The place I’m currently working at has over 50,000 customers. Most of the customer information is contained in folders that are filed away in cabinets that reach from floor to the ceiling.
Problem is that since the filing system is so huge and complicated, many of the files often get lost.
I’m thinking of suggesting that the company should start scanning the customer contracts and saving them on central harddrive.
I’ve heard there are special software designed for such purpose. I was wondering if anyone is aware of those software, so that I can do a little research on it and mention the software name(s) in my report.
but i found this and something like this should do it for your company "pixtran dot com"
also you'll have to look at what type of scanner is required. something where the paper just has to slide thru and comes out the other end. (banks have it these days to scan your checks so you can view your checks online)
a point that might come up by administration in your company is "signatures/original documentation"
It's for simple purposes. Just to scan and keep a copy of the contract stored on the harddrive just in case the actual copy gets lost/misplaced. Or to quickly view the contract when the employees are on the phone with the customers.
Usually they have to put customers on hold or have to call them back in cases where they have to view the contract that is filed away in filing cabinets.
I’m sure you can get all your answers if you call these guyz up
The system is going to be “costly” - and that is defined by what your company thinks costly is.
I think speedscan also offers services in canada
call em monday
I don't know what their costs are. Speedscan offers services internationally. As GS said it's not going to be cheap. I can scan around and see if i can find other competitors.
I'd like to thank you both for your assistance so far.
I've dropped a few emails to both Cold systems companies as well as to pixtran. I really hope they write me back, insha'Allah as I return to college this week and won't be having the time to really get in touch over the phone.
I'm gonna start writing my report and will see how far I can get with it. Then I've gotta incorporate the findings that I've learned from the two of you.
Once again..thanks a ton.
Please do share any other useful information that you believe could be of use to me.
Document Management Systems be something more than what you need but then again no harm in planning for future and you can look in to them as well. The products are archiving solutions that manage documents in electronic format. Most of DMS have the features of
Retrieval of documents in electronic format. Indexing, OCR capabilities in a DMS can be used to make the system recognize some of the fields on the form and later on used for search and more
Search capabilities
Free text capabilities
COLD being part of the system
Workflow and integration
I dont think i am explaining that well so here is a little copy paste that will explain better for you
Document management systems were originally developed to help law offices maintain better control over and access to the many documents that legal professionals generate. The basic mechanisms of the first document management systems performed, among others, these simple but powerful tasks:
Add information about a document to the file that contains the document
Organize the user-supplied information in a database
Create information about the relationships between different documents
In essence, document management systems created libraries of documents in a computer system or a network. The document library contained a “card catalog” where the user-supplied information was stored and through which users could find out about the documents and access them. The card catalog was a database that captured information about a document, such as these:
Author: who wrote or contributed to the document
Main topics: what subjects are covered in the document
Origination date: when was it started
Completion date: when was it finished
Related documents: what other documents are relevant to this document
Associated applications: what programs are used to process the document
Case: to which legal case (or other business process) is the document related
Armed with a database of such information about documents, users could find information in more sensible and intuitive ways than scanning different directories’ lists of contents, hoping that a file’s name might reveal what the file contained. Many people consider document management systems’ first achievement to have created “a file system within the file system.”
Soon, document management systems began to provide additional and valuable functionality. By enriching the databases of information about the documents (the metadata), these systems provided these capabilities:
Version tracking: see how a document evolves over time
Document sharing: see in what business processes the document is used and re-used
Electronic review: enable users to add their comments to a document without actually changing the document itself
Document security: refine the different types of access that different users need to the document
Publishing management: control the delivery of documents to different publishing process queues
Workflow integration: associate the different stages of a document’s life-cycle with people and projects with schedules