Business Problem Solved – FileHold Server-Side OCR

Search all your documents – even scans and faxes – like they were text.

The Pain

You need to digitize the back room of records. Dozens of years worth of data needs to be scanned, indexed, and entered into your digital library. Piles of banker boxes with long forgotten memos, reports, and minutes now loom over you, taking attention away from your other critical tasks. You may end up spending days or weeks painstakingly categorizing all this paper, only to have it ignored and your efforts gone to waste.

The Solution – FileHold Server Side OCR

There are many great reasons to keep archives of documents in any organization. Sometimes they are required by regulations, where documents must be kept in perpetuity or a pre-set length of time; sometimes, they help move an organization past the institutional memory of the current staff; it can even be as simple as wanting to keep the historical activities documented. However, these paper records have some huge downsides. They take up a tremendous amount of space. They are prone to misfiling or damage if improperly handled, and at worst can be a fire hazard unless pains are taken to properly house them. Worst of all, they can be forgotten. All these reports can yield important lessons about why the organization did what it did, and how those circumstances can be avoided in the future. Moving from a physical paper record to a digital record makes sense, as it solves all these problems but keeps these documents accessible.

The challenge is taking the time to properly archive these documents. Scanners can make the digitizing fast, but these documents still need to be organized. After all, digital files are no more useful than a stack of papers if you don’t know what’s in them. A document management solution is ideal for just this task, since it will let you index and categorize these scanned documents. But for organizations with deep historic archives, this too can be a waste of effort – what if no-one does access all these documents? Do all the minutes need to be finely parsed into metadata if they are never read again? The labor needed for this careful archiving can make the whole process counter-productive.

FileHold’s Server-Side OCR can solve this problem. OCR (optical character recognition) will take the “flat” image file and adds a text layer to the document. This text layer is then entered into the FileHold search index along with the complete text of all the other documents. Now you can search the scanned images like they were a typical Word document. Search for words, phrases, partial words, synonyms – FileHold’s powerful search index will find and display your content. Use the Highlight Results feature to get a preview of your document and see where it found your text. Search results are presented ranked by how relevant the result was, so you can be assured you’re finding the right content.

OCR will let you search instantly for documents as needed. Once you’ve searched the archive and found what you need, then you can spend the valuable time to index only the documents relevant to the modern business. All the information is still there ready to be found and you minimize the time on documents that may need to be kept, but don’t need more immediate investment. You get the best of both worlds: a digital archive that replaces the paper, and is cost-efficient in its use.

FileHold’s Server Side OCR will work on all .tiff and .pdf documents as they are added to the Library. The OCR is applied in the background, requiring no direct supervision. It also works on indexed documents so as you scan documents into the Library, tag them with critical information, and put them into a workflow, OCR will perform the same vital task of bringing the information to life. Whether a fax or a scan, make all your digital images searchable and accessible.

Problem Solved

As the last banker box is emptied and the scanner churns away, you can be assured that the history of your organization is in good hands. All your documents have been put into FileHold, and now everyone can search not only their current documents, but also the archives and bring them back to life and use. All this, and that backroom is now empty and ready to be repurposed.

To learn more about Server-Side OCR and the other cost-saving features of FileHold DMS, contact sales[email protected].

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Chris Oliver

Chris Oliver brings his twenty years of experience in management in the entertainment industry to FileHold Systems as the Client Training and Retention Advocate. To learn more about how FileHold DMS can work for you, contact him at [email protected].