DATA MANAGEMENT

Paper
We all need it to do our work, but paper accumulates quickly. Our files grow fatter and fatter, then they grow some more. Folders and filling systems make it easier to find out documents. Record managers organize, archive, and retrieve our information. But the amount of paper keeps growing, paper files are often hard to find, records may not be in their proper folder. Or they may be "borrowed" and then left on somebody's desk. Studies show that professionals often lose up to 500 hours a year just looking for documents. Those days are gone. Document Imaging or Management offers a better way to manage the records you rely on.

What is Document Imaging or Data Management?
This is the conversion of paper documents into electronic formats on your computer. Once on your desktop, these documents can be retrieved effortlessly in seconds. Every organization generates large amounts of paper and electronic documents. We all have developed our own ways to store important files, yet things continue to get misplaced. Traditional methods of storing paper and electronic documents require a great deal of effort to manage, distribute and find those documents. Document Imaging revolutionizes the archival of information and provides the means to rapidly find, retrieve and share all documents in your systems. All document imaging systems should have five basic components:

• Scanning and importing tools to bring documents into the system
• Methods for archiving and storing documents
• Indexing systems to organize documents
• Retrieval tools to find documents
• Access control to provide documents to authorized people.

To compete in today's world, a company has to survive in a fast-growing, technologically driven environment to produce goods and services. How does a company deliver the best product or service to market at a fair price in the shortest time?

To maintain a competitive edge, a company must leverage its information assets which include a tremendous amount of engineering documents. Tools and processes to efficiently manage, distribute and modify these assets are essential.

International Data Corporation and Document Management magazine estimate that there are more than eight billion drawings worldwide, of which fewer than 15 percent are in a Computer Aided Design (CAD) format. This leaves an astonishing 85 percent of drawings maintained in non-electronic format, mainly paper-based engineering archives. Considering that each successive stage in a product cycle-design, production, support services-uses substantially more documentation than the prior stage, the benefits of integrating this information grows exponentially.

The need to capture, modify and distribute existing paper designs within the environment of today's computing technology predates CAD technology itself.