SharePoint Document Management

Scanned Image Repository Planning

Stephen BoalsPSIGEN Software

SharePoint for Paper??

The Facts

Source: Gartner Group

• Most office workers lose up to 500 hours a year looking for documents.

• On average, professionals spend 50% of their time looking for information.

• The average organization:• Spends $20 in labor to file each document.• Spends $120 in labor finding each misfiled

document.• Loses 1 out of every 20 documents.• Spends 25 hours re-creating each lost

document.

The Reality…

• The volume of paper records is still increasing steadily in 56% of organizations…

• Half of organizations are scanning newly received paper items and filing them electronically rather than manually , and a third of businesses are looking to go to all-electronic records-keeping.

Source: AIIM

Reality Continued

• But for the other half, as well as manually filing inbound paper documents, 40% admit to routinely printing newly generated office documents and emails for the purpose of filing them as paper records.

• Electronic records are more than twice as likely to be described as “Unmanaged” than paper records. Source: AIIM

Why Scan and Capture?

Customer Demands and Key Drivers: Why Scan?

1. Operational efficiency/ business process improvement

2. Risk reduction3. IT efficiency and

consolidation

© Doculabs 2004

Defense• Compliance• Litigation• Continuity

IT Efficiency and Consolidation

Offense• Operational

efficiencies• Customer-facing

Operational Efficiency/BPI

• Reduce operational costs• Improve productivity• Improve customer service• Customer acquisition and retention• Increase Profits• Etc.

Offense

Risk Reduction

• Compliance – Sarbanes-Oxley– Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act– Securities and Exchange Commission Rules– Department of Defense

• Litigation exposure• Security standards support• Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery

Defense

IT Efficiency and Consolidation

• Movement towards centralized storage• Consolidation for backup• Cost reduction• Strategic enabling for future initiatives

Offense+Defense+Strategy

Document Management Components

• Hardware• Capture • Archive• Search and Retrieve

Hardware

Choosing your Weapon

• MFPs or Scanners??

or

MFPs – The Pros

• Leverage your existing investment in the MFP• Most copier maintenance plans do not charge for

scans• MFP manufacturers are really focusing on scanning • Network scanning functions:

– Scan to email– Scan to Windows Folders– Scan to FTP

• One-to-Many relationship: all workers can use one device.

MFPs – The Cons• Contention – “line at the copier”• Poor performance with differing paper sizes• Lack of color dropout (Scanning blue or black

backgrounds will result in a black page)• Small Document Feeder sizes (50 – 100 pages)• On average, file sizes are 10-20% larger• Duplex scanning/DPI increase greatly slows down

rated speed• Black and White scanning only on some models

Scanners – The Pros• Convenience – scan at your desk• Duplexing does not slow down scanner• Color dropout• Superior image quality due to enhancement

features• Ease in handling differing paper sizes/types• Larger document feeder selections (up to

1000+ pages)

Scanners – The Cons

• One to One relationship – directly connected to PC

• Additional Maintenance costs• Can be quite expensive to outfit your whole

organization.

When to use a Dedicated Scanner• Scanning 10+ documents per day• Workers that are constantly scanning throughout the

day• Mixed paper sizes, weights and colors• Poor quality, older documents or when image

enhancement is required• OCR or ICR applications• High volume copying and printing environments• Large Document scanning• High security environments

Key Points When Purchasing

• Scanning speed• Document Feeder Capacity• Daily Duty Cycle• Scanning Mode• Warranty and Service

Capture

Scanning Challenges

• Basic capabilities• No standardization• Documents not searchable• Time intensive• Lack of integration into Enterprise Applications

Capture vs. Scanning

• A scanning application is just a means to take paper, and quickly and easily convert it from paper to digital form. They are well suited to environments with very basic needs, and what I call "onsie-twosie" scanning, or low volume environments.

Capture software can be utilized for basic scanning needs, but takes you to a whole new level from a "capture" perspective.  These applications typically have a number of ways to "slice and dice" documents, and really focus on efficiency, and minimizing the time required to scan, index and capture data. 

Why capture?

• Reduce the required time for scanning and indexing documents = Efficiency

• Enable a standard process for scanning, capturing, indexing, naming, and processing = Standardization

• Provide numerous gateways to multiple repositories = Flexibility

•TWAIN, ISIS, VRS

•Simple Capture Support

•Local/Network•SharePoint WebDav

•Auto-import

•High Speed Scanner Support

•Copiers•Fax Machines•Digital Senders

MFP Production Scanning

Desktop Scanning

Image Import

Capture Devices

Distributed vs. Centralized• Corporate Structure– Branches– Connectivity– Bandwidth

• Hardware devices• Volume of scanning• Control and reporting

Capture Features for SharePoint• Advanced Data Extraction (ADE)• MFP Hot Folder Processing• Routing sheets• 2D Barcodes• Document Harvesting• Redaction and other legal functionality• Fax processing• Other connections…

Capture and 2010

• Document Sets• Term store

Archive

How much storage?• Planning estimates:– 1 scanned page = 50K– A file cabinet is 10,000 – 12,000 pages– Banker’s box is 2,000 – 2,500 pages

• Image Processing technology can reduce file size by 10-30%– Despeckle– Border removal– 3 hole punch removal– Binarization***********

SharePoint Storage Architecture

• Image file sizes can lead to DB issues if proper planning does not take place and storage considerations are not examined.

• Consider the use of Remote BLOB Storage (RBS)

Microsoft RBS Recommendations

• RBS provides benefits in the following:– The content databases are larger than 500

gigabytes (GB).– The BLOB data files are larger than 256 kilobytes

(KB). – The BLOB data files are at least 80 KB and the

database server is a performance bottleneck. In this case, RBS reduces the both the I/O and processing load on the database server.

How do I format my Site?

• SharePoint site structure:– Libraries– Folders– Columns– File Naming

• Choose wisely…

Site Structure (Continued)• So how do I figure out the best way to

structure?– Max recommended number of items in a Library is

5 million– Max recommended number of items in a

“container” is 2,000– A container is…the root of a list, as well as folders– Foldering is the preffered method– Age old folder argument…..

Search and Retrieve

Capture drives Search• How do you want to find your documents?• Index fields (Columns in SharePoint) are the

critical focus.• Rules to live by:– 5 <= defining fields per document type– Always include dates– Steer clear of field “overdrive”

• Automation and data sources can let you go beyond

Full Text

• The Insurance Policy• Adobe PDF Image + Hidden Text– Industry Standard– One “Package” for image and OCR text– Portable

• Provide the ultimate in searchablility

Summary• Easy justification for scanning paper files• Four components:– Hardware– Capture– Archive– Search and Retrieve

• People focus / adoption • A little planning goes a long way

Questions?