Outsource Outsourcing Electronic Document Management (EDM) Services to India

Services offered by Indian Companies

Electronic Document Management is a necessity in today's business environment. However handling the document conversion on your own is not easy or productive. Instead of focusing on your own core activities you will be spending time and energy on a process that would be more profitable to outsource. India is one of the most popular outsourcing locations with some of the finest information technology companies, products, and services available. Technology companies here possess the requisite knowledge, skills and expertise to carry out even the most complex projects.

Scanning Systems and Services

Under this Indian service providers have expertise in the areas of -

• Document pre-processing - This is the process of preparing documents for scanning. They remove all staples, tags, folds and arrange the documents in sequence for scanning.
• Document Scanning - Scanning documents into the database using scanners and EDMS software. The selection of scanners and the EDMS software depend on the volume and the time frame for the project.
• Format conversion - Converting scanned images which are in Tiff format to a desirable format, i.e., to PDF / Word / Excel, etc.
• Indexing the documents - Indexing documents for future retrieval purposes. The number of fields for indexing is decided by the customer.
• Quality check - Prior to burning the documents on to a CD the quality of images and the content are checked. If need be, a re-scan is done and put into database. They also check the indexing criteria and make sure proper indexing is done for related documents.
• Implementation of EDMS - We also customize and implement EDMS enterprise wide for enhanced information retrieval mechanism.

Benefits of outsourcing document conversion to India

It is very evident that the document conversion project is -

• Process intensive
• Labor intensive
• Technology intensive
• High precision and quality intensive
• Highly time related

India is a country with high intellectual capital, and services are available at affordable prices. It is a strategic & beneficial decision for a business to outsource document conversion projects to India. This will benefit your business in many ways, example -

• High quality output of converted documents.
• Cost competitiveness, simply because of abundance of intellectual capital.
• Effective turnaround time, due to a time difference vis-à-vis the west.

Speeding up the Outsourcing Process

How can I make the process cheaper and faster?

There are a number of things one can do to facilitate the document conversion process -

• Spend extensive time thinking through all the details. Write down all the rules you want to use during the conversions. For example, "How are post-it notes handled?"
• If you use a consultant, have him or her talk to your scanning service bureau as early as possible in the process.
• Thoroughly understand the indexing scheme you want to use, and whether you'll need OCR, formatted OCR or ICR.
• Work with your staff and consultants on all the "what if " scenarios.
• Get rid of "junk" documents you don't really need.
• Prepare your documents in-house before shipping them to your scanning service bureau. For example -
  • Remove all staples.
  • Mark each carton with a simple, effective serial number.
  • If you'll need some of your documents while they are being converted, make copies for yourself.
  • If you are giving your scanning service bureau documents in pieces (separate boxes), develop your own indexing scheme for the boxes so you'll have an audit trail of where the boxes are (service bureau will maintain a "mirror" trail with you).
  • Preparation time is usually 15% of the total conversion - Preparation takes one to two hours per thousand pages.
  • Do a trial run with your scanning service bureau to validate sample scans, file structures, and indexing schemes. Provide samples of all sizes shapes of documents to be scanned.

Issues to be considered while outsourcing document conversion projects to India

• Competitiveness of the service bureau to execute such projects.
• Classification of documents that need to be scanned on-site and off-site.
• Modus operandi for shipping documents to scanning services bureau & back.
• Indexing criteria for retrieval purposes.
• Integration of converted documents into main stream EDMS.
• Capability to offer full solution for life cycle management of a document.

Read our other articles on the need for Electronic Document Management Systems and Outsourcing CAD Conversion.

Please contact Outsource2india here with your outsourcing requirements.