Collaboration, Enterprise Content Mangement, Computing in the Cloud. . .

The internet is offering a great way for us (the end user) to connect with people locally and around the world.  Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Linkedin have allowed people with similar interests and family and or business relationships to connect, communicate and share ideas, music, documents, etc.  If it's digital, it can be shared. Sharing and collaborating on the internet is commonly referred to as, "Computing in the Cloud".

Beyond sharing, there is a need to collaborate on business and social projects that would be nearly impossible without the internet.  For example, a small business owner hires a book keeper part time to update his accounting software, such as Quickbooks, with receipts, invoices, bills, etc.  In "the old days", the book keeper would have to be onsite or stop by the office and pick up all of the hard copy documentation so that they could update Quickbooks back at their own office.  Now, the receipts, invoices, bills, etc. can be scanned and posted on a content sharing and collaboration site such as SharePoint or Box.net (as a side note, SharePoint is a server based product offered by Micorsoft and Box.net is a Web 2.0 cloud computing site).  The book keeper can be granted access to these files and they can continue their work with no time commuting back and forth to the office to pick up the documents.  It gets even better.  Let's say two businesses, separated by a thousand miles, are partnering together to bid on a large government project.  They both need to work on the bid proposal which happens to be a MS Word document.  The Word file can be placed in a shared content management folder.  Comments and corrections to the bid can be added and revisions to the bid can be tracked.  Access to the document can be controlled thus ensuring the document is secure from non-designated employees viewing the document.  You are now in control of your documents.  You can manage your time more effectively and efficiently.  Manage your documents, don’t let them manage you!

"But what if I have "tons" of digital documents (word docs, spread sheets, PDFs, mp3, etc.) and I want to find them easily and only allow access to certain employees?"  That's refereed to Enterprise Content Management (ECM).  "Doesn't that require some highly trained IT personnel to implement and maintain a system like that?"  Yes and No.  More NO than YES.  As I mentioned previously, there are server and cloud computing products out there that can fit most all needs.  From a family member wanting to privately share photos with other family members, to the small business owner who needs to partner with other businesses and part time contractors, to the large company with literally millions of documents, there are solutions.  For most of us, there are free to competitively priced solutions out there that will meet most personal and small business needs.  Here are a few examples. . .

1)  Google Apps (free/fee):  Google Apps provides the small business their own domain, e-mail hosting, Google docs, Google Calendar, Google Contacts and other selected features.  Sharing and collaboration with permissions is a strong point and it is simple to use with a short learning curve.  Your documents are stored on Google's servers so disaster recovery is assured.  The only drawback, as with any Cloud Computing product, there are storage size limitations.  If you have gigabytes of data, you'll need to look to a server based option.

2)  Microsoft SharePoint (free/fee):  As I mentioned previously, SharePoint is a server based product offered by Microsoft.  If you are running Windows Server 2003 or higher, you have SharePoint services for free.  IT support will be required to implement SharePoint Services or the Portal version (fee).  Hosted SharePoint solutions are also offered by providers such as 1and1.com and GoDaddy.com  The learning curve for SharePoint is a little more steep and longer.  But, if you have gigabytes of data and your own server, you can store as much content as your server will allow.

3)  Box.net (fee):  Box.net is a very powerful, yet easy to use cloud computing ECM solution.  Box's strong points are integration with 3rd party software vendors and its universal document viewer.  Like Google Apps, access to documents can be controlled by the end user.  Again, integration with 3rd party software vendors helps the end user to be able to easily modify and revise documents from within the Box.net environment.  

4)  Documentum (fee):  If you are a director or VP of a large company, then you'll want to consider this very powerful server based enterprise solution.  There are a number of modules that can be added and customized as needed such as; Document Control, Business Process Management, etc.  Implementing any larger server based ECM solution will require specialized IT support and a training program for end users will be needed.  The implementation will require time training and budget but the benefits will be worth it.  

At Twin Imaging, we can help you determine the best ECM and/or collaboration tools that will help your organization to share, collaborate and manage content. . . Manage your documents, don’t let them manage you.

Sean Martin, Vice President

sean@twinimaging.com

The Fun Side...

There is a fun side to scanning. As you may know, most days, I see the same types of documents go by. But photos! Now those can be exciting. When you see photos from the 60's and 70's, you realize how much hasn't changed.

Last week, I found some photos in my garage. The pictures were taken when my sister and I took our families on a cruise to Mexico in 2001. My niece and nephew were teenagers then. My niece is now 26 and my nephew has just begun a new career in the Navy.

I have such great memories of that trip. And now that the photos are scanned, I can share them with my sister, whom by the way, has been asking about them for years.

I share all this with you because Twin Imaging has partnered with EverAfter Scrapbooks to do photo and scrapbook scanning. Stop by the store; drop off your photos for scanning. There will be a form for you to complete. Photos will be scanned and placed on a CD or available for download.

Gina Martin,

gina@twinimaging.com

Twin Imaging's QR Code. . .

Kodak i780 - Excellent Image Controls and Auto Document Feeder (ADF). . .

We were very impressed with the Kodak i780's performance.  The real stand out is the fact that you can run 300 dpi at full rated speed with all image controls turned on.  Additionally, the i780 provides great flexibility when using the color detect option because the scanners interface allows for multiple stream outputs (i.e. black and white, gray scale, color).

