Not so long ago, every document in every office took physical form. Documents were always paper, and had been for nearly 2,000 years. Then, just a few decades back, desktop computers really started to take off. Now, documents could be created on the screen and printed to produce a hard copy – like everything else in the office. But as computers grew even more common and with the rise of the internet, there came a point when documents no longer had to be printed to be distributed – they could be stored online or on a network, in the office’s document management system. Now, there were two separate systems: paper and virtual, and the problems this entailed – and still entails – could be serious. It can be messy, wasteful and inefficient. Employees trained in one system may not be very familiar with the other. Documents can get lost in the paper system, perhaps getting buried on one person’s desk, or taken out of the office and never brought back. Document processing aims to bring the two systems together, bridging the considerable gap between a paper-based office and a paper-less office. Invoice processing does the same for the accounts department – an invaluable asset in an age where some invoices are sent through the mail and some are sent electronically, by bacs.
The technology used to achieve this has come a long way in the last few years. At one point, the best you could hope for was a scanned image – a picture file of a document that could not be edited, and certainly not using a word processor. More recently, optical character recognition has enabled printed documents to be turned back into editable computer files. Further changes mean that even handwritten letters can be converted into Word or other documents. The technology typically takes a while to ‘learn’ to read handwriting well, but boasts accuracy rates of upwards of 97 percent.
This means that document processing is now extremely reliable and effective, and when combined with a good document management system can make for a much more efficient office. Everyone can access the documents they need – and the documents will always be accessible to those who have permission to read them. Similarly, invoice processing means that your accounts department is less likely to miss a payment – something that always undermines a firm’s reputation with suppliers and clients.
Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.
http://www.bottomline.co.uk/
5118011860a4d