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Benefits of data and forms processing solutions

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Bottlenecks caused by the slow of inefficient processing of forms such as applications can cause widespread damage to your companies business. At a crucial point in this data capture process, unwanted and unnecessary delays can cause customer frustration and undo much of the good work in building customer relations during any business process cycle.

 Moreover, they create unnecessary extra work for any forms driven departments within your company making the processing stages very slow taking up valuable resource and more crucially, impacting on cash flow.

 ORS Outsourced data and forms processing services

 ORS provides state of the art data capture and forms processing services to organisations and businesses throughout the UK who have a need to streamline their data management.

 These services are provided from various ORS data processing sites across the UK.

 By using data capture it enables ORS to electronically control, edit and search through data that has been extracted from your hard copy or electronic forms with the aid of our specialist data scanning services.

 ORS have completed many, large volume data capture and form scanning projects over its 20 year history. Our customers range from Medical organisations, Facilities companies, MOD, Social Housing, Local Government and Examination Boards and ORS process both hard copy and electronic forms such as;

 Marketing                                                       

  • Applications
  • Questionnaires
  • Surveys

 Human Resources

  • Timesheets
  • Payroll records
  • Maternity and Paternity Forms
  • Sickness
  • Job Sheets
  • P45, P46, P38, P11d

 Financial

  • Coupon redemption
  • Credit card applications
  • Insurance claims
  • Medical claims
  • Loan applications
  • Direct debit forms
  • Subscriptions

 Other

  • Patient Records
  • Product registration cards
  • Shipping documents
  • Student enrolment forms
  • Multiple choice questions
  • Examination forms
  • Charity donation forms
  • On-line web pages

 How the service works

 All of your incoming forms are re-directed to the ORS mail processing centre via a dedicated PO Box number unique to your company. This ORS service can also accept electronic forms, pdf attachments from emails or forms received by fax.

 Once scanned and in the system, forms are read using one of the following automated processes;

  • Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for typed text
  • Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) which can detect different fonts while processing
  • Optical Mark-up Recognition (OMR) which can recognise written handwriting

 Once this data is read, our experienced staff perform extensive validation checks on the data that has been captured to ensure it is the same as it appears on the original document or image.

 Images and associated data are then passed back to your ERP / CRM or EDM System to start your workflow processes. Images of forms can be captured and stored against your application information if required and can then be recalled from within the system or the ORS hosted solution via the Web for greater access and availability.

 Since each data capture application has its own service level agreement, you can clearly specify what information should be extracted, from header information down to full line item detail. The resulting data is available within a matter of hours, not days, ready for integration into a variety of back-end office systems.

 Application Form Processing

 ORS will have your forms electronically processed and have the data from the form extracted into a format that is editable, searchable and useable for statistical purposes or to retain the personal details from each field. However your company plans to use this data, we can guide you through the process and advise on the best use of the data to maximise the business benefits.

 Questionnaire Processing

 ORS will scan your questionnaires and feedback forms using OCR, ICR and OMR quickly gathering data from text characters, tick boxes, circled answers and crossed boxes.

 The data from these completed forms and any MI statistics required are then provided back to your company having first been validated against a set of defined business rules that you require running in the background.

 Survey Processing

 This type of form processing is becoming increasingly popular with large companies and public sector organisations as it effectively gathers the results from a distributed customer survey form and automatically converts the data into a useable electronic document with logged statistics eliminating the need to carry out long, manual data entry tasks.

 The benefits of automated data and forms capture

 If your organisation sends out any type of form you will be aware that there is a time consuming amount of data entry involved in entering the information. ORS take that requirement away and provide the fully captured data and images in a fast and efficient solution from its mail processing sites across the UK.

 Many ORS customers now use this service to speed up their workflow and now no longer have to hire additional data entry staff or have staff members waste days on entering data from their forms.

 The ORS data and forms processing solutions offer many other benefits such as;

  • Reduction in data entry costs by up to 85%
  • Reduction in data entry errors and an option for additional data checks providing 99.95% accuracy
  • Improved data processing times
  • Instant access to business critical information
  • Flexibility to cope with fluctuating volumes on a per item cost basis
  • Increased security and safety by all forms being processed in a central location
  • Lower operational costs by reducing dependence on manual processes
  • Improved response times
  • Increased accessibility
  • Compliance with regulations

 The ORS automated forms processing solution is built on a secure data capture  platform which provides an effective, robust, stable and scaleable environment for high-volume input capture and processing.

