Scanning/OCR/Databasing Suite? (For converting an office to be almost-paperless)

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arkmtech

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 9, 2003
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I'd like to think that the title pretty much explains it - but I guess it's a pretty elaborate operation that I'm looking for here, so I'll go into detail a little more. I do, however, apologize in advance for this hellishly long post.

I'm working as part of the IT Dept. at the university I attend, and our 'Scheduling & Activities' office for the entire campus is interested in transitioning our 'paperful' (if you will) office into one that would be almost paperless.

The problem exists in the filing methodology of the current secretary who runs the office. Everything (and I mean everything) is printed out and kept in one of the millions of filefolders she has in the many 8-drawer vertical filing cabinets that hide the actual walls of the office. ;)

The problem with this is that with the current system, it often takes an hour at the least, and sometimes as long as a day, to find one single piece of paper. Worse yet, the office's secretary is the only person who actually knows where every one of those pieces of paper is filed at.

Bottom line: She's retiring next year. We have a nightmare of nuclear-holocaust proportions on our hands. :eek:

What we could really use is a system that does the following:
  • Can utilize a sheet-fed TWAIN compliant scanner to scan forms...
  • Then save each form to an Adobe Acrobat 6.0 PDF (or similar format), OCR'ing as necessary but essentially keeping the original formatting of the page...
  • Finally allow us to save each PDF into a centralized database that would be kept on a redundant fileserver.
  • This database must allow us to search for the filename of each PDF, as well as search the entire contents of each PDF, and must be able to be modified by multiple users at once over a LAN.
That's pretty much the situation we're standing in right now - and believe me, we're knee-deep in it. :( I would greatly appreciate any suggestions, as well as comments/thoughts/flames anyone has on how I might go about this.

Budget isn't really a factor at the moment, so fire at will. ;) Thanks in advance!
 
there are quite a few programs that can do what you want but you have created one problem, PDF files are not the easiest things in the world to modify, if this is data you just want to look at it will work fine, but ocr technology is not up for the job that you have set out for it, you are looking at tons of time. The big thing here is going to be is do you have someone that can work for upwards of 3 months scanning ocring and checking documents??? it is not an easy task even with an ADF scanner, i converted a 800 page book to digital format in PDF, with no OCR, and no database and/or searching capabilities, and it took me probably 2 weeks of str8 time so almost 100 hours of work for 800 pages.
 
There's not really any more of a feasible option as far as we know. If a simpler way existed to make the entire hardcopy filing-system easily accessible, I'm sure we'd jump on it like a fat kid on a cupcake...

The major problem we face is all the old information needs to continue to be accessable - and it needs to be accessible by a person who doesn't have the first clue as to it's physical location - so we're eliminating the physical aspect of it.

Of course, the older hardcopy system will be archived & warehoused somewhere on campus for emergency purposes - and of course, any newer information will be produced on hardcopy for the same reason, but in most cases be more consolidated. (i.e. Something that would've taken 28 pages to print would be condensed into 7 pages or less.)

As for the transitioning factor - the time it will take to make all those hardcopies into digital files - the University system is prepared to shell out some serious dollars to get above ground on this mess. More powerful computers and commercial-grade ADF scanners to move the job along.

We only have an idea of what our needs are. If a company is available to give us a consultation and give us a better idea of what's available, it would probably make my life easier by leaps and bounds. :) On the other hand - if a software package/suite is available for doing this, I would greatly appreciate being pointed towards it.

Thanks for your time & thoughts 'bignasty' - they're appreciated more than you know! :cool:
 
I'm an IT Manager in a paper-centric industry (real estate title insurance). We, our competitors, and every one of our clients has gone through the same thing you are facing within the past 3-4 years, as the whole industry has been moving towards end-to-end electronic document delivery.

As for the transitioning factor - the time it will take to make all those hardcopies into digital files - the University system is prepared to shell out some serious dollars to get above ground on this mess. More powerful computers and commercial-grade ADF scanners to move the job along.
Click to expand...

If it's true that the people with spending authority are prepared to shell out serious dollars, then your best bet is hiring a service company to come in, evaluate your current document store, design and sell you a solution, and maybe even scan your current documents for you. (although I would use cheap work-study student workers for that).

Speaking from experience, trying to research, design, and implement a complete solution yourself is not at all easy, but it's easy to make very costly mistakes. If the money is there, hire professionals who have done this kind of thing before.

- Qualm
 
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