One-Minute Document Scanning Primer

Document scanning is known in this industry as imaging. These terms are commonly used alternatly and mixed. "Imaging" has a number of other meanings but for our purposes we are talking about document imaging, which is converting paper documents to electronic files through scanning.

There are many reasons to use document scanning; the three primary ones are:

• Save costs in paper handling, filing, storage, and retrieval
• Save time in filing, retrieving, and duplicating documents, and searching for misfiled documents, and recreating lost ones
• Safeguard documents from destruction and secure them from theft and unauthorized access

Document scanning solutions are conceptually simple:

• A scanner converts paper documents into electronic images
• Each image is placed in a folder, database, or other repository on disk (hard disk or otherwise), optionally with one or more indexes that act as lookup keys
• Users can retrieve images based on their access rights and print, email, or fax them
• Stored images can be backed up like other computer data

Electronic document images are more efficient to manage than paper documents and, most important, they can be easily safeguarded so should disaster strike you can easily have an offsite backup (otherwise, how in the world can you back up your paper?)