Accounting Today: Smarter Scanning
The Accounting Today article featuring our customer Horne LLP is now available online. It is a five-page examination of different firms and the document management solutions they are using. A section of the article featuring DocSolid is included here.
Firm: Horne / Ridgeland, Miss.
Size: Approximately 500 people
Product: KwikTag (DocSolid Inc.)
Amount spent: Software – $25,000; annual maintenance – $4,000.
Commencement date: January 2007
On record: Business analyst Carlton Beamon
Challenge: Implement a scalable scanning solution that tightly integrated with Horne’s Enterprise Document Management system while providing centralized, full-text indexing of paper from any business unit in the firm. Consistency within processes is an ongoing strategic focus at Horne, so the solution had to be flexible enough to address the changing needs of any service area within the firm.
Process: Horne discovered DocSolid KwikTag through due diligence conducted by technology consultants iEnvision Technologies. There were a few products of interest, but the firm ultimately found thatDocSolid KwikTag best fit its needs. Horne chose KwikTag’s integrated add-in to the existing document management that software users were already accustomed to, so training is extremely simple.
“What it does is allow the user to initiate scan reservation placeholders within the context of the client engagement workspace [in the document management system],” according to Beamon. Using barcode labels tracked by KwikTag, users verify their next barcode, create a scan reservation in the workspace, and place the matching barcode on the paper document. At the scanner, users select a single firm-wide KwikTag scan destination and then scan. From there, KwikTag uses the barcodes to separate the documents and then produces a full-text searchable PDF that replaces the original scan reservations in the document management system.
Results: On average, 7,000 pages are scanned per day. Once the firm’s administrative and professional staff experienced what KwikTag could do to improve their daily workflow, they were all interested in using it. Staff levels from administrative support to partners use KwikTag everyday. Most do not even realize they are using a separate system because of the tight integration with the document management system.
KwikTag allows users to process large numbers of scan reservations that they have accumulated one at a time, or in large stacks. This has minimized trips to the scanner and time spent standing in front of the scanner. Professional staff appreciate the ability to maintain focus on engagement work at their desks, while still using KwikTag reservations throughout the day. Once they can find time to scan, they know all of the documents will go where they are supposed to. Also, everyone likes the fact that the barcode is redacted from the final document.
Other features users have come to rely on are the e-mail notifications that are sent immediately after documents have been received, and daily “Scan Not Received” notifications for staff that never got around to scanning.
Next steps: The firm’s technology team recognizes the superior value that a full-text searchable document holds over that of a scanned “picture” of a paper document. Many staff do not realize this key difference. Future plans at Horne are to use the KwikTag paper gateway to ensure that 100 percent of documents introduced via central network scanners are full-text searchable.
