Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom From Paper Archives to Mobile Capture

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom From Paper Archives to Mobile Capture TheAssociation for Information and Image Management(AIIM) put forth an ideal scenario. Your invoices are scanned at the door, the document type is automatically recognized and routed, the data is captured, it is verified against transactional content in the system, and the invoice is passed for payment in a hands-free or light-touch way. Ah, but one can dream! While most organizations use scanning at some point in this process, for the most part, paper still rules. Data may be extracted here and there, but in the majority of cases, it’s the paper (or at best, a flat, scanned image) that is routed through workflow. Even in the largest organizations, the level of full data capture is only 16 percent. These companies are most likely using paper-free data capture for basic financial operations, including the accounts payable andexpense reimbursement processes. The evolution of capture AIIM mentions that centralized systems have become speedier and more capable in recent years, and prior bandwidth issues associated with connecting to distributed and remote scanners are more or less moot. Today’s discussion mostly centers on how we can efficiently and safely capture data from mobile phones, tablets, and home devices. AIIM reports that about 25 percent of organizations have employees capturing data at home and while traveling â€" a process called mobile capture. Mobile capture includes content creation on the device and the use of electronic forms to directly capture data. Pen-stroking ofsignatures is also an important application, and can include the biometrics of how the signature is drawn rather than simply the bitmap of the result. Other ways data can be collected and stored by mobile devices include speech recognition and recording, photo capture and annotation, barcode scanning, GPS stamping, and RFID capture. The obvious benefits of mobile capture are that the process kicks off immediately, and if the customer is doing the capture himself, errors can be spotted right away. On average, AIIM survey respondents reported an improvement inresponse timeof 4.0X â€" reducing 1 day down to 2 hours, or 4 days to 1 day. As far as productivity increases go, the average across all respondents is 29.7 percent improvement. Finally, mobile capture applications allow usage of the same electronic forms across a wide variety of devices. For more on the different ways to save and store information, check out the full post on Intuits Fast Track blog.