be:

-- Lawyers who travel to client locations
-- Doctors who work at multiple locations
-- Real estate pros who get all around town

All three of these professions, and many more, could make great use of the ability to capture document images on their mobile devices. However, in order for mobile document imaging to really catch on, camera quality in mobile devices will have to be improved.

In order to create readable, usable images of important documents, cameras must be high quality. Up to now, camera quality has been an afterthought for many cell phone-makers.

Blogger Ralph Gammon noted that the 3G iPhone has addressed this camera concern. Look for business-focused phone makers like RIM to make the next BlackBerry iterations more friendly to document imaging possiblities as well.

No Document Imaging = Minimal Mobility

For employees working at companies that do not possess good document imaging systems, it can be difficult to see why document imaging is such a big deal.

One terrific measuring stick of the impact an excellent document imaging system can make on the functioning of a company--and the worklife of its employees--is in the area of mobility.

Without a solid document imaging solution, employees are constantly facing struggles when they need to move documents from place to place. Either that or the scanner's broken again, and not worth messing with. So what are going to do with this signed document then?

Thus, loan officers do hire couriers, and tax preparers do messenger physical files. Meanwhile, document imaging proponents are continuously improving their work processes.

Yes, implementing an excellent document system costs some money, but so do the paper-based alternatives. Paper just doesn't move fast enough to keep up with the fevered pace of the modern business world.

Document imaging, done right, is fast like that.

Document Imaging Going Mobile, and Quick

Jarad Carleton of research firm Frost & Sullivan recently released a substantial and insightful white paper on the topic of "distributed capture," one of the most important aspects of document imaging now, and only growing more important by the year.

Carleton starts his paper, promisingly, with the hard-headed business realization that simply buying new stuff is not what smart businesses do. Rather, they harness their existing technology and then integrate the new stuff into a system that includes old stuff.

Distributed capture, though, is about much more than making old machines work with new machines. It's about people being able to work remotely as effectively as if they were working in the office.

Currently, working remotely is popular and entirely possible--unless you work with paper-based processes, such as those that require signatures. In real estate, for example, couriers are still common, transporting documents from the office to the client and back again.

The same goes for insurance, and the same goes for accounting.

But this reliance on paper is slowly changing. Carleton does a brilliant job of describing how and why, and how and why you may want to consider taking document imaging with you everwhere you go.