Behavioural change is hard. Really hard. There are two key reasons why. Firstly, change is hard. Secondly, people only change when they can see it is in their best interest to do so. This fundamental fact lies behind the failure of many attempts to move to a decentralised capture solution and get users involved in record-keeping.

There are not many organisations today with the capacity or the desire to engage large centralised teams of record-keeping professionals to digitise and categorise the huge volume of documents and emails that flow in to, out of and around a typical organisation. Even if they did, they would soon be swamped.

The reality is the work still needs to be done. An enterprise digitisation strategy that satisfies obligations around governance, compliance and digitisation standards is a critical necessity.  However just throwing the job on to your everyday knowledge worker, with no training in records management, is not the answer. If team members do not perceive it as part of their core duties, it will not be done.

The core reasons that most organisations introduce a digital process to their business is not just to improve record keeping.  They see many tangible benefits outside improved governance and compliance such as high speed information capture, faster distribution, better search, improved analytics and more importantly adding value to the business. 

Record-keeping professionals have been lobbying for some time that the practice of record-keeping should become a function of the business process as opposed to an obligation at the end of the information life cycle.

This thinking was behind Outback Imaging, the home of EzeScan, developing a range of Web Applications designed to take the hard work out of decentralised capture and ad hoc scanning. 

Let’s accept that everybody is comfortable with walking up to a photocopier, scanning a document and sending it via email. If this process can be tied to an organisation’s business rules to allow for the scanned document to be digitally optimised and saved to the right place in a corporate EDRMS, then you are on the way to information management nirvana.

Now many MFD vendors may say that they can already do this, but this probably involves standardising your entire fleet of devices. A typical organisation today has a range of MFDs of varying make, model and vintage and multiple different OCR solutions. This could be solved in one fell swoop with a total refresh, but you may not have the budget or the inclination to do so.

You may also have existing embedded solutions that are not delivering as they are too difficult to use and hence enforce. Users also find it difficult to name and file documents correctly on the MFD keypad. Additionally, much of the scanning ends up with images that are saved or emailed as a non-compliant PDF with no text search and no image enhancement or QA.

There are plenty of solutions that allow documents to be scanned straight into an EDRMS but unfortunately if not done correctly this can end up  as more of a hindrance than a help to an organisation's record keeping.   For example If a 20-page contract or report is scanned on a photocopier and only 15 pages go through because a couple of pages got stuck together, the only time you find out is at some stage in the future when it actually becomes really, really important to see the whole 20 pages. That’s when you suddenly realise why QA is important. And that’s why dedicated document scanners have image enhancement and multi-feed detection, but most MFDs don’t.

Information and Records Managers have always wanted to align the business rules associated with the capture of these documents and have naming conventions, file locations and workflows automatically applied without the operator being aware of what is happening in the background.

This was the thinking behind the development of EzeScan Remote Indexing Assistant (RIA) Web App for Workgroup Capture.

This Web-based application works in the background. When a typical user walks up to an MFD, and scans a document to their email, EzeScan intercepts the document and immediately converts it into a compliant searchable PDF/A document then sends an automated email notification to ask the user to QA the document and add or modify essential metadata via a simple web-form. This can be done on their smart phone, tablet or at their computer, and once completed EzeScan grabs additional information based on an organisation’s business rules, creates the filename and files the document in the correct location.

This also means it’s not necessary to purchase an OCR kit for every MFD in the organisation. Once the user has completed the web form the scanned document is submitted to the next stage of processing which could include uploading to an EDRMS.

In this way Administrators can control static data, naming conventions, filing locations or EDRMS metadata for ad hoc scanning. Additional custom fields can be configured for users to input custom values via the applications web interface.

We can also capture the serial number of the MFD where the document was scanned and include it in the PDF/A metadata which is becoming a necessary component of records compliance.

In addition we have created a File Upload Assistant (FUA) Web App for Workgroup file upload.

This is another Web-based application to allow users to select and upload a range of electronic files from a computer or mobile device to the desired location (network/supported EDRMS) with the correct metadata.

Once again it provides a simple Web form which is easily configured for the users to input custom field variable data.  In the background EzeScan maintains naming conventions, filing locations or EDRMS metadata.

At the moment, most records managers maintain a set of business rules which exist in a document sitting somewhere on their hard drive. These rules dictate how files should be named, classified and where they should be saved as well as applicable workflows.

If however, you have 5000 users they probably have no idea what the rules are or how to apply them. By identifying the user and requiring them to complete a simple web form, EzeScan can now look up those rules each time a document is processed and apply them automatically.

In many cases this may only require entering something as simple as a Matter number, in the case of a Lawyer, and perhaps the document type, whether it’s a Contract or a Client Brief. In this case EzeScan can look up the relevant rules to apply classification, metadata and file it without the user having to know or understand the record keeping requirements and processes.

Organisations want their team members to focus on the role they have been employed to do and not be bogged down by difficult administration processes.  At the same time the capture of information is necessary and being able to put it to use highly desirable.  By implementing a system such as this an organisation has the knowledge that their information is being handled correctly while at the same time ensuring their team members are not overwhelmed by the task at hand.

Demos Gougoulas is Sales & Channel Manager with Outback Imaging, creator of EzeScan. Email him at demos@ezescan.com.au