Improving business processes, fostering improved collaboration and finding easier ways to ensure information is handled in compliance with internal or external regulation are challenges organizations of all sizes deal with on a daily basis. Any party to the transaction (client, processor, coordinator, vendor, you, etc.) can fax documents directly for processing. Reliably integrating vital electronic and paper documents obtained by fax or courier such as invoices, expense details, purchase orders, claims , contracts into the available enterprise workflow is a standard challenge. This challenge can be overcome by having a barcode on the document.
Paper documents stamped with bar codes are widely used in a variety of industries such as finance, mortgage, insurance, healthcare, transportation and manufacturing. Combine these bar code stamped documents with network based faxing and data capture solution would result in a mature and cost-saving data collection technology. By having a barcode on the documents helps the software in segregating the documents, identifying the documents and also holding relevant metadata of the documents.
As a part of standardization or the need to make processing of documents efficient most software allow printing their output or forms with a barcode. Once the fax or a document with the bar code is obtained, the fax server or the data capturing software can read the bar code and extract the metadata. The metadata is then used to determine, route, retrieve documents efficiently and effectively.
A bar code of twelve characters can be read in approximately the same time it takes a keyboard operator to make two keystrokes. For every 1,000 characters typed by a keyboard operator, there are an average of ten errors. For an Optical Character Reader (OCR), there is one error in every 10,000 reads. Clearly, barcodes expedite front-end processing by improving scanning and indexing methods. Combined with data capture technology, bar codes provide a rapid, accurate and efficient means to collect, process, transmit, record and manage data in a variety of industries. With a data capture solution, capturing data is faster and more accurate, costs are lower, errors minimized and managing inventory is much easier.
In Rincon’s EDMS solutions, the barcode values are used to map the scanned image with the metadata / critical information available in the documents. With better decision-making, with better information, you can gain opportunities and get ahead of the competition. We see barcodes being used in the future on almost all major forms, documents available for processing.
Contributed by Ashish Baby