This presentation looks at what organizations on the path to paperlite need to do in the planning stage to ensure they reap the rewards of document imaging.

2. 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!

3. 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?

4. 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.

5. 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!

6. Start with knowing your Audience
Clearly define what the storage, use and retrieval
requirements are for the documents you will be scanning.
Storage
Environment
Document
Workflow
User Needs

7. User’s Needs
How do documents support
your end user’s work?
External content that starts a
workflow process:
• Forms
• Mail
• Email
• Electronic Forms
Created Content
• Correspondence
• Checks
• Contracts

8. Workflow Questions to Address
• Post Process versus In Process?
– File/Section = Image
– Document = Image
• Imaging Center versus Desktop Scanning?
• Day Forward or Back Scan?
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.

9. Storage
Environment
Equally 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.

10. 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.

11. Complete a document assessment
Inventory
Retention Periods
Duplicate 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.

12. 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

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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

16. Thank you!
For more tips on how to design and implement a
document imaging project at your organization,
visit www.tab.com/imaging.