The scanner has an excellent automatic document feeder (ADF) mechanism that is simple to service and clean.  The consumable rollers are relatively inexpensive and can be easily replaced when needed.  One very beneficial byproduct of the i780s excellent ADF is that it hardly ever double feeds!  This is crucial in a production environment when constant starts and stops, due to double feeds, can cut dramatically into daily production goals.

Regarding Kodak's image controls; we would like to see auto orientation accuracy increased.  VRS auto orientation accuracy seems to edge out Kodak's but not by much.  Other than auto orientation, the i780s image quality is excellent. The fact that the Kodak's image controls are built into the scanner makes for much simpler implementation and operation as compared to VRS.

Overall, the Kodak i780 is an excellent scanner and will help any service bureau to meet production and image quality goals.

Sean Martin, Vice President

sean@twinimaging.com

Ah...To be a student again...

How about being a student and running a business (with over $1M in revenue in some cases) at the same time? For someone like me who loves having multiple projects going on, that's impressive.



The Global Student Entrepreneur Awards honors the top undergraduate students that are running their own companies. November 6th the competition takes place in Chicago where students will compete in a live competition where they present their companies. What's the prize? Over $100K in cash and donated products and services.



Twin Imaging Technology donated a Fujitsu S300 ScanSnap. It's perfect for those of you with mobile offices or are looking to minimize the amount space taken up by hardware on your desk. It provides duplex scanning with automatic color detection, has an Automatic Document Feeder, an AC Adapter and USB bus power. It also automatically recognizes document types and creates text-searchable pdf's. I might also add that it fits neatly into any student-entrepreneur's backpack.



Best wishes to all the contestants!

ScanSnap S300

Rita Blanzan, of Rita Blanzan & Associates, located in Helensvale, Austrailia, was kind enough to allow us to post her firms experience with the Fujitsu ScanSnap S300. Rita can be contacted at:


Rita Blanzan & Associates
PO Box 3345
Helensvale Qld 4212
Australia
+617 (5580) 5055
http://www.the-accountant.com.au/


I've now had a chance to put this scanner through its paces...

One of my projects and family responsibilities is to preserve our family photos. My brother collected the photos from my parents and brought them to me and I had to scan them quickly and accurately so he could take them back as he visited me for only a couple of days and he lives quite a distance from me.

I scanned over 3000 photos in a few hours to 300dpi jpg files, duplexed to capture any notes on the back. It didn't miss a beat and it didn't faulter in any way. As it's a straight through scanner, it didn't bend the photos. I was able to do the job with little handling of the photos which is important in the preservation of old photos.

This little scanner worked like a trooper and I liked the colour reproduction as well. It's bigger counterpart (the 5110) does not have the same colour reproduction, not as good IMO. It also was very good with pulling the photos through straight. I only had to adjust the rotation on a couple of them.

I pushed to it's limits when I scanned my postcards collection. These took a little longer. The postcards date back to early last century, a lot of them are lythos and hand painted and are on a much thicker paper or cardboard. Some postcards required gentle assistance to get them through.

For work, the scanner sits on my meeting room table next to my laptop and I can scan documents when I meet with clients.

All round, the scanner is well worth the money.

Rita

How do I identify my scanned files. . .

All the files that we scan and convert to digital image files have to be given some sort of identifying "name" (i.e. Smith-John.PDF, 1234.PDF, etc.). We do this by a process called "Indexing". Indexing can be a manual and/or automated process. Index data can also be used to name folders and sub-folders which the image files are placed in. There is also "Metadata"; think of metadata as data about the data (i.e. file creation date, file size, color or black and white image, etc.). PDF Text Searchable and PDF Normal files also contain metadata - the text contained within the document.

When considering a document imaging project, you will have to consider how the files will be named and organized. Typically, many companies have paper lists/logs describing the contents of a hardcopy document and where documents are located; in what file cabinet, what building, etc. Start transferring that information to an Excel spreadsheet - NOW! You will want to have all of your lists/logs stored electronically. The information contained in the spreadsheet can be imported into any database or enterprise content management system. The bottom line - make it electronic!

Having your data in an electronic format will help greatly aid indexing during the scanning and conversion process. In many cases, handwritten information contained in lists/logs has to be manually entered during indexing. Depending on the amount of information needed, this can add significant cost to any scanning conversion project. On the other hand, using existing electronic data will help to minimize the amount of manual indexing required, reduce cost and increase data accuracy. As an example, Twin Imaging Technology recently scanned and converted over 23,000 patient records for a medical group. The client required each patient file to be named using the patient’s last name, first name, and ID number. This would have been time consuming and costly to type in all 23,000 names. Our client was able to provide us with an electronic database containing all of the patient names and ID numbers. We used our batch scanning software, PSI Capture, to automatically "read" the patient ID number from each scanned file. Once the ID number was read (zonal OCR), PSI automatically looked up the name associated with the ID number and named the file. Manually naming a batch of 100 patient files would have taken 15 to 20 minutes. Using the electronic data provided by the client allowed us to index each batch (100 patient records on average) in less than 10 seconds.

Don't fret if you can't provide any of your data electronically. As I mentioned previously, we use a process called Zonal OCR to read text from a document. This is not always accurate, but does help to automate and reduce the time devoted to indexing.

Next time we'll talk about how you can structure your documents to be more scanner and indexing friendly.

Sean Martin, Vice President, Twin Imaging Technology
sean@twinimaging.com