Document processing is the conversion of physical documents – whether already typed and printed, or hand-written – into electronic ones. This is achieved by a variety of means, including just scanning and conversion to pdf, optical character recognition and intelligent character recognition, amongst others. The advantage of this is that the files created as a result can be moved to a document management system, allowing for far greater flexibility in their later use, sharing and so on. It can also be used to transform invoice processing, so that instead of manual copies being made the whole system can be automated – with benefits in terms of efficiency, time scales and accounting.

Document processing has come a long way in the last decade or so. Before, there was no reasonable way for physical letters and memos to be turned to Word documents; instead the best that could be achieved was a scanned picture. These took up a lot of disk space (at a time when storage was more costly and far more limited) and, of course, could not be edited. Now, optical character recognition (OCR) has come of age. Intelligent character recognition (ICR) is a progression of this, and can even be used to understand handwriting and turn it into an electronic file. This generally uses a neural network and ‘learns’ to understand handwriting as it goes along. This means that first results may be quite poor, although when the system is properly ‘taught’ it can lead to 97 percent accuracy – with obvious efficiencies to enjoy, especially if such documents would usually be transcribed by employees.

The nature and sophistication of document processing that you choose will depend on your budget and needs of your company – obviously a smaller outfit with fewer documents will probably not benefit from the most expensive and extensive form of ICR. However, document management is an important step in bridging the gap between past practices and truly paperless offices. Although emails are easily the most popular form of written communication, plenty of people still use notes and letters, and many documents are sent through the post. These can all-too-easily be lost or mislaid if they are not carefully tracked. The same is true of invoices, but invoice processing can bring your procedures for paper invoices in line with those submitted by bacs and other electronic means. This makes for far greater efficiency and fewer mistakes.

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A document management system is akin to a sophisticated filing cabinet for your computer network. Few companies today are really paperless, although many aspire to this for a variety of reasons. It may be cost – removing paper, printers and all that is associated with them (envelopes, stamps, fax machines, etc) saves cash. It is also environmentally friendly. Finally, it is quicker to organise – so long as things are ‘filed’ in the best place on the network, there’s no problem of that letter or memo ending up on someone’s desk under a pile of paper. document processing can help your business take a step towards being paperless. It is the method by which paper documents are processed for use on the computer. This can be a simple matter of scanning them and converting them into pdf files. However, it can be more complex and impressive, for instance in those cases where optical character recognition is used to come up with an editable Word document of a handwritten document. Finally, invoice processing refers to this technology when it is applied to your accounts department. This means that physical and electronic invoices are treated the same way, so clients are not disadvantaged by using one or the other.

The advantages of this technology are manifold. For starters, it does take you a step closer to the desirable paperless office. In twenty or thirty years, probably many more businesses will work online only. All documents will be sent by email, and invoices received and paid electronically. However, while a large proportion of the population operate offline, or at least prefer to work with paper, this is not possible. What document processing and management means is that you don’t have to have a two-tier system, where ‘old school’ clients and customers find that they do not get payments or replies so quickly – with associated fallout for the relationships.

There are plenty of companies who sell document processing solutions, and it is worth looking around to see what is available. Document management has progressed significantly in recent years, particularly with the advent of good OCR, which means that mere scans of paperwork can be turned into useful files. Similarly, as more companies and individuals migrate to online banking and BACS payments, you may find invoice processing becomes more important. Either way, these are changes that will inevitably occur in the near future, so if you want your business to have any kind of longevity it’s best to think in advance.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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