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SharePoint 2007 “Friend or Foe”

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

SharePoint 2007: The key questions for records management

In the recent past the records management profession did not have to concern itself too deeply with any one system from any one vendor.  The profession could establish specifications as to what it wanted records management software to do (TNA 2002, MoReq etc) and use those standards to incentivise a clutch of vendors to produce systems that operate according to that model.  Records managers simply had to understand the thinking behind the specifications.
SharePoint 2007 is different.  It hasn’t been designed around existing records management specifications, instead it has its own idiosyncratic records management model.  SharePoint team collaboration sites pose significant governance challenges and are sometimes introduced alongside, and in competition with, existing electronic records systems.  
The vendor behind SharePoint, Microsoft, already monopolises organisational servers and the basic desktop tools for document creation and e-mail. Their exceptional size brings with it exceptional ambitions.  They want to sell SharePoint into every organisation large medium or small.  They don’t want to base their product around the types of records management controls (particularly the corporate fileplan) found in TNA 2002 and MoReq 2.  Only a minority of organisations have the appetite and capability to implement and sustain a corporate fileplan. 
Not every organisation will take on SharePoint 2007. Of those that do, not every implementation will be successful or sustained.  SharePoint will face competition, but on a global scale that competition is unlikely to come from the niche vendors who provide EDRM and ECM systems based around TNA 2002 and MoReq/MoReq2.  The organisation in the best position to take on Microsoft and SharePoint is Google:  another huge, cash-rich monopoly.  Google plans to skirt around Microsoft’s monopoloy of organisational servers and destops by providing their Google Apps system across the web, from the cloud.
The records management profession is going to have to get used to managing records in records systems that are not of its professional making.
The strength of SharePoint 2007 in the marketplace gives us as a profession no choice but to engage with it.   We need to be in a position to ensure that organisations make decisions in relation to SharePoint with their eyes open.   When organisations do choose to implement SharePoint team collaboration sites we need to be able to help teams make the best of them.   On a broader front, as a profession, we need to assess how we move forward in a post-SharePoint 2007 world, where our records management standards and specifications will have a reduced influence on the marketplace.
Below are what I consider be the key questions that we need to address in each of these areas 

Helping organisations make informed decisions in relation to SharePoint

  • Given that SharePoint 2007 has no place to hold a hierarchical corporate fileplan how do we ensure the overall coherence of the collection of collaboration sites?
  • How do we guard against the danger of ‘SharePoint sprawl’? 
  • How do we apply retention schedules in SharePoint?  How do we protect records from amendment or deletion?  Is it worth using the SharePoint 2007 Records Centre for these purposes?
  • To what extent should we encourage/require the use of version control and metadata in SharePoint? 
  • Do we recommend that organisations turn on the facility to allow each member of staff to have a ‘my site’?  Individuals can use their my site to share information about themselves; to blog; and to create, store and (if they wish) share documents
  • Do we recommend that organisations plug in TNA 2002/MoReq 2 based EDRM/ECM systems behind SharePoint?  If so how do we recommend that they map from the elements of SharePoint (site collection, site, library, folder or content type, document) to the elements of EDRM (fileplan heading, folder, document) 
  • SharePoint offers many alternatives to documents and e-mails for creating and communicating information (wikis, blogs, discussion forums etc.)  Do we need to manage them?  If so how?    
  • There are usually other drivers beside records management behind a SharePoint implementation.  How can we best ensure that records management and governance needs are afforded sufficient priority?  
  • What do we do when we find SharePoint team collaboration sites being rolled out in competition with an existing or planned electronic records management system? 

Helping teams and end-users make the best of SharePoint

  • What advice and support do we need to provide end users to help them set up and manage SharePoint team collaboration sites?  
  • What should we be advising each team to do when they start a new project or piece of work? Should they create a new team collaboration sub-site? or a new document library within an existing site/sub-site?  or a new folder within an existing document library? 
  • Should we advise end users to use folders to organise their document libraries or ‘content types’ (metadata)?   
  • Do SharePoint team collaboration sites help with managing e-mails?  

  

Moving forward as a profession

  • SharePoint 2007 blurs the distinction between the intranet and the team working space.  It blurs the distinction between data and documents. How will this affect the relationships and distinctions between records managers and other professionals?  
  • Where next for the business classification/corporate fileplan?  The international records management standard is based around it.   So are TNA 2002 and MoReq2. But they are difficult and time consuming to build and have had a mixed reception with users in those organisations that have built them.  SharePoint doesn’t cater for them without work-arounds and customisation.  
  • Where next for electronic records management specifications? When there were lots of niche vendors in the field, and when electronic records management systems (EDRM) were distinct from other types of system such as web/intranet content management systems then specifications worked well as a way of influencing the market.  Now EDRM systems have been subsumed into broader Enterprise Content Management (ECM)  systems, organisations are basing their procurement choices on a broader range of criteria.  And Microsoft have been able to ignore the specifications but still dominate this market.

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