Turning paper into digital documents

While many schools transform their manual processes to digital and gain benefit from the operational efficiencies that this offers, many have realised that some paper documents are not going away any time soon. In many situations, hard copy documents of all types are still the primary trusted record - and are often required to be kept for 25 years or more. 

Whether you need to create hard copy records or not, there are benefits to then storing both formats a digital repository. However, capturing your paper documents, in a digital format, can be a laborious process. There are simple, easy and fast ways to capture, register and file school documents exactly where they need to be, so you can find them quickly when you need them.

Capture solutions can assist with complex batch processing right through to single documents. Allowing schools to scan paper documents directly to a content management system or folder library and register, store and share documents quickly and easily.

So how does it work?

Fuji Xerox Australia provides a document capture solution that assists schools and Government Departments efficiently manage documents to help reduce the amount of paperwork and free up resources.

Scan

For large groups of information, such as enrolment forms, student assessment or permission based records, schools can scan documents using batch scanning capabilities or import documents from a folder or direct from an email account. You can then save and reuse your scan job workflows, including your digitisation standards and selected image enhancements.

Capture

While scanning information can be a useful first step for schools, there are further ways that the digital document can be optimised to make it smarter and make the life of school administrators easier. Optical character recognition (OCR) technology allows for the identification of printed characters to be changed into machine readable text.

The use of OCR technology provides the ability to perform quick database lookups or select field data via drop down menus. Define and reuse static metadata to limit the number of keystrokes or eliminate them altogether to deliver productivity gains.

Automate

The next step that could be taken, is to then automate these workflows to further reduce the amount of manual intervention required, allowing administrators to focus on more complex tasks. This could include scanning, image enhancement, data capture, validation and routing automation. All of these aspects are designed to limit the amount of user intervention, excessive manual processing and data entry.

Integrate

Schools can then take this data and integrate it with many popular content management systems such as DocuShare and Microsoft OneDrive or SharePoint or with student management systems. To the end user this means a seamless experience when scanning and registering documents.

What does this mean for your school?

In short, it means that you can realise the benefits of digital from the physical paperwork that you have. Meaning that you can free-up staff time and resources to focus on what matters most - teaching.

Schools can start simply by digitising one process, for example, student assessment or they can tackle multiple processes at the same time. Fuji Xerox can help no matter how big or small the job is.

More information?

For more information about how Fuji Xerox can assist you, please reach out for a discussion and live demonstration. We also have a number of schools willing to share their digitisation experience and improvements realised to date.

Michael Perry