Introduction

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="02c285a1erlcgo.png"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFCC66" FACE="Arial" ><B>Kenneth A. Megill</B></FONT><B>     |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Kenneth A. Megill"><B>home</B></A></div> <div> back to  <A HREF="id76.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE=" Document Management"><B> Document Management</B></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="02ad2c00dkelyh.png"> <div> <A HREF="id107.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The authors">The authors</A></div> <div> <A HREF="id106.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Introback duction to the series">Introback duction to the series</A></div> <div> <A HREF="id105.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contents">Contents</A></div> <div> <A HREF="id104.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Foreword">Foreword</A></div> <div> <B>Introduction</B></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 width="100%" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I>Introduction</I></div> <div> Document management includes the creation, modification, storage, processing, and retrieval of documents that meet customers' needs and objectives. Document management also includes managing the work-processes or workflow - both the flow of documents and that of business activities related to documents. Workflow analysis requires an understanding both of the customers' needs and of the costs of implementing the work process.</div> <bR> <div> The purpose of document management is simple - reducing costs, increasing productivity and increasing the value of information.</div> <bR> <div> This definition of document management may, to some, leave out a number of important activities involved in managing documents, such as shelving and charging out books and other documents in collections and/or managing word processed files and spread sheets. Others have discussed, and will discuss, how new technologies can help us manage documents as we know them.</div> <bR> <div> Our understanding of the nature of a document is contained in an earlier volume in this series <I>(The Corporate Memory.  Managing Information in an Electronic Environment</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Bookman Old Style" ><I> </I></FONT>by Kenneth A. Megill, chapter 4, 1997).</div> <bR> <div> In this book we focus on technologies which transform our understanding of what it means to manage documents. These were developed by document managers who come from the data entry and data recognition disciplines. Their problems were how to recognize and capture large amounts of data. To do so they invented a number of recognologies - ways to recognise data. The most familiar of these is optical character recognition (OCR), a mature technology which is .now finding popular applications with scanners with rudimentary OCR capabilities as a part of many desk-top computing systems. As the cost of systems using recognologies decline, these technologies provide the information service professionals with new opportunities to rethink their understanding of documents and how they may be defined and managed.</div> <bR> <div> We also do not concern ourselves with the management of files, a mechanical task in an electronic environment. Files management (such as the management of word processing files or spread sheet files) do not come within the purview of this book.</div> <bR> <div> Document management, properly designed and implemented, should minimize the costs of document processing and/or increase the value of the information in documents. Information services - providing information in documents - are driven by the same considerations as other businesses that use documents. Information institutions rise and fall because of the success they achieve in managing the information contained in documents. Information has value only if it can be preserved and retrieved to meet customer needs.</div> <bR> <div> The convergence of a number of factors makes understanding the principles of document management essential for information managers of the future. These are:</div> <bR> <div> <B>Greatly increased storage capacity and processor speeds:</B><B> </B>there appears to be no end to the expansion of low cost storage capacity for electronic documents. Much of the theory and practice of document management assumes limited storage capacity and processing speed. Storage of information will always cost, but that cost continues to drop dramatically.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Independence of media:</B><B> </B>digital documents can originate in any medium - paper, microfilm, audio, or even sculpture. Digital documents may be delivered via almost any medium and the creation and presentation of documents need not be determined by their media. Managing documents in electronic form means that information services do not need to be media centered, but can be information centered.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Independence of location:</B><B> </B>the development of telecommunications and the ability to transmit electronic documents cheaply and quickly means that the location of documents is increasingly irrelevant for their informational use. Client/servers, Intranet and the Internet enable users and documents to come together independently of the location of the documents.</div> <bR> <div> These fundamental changes in technology enable the document manager to focus on the information content of documents rather than the myriad tasks involved in collecting, organizing, and storing physical documents.