As electronic imaging began to gain momentum in the 1990s, a number of companies saw opportunities to provide an easy way for organizations to store, retrieve, and distribute images and data within an organization. The business became known as document management or imaging management.

Lately, document management likes to call itself knowledge management because the primary role is to get the right information to the right people at the right time, so that an organization's intelligence can be leveraged.

Take the example of a customer who calls the customer service department at an insurance company to ask, “When will my claim be paid?” If the insurance firm has a document management system that spans the entire company, the customer service person can access the data with a mouse click and immediately answer the question. The customer gets a timely response and the customer service representative does not waste time searching for the answer. This is the essential function of document management.

Documents and data are stored in a hierarchy and controlled by permissions. The level of the employee determines what data and documents the employee may access. For example, a customer service representative is probably limited to customer files and claim images, while the administrator or the company CEO has access to all documents.

Electronic document management also eliminates many of the pesky problems associated with paper documents. Paper files can be misfiled, worn, torn, damaged by fire or water, and eaten by the CEO’s dog. Moreover, retrieval can be another problem because paper files can be located only by a single index. For instance, paper-based AP files may be filed by vendor name or vendor number, compared to digital images that are indexed by numerous “fields” in a database, such as vendor name, vendor number, address and commodity. Thus, information can be located more quickly and by database search techniques.

“Other obvious benefits are the cost savings over paper files which require copies, paper, file cabinets, clerical file staff, and storage,” says Maureen Mitchell, president of Advanced Technology Systems, Inc. (ATS). She notes that the average clerical worker is responsible for processing a minimum of 20,000 pieces of documentation, spending 30 minutes each day looking for lost or misfiled documents. “This seemingly small amount of unproductive time accumulates to a staggering 130 hours per year,” says Mitchell. “Management will spend nearly an hour each week searching for files. This is in addition to the 2½ hours per week clerical personnel spend looking for the same documents,” she says.

The ATS numbers concerning the paper chase are familiar to anyone who has spent more than a day in an AP department. ATS research indicates that

• office workers spend 50 percent of their time looking for information, but only 5 to 15 percent of the time reading or using it;
• 7.5 percent of all documents get lost and 3 percent of the rest are misfiled;
• the average document is reprinted 19 times, but for every 10 printed or copied pages, only one is ever consulted.

Perhaps the most important benefit, however, is resolution of problems. Typically, files of check images, invoices, delivery receipts, etc., are only necessary if there is a question or problem. By literally having file access at the fingertips, problem resolution is handled much quicker, with less aggravation.