</div> <bR> <div> The most important technologies directly related to document management are the development of `recognologies' (technologies of recognition) and document imaging. The term `recognologies' is used throughout this book to refer to the technologies developed to recognize characters, marks and images electronically. Optical character recognition (OCR) is the term that encompasses all recognologies. Recognologies are often a part of digital image scanners, increasingly a standard part of desktop computer systems.  Indeed, in the financial and business worlds these recognologies have been developed to decrease the reliance on manual data entry. It is clear, therefore, that the delivery of this technology to the desktop is just the tip of this important technology.</div> <bR> <div> OCR is used to enable faster and more accurate data-capture. For many years it has been associated primarily with high-speed on-line data entry and found its applications where the collection of large quantities of similar information was needed - such as the census, in the insurance industry, payments or governmental tax collections. As a result, much of this technology is not yet familiar to many information professionals.</div> <bR> <div> The ability to digitize and electronically recognize data and bring them into the computer fundamentally alters the way in which documents are managed. These technologies are still in their infancy and the costs of using these recognologies are only now at a point where they can be considered part of integrated information management systems and be applied to applications beyond the processing merely of large numbers of forms.</div> <bR> <div> Throughout our discussion we include material from some of the major providers of the tools and technologies that make electronic document management systems possible. This material illustrates the principles we discuss and also provides examples of how document management technologies can be used.</div> <bR> <div> We are rapidly moving beyond machine print character recognition into recognizing handprinting and signatures. Technologies are also rapidly being developed out of the principles used in <FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >OCR </FONT>to recognize images and features of images.</div> <bR> <div> OCR is the technology that makes documents understandable. Without OCR an electronic document is just a page of black and white dots. Using the various recognologies we can reach the meaning of a document - and therefore the information of the document.</div> <bR> <div> Document and information management are merging. Once separate processes are becoming one integrated technology. Document content, not media, becomes primary as documents become electronic objects.</div> <bR> <div> Until 1994 data processing focused primarily on file management' applications. Document management was relegated to niche software developers and the vendors of word-processing software. Now documents are the main focus of imaging and information technology and the issues of indexing, storage, security, tracking, and retrieval are of great importance.</div> <bR> <div> The issues of indexing, storage, security, tracking, and retrieval have long been important to managers of paper documents. Now that documents once managed in paper form are being shared across electronic networks, there is a growing need for creating and processing multimedia compound documents which may incorporate text, images, audio, and video into a single document.</div> <bR> <div> This book is about how to define and manage documents in the information age. We hope to show that an electronic document manager is an information manager who manages workflow, determines the costs and benefits of various ways of managing documents, as well as determining the increase in productivity.</div> <bR> <div> We have written the book as a primer - designed to prime your interest to proceed and give you some guides on how to do so. We have also tried to give you examples to follow. This book is a product of the collaborative work of two very different professionals. One is an engineer who has worked in the area of data input and character recognition. The other is a records manager. Our collaboration has been fruitful and is an example, we think, of the kind of collaboration across professional lines that will become commonplace in the future.</div> <bR> <div> The book can be read from beginning to end or by going directly to those parts of the book which interest you. The appendixes provide the document manager with some working tools. We especially encourage you to work through the cost-benefit analyses since they are the key to effective document management.</div> <bR> <div> In the 1960s and 1970s the on-line technologies transformed the work of the information service professionals from being collection managers to information managers. On-line technology enables the information professional to access information stored in collections throughout the world. The development of the Internet makes the basic technologies underlying online information a part of everyday work habits. The work of the information service professionals has shifted from identifying and delivering information containers to developing and building information systems that meet the needs of customers.</div> <bR> <div> We believe that document management will be the next methodology to change fundamentally the work of the information services professional. The technologies described here enable the information professional to bring the traditional forms of documents into the electronic world where the full range of on-line tools can be used to provide information that customers need.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Note</B></div> <bR> <div> 1     File management means different things to different professions. Here, the term file management applies to an electronic file. Certain records managers may think of a paper file and see file management as a question of managing files of papers into cabinets, boxes, etc.</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>