The Missing Element in Imaging Today—Ubiquity
Document imaging technology, for all of its benefits to organizations previously burdened with paper processing and storage costs, is an incomplete solution. The next challenge lies in making the digitized content available to all constituencies in a convenient, ubiquitous, controlled and personalized fashion.
Imaging and Workflow
Document imaging technology coupled with workflow automation software provides an established vehicle for capturing, managing and storing structured and unstructured information. Organizations with high-volume throughput requirements, manually processed information transactions or requirements for highly controlled information routing and approvals have been the primary beneficiaries of document imaging and workflow processing systems. Today, many such organizations rely on this technology to create, capture, retain and distribute virtually all forms of document and transaction content including images, forms, computer-generated reports, statements and invoices, office documents, Web content, emails, faxes, rich media and online assets.
Most systems store this digitized content in a repository, allow access to the content through some form of query and provide a viewer for content display.
Organizations that adopt this type of imaging and workflow system often see significant cost reductions. They are able to transition from paper to high-volume digital processes and streamline their document-intensive transactions. Many use the technology to ensure the retention, access and expiration of business information assets.
These systems can also have a positive effect on customer service. By giving public-facing employees quick access to digitized content, organizations can become more responsive to the needs of customers and partners and more efficient in their customer service processes.
Finally, these systems help reduce paper document storage and, through the creation of tighter information controls, help organizations meet compliance and governance obligations.
But for all of the progress imaging systems represent, they often lack the ability to deliver the content to all appropriate audiences, regardless of their location.
Broadening the Circle of Beneficiaries
Consider the following scenarios:
A prospective property owner is standing on a piece of rural land. He realizes the property markers are ambiguous and, seeking a definitive indication of where the property lines lay, he opens a browser on his Blackberry, visits the website for the local county government, pulls up the appropriate plat and begins walking off the footprint for his new house.
An attorney is researching a real estate closing on behalf of her clients. Rather than travel to the Registry of Deeds and wait for a Registry employee to retrieve the appropriate title documents—at the cost of $135 per hour to her clients—the attorney pulls up the title from the Registry's website and completes the search process from her desk.
These and countless other scenarios underscore a significant limitation in most current document imaging and workflow automation implementations: while they provide high-throughput content handling and process automation, they fail to make content available to the broadest set of constituencies in an open, convenient, personalized and controlled fashion.
Opening a Portal
Extending content to multiple constituencies is the role of portal technology. And marrying a document imaging system with a portal—or selecting a document imaging system that offers portal capabilities—lets organizations provide a single point of access for customers, employees and partners to document-intensive content that was previously accessible only to a select audience through a specialized viewer.
A full-featured portal can provide sophisticated self-service capabilities to a broad set of audiences, which in turn makes highly personalized online experiences possible. Such portals allow content owners to assert control over the nature and extent of that online experience through content targeting rules. At the same time, consumers can access the content they need, where they need it, when they need it, using ubiquitous Internet technology, Web browser software and the digital device of their choosing.
Healthcare is Blazing the Trail
Healthcare is on the cutting edge of just such a transformation from closed document imaging systems to portal-centric imaging, workflow and distribution systems.
A growing number of healthcare providers have deployed so-called electronic health record systems that are healthcare-specific implementations of document imaging technology. With these systems, physicians and other provider employees can retrieve patient information in real time. Provider organizations have benefited enormously from the time savings and other efficiencies these systems deliver, and they readily attest to improvements in patient care.
But innovative healthcare organizations have taken the extra step of building additional capability and flexibility into the delivery of the electronic health record they manage. Adding portal capabilities on the front end of the imaging system means doctors can get a physician-specific view of patient data and records all in one screen. It means administrators and financial personnel can use appropriate portions of the patient record to manage the business side of the healthcare organization. It means patients themselves can have browser-based access to their own health records, allowing them to be better informed and make better healthcare decisions. Finally it means ubiquity, convenience and efficiency goals are met as are compliance regulations surrounding the sanctity of patient data.
For more than ten years, Vignette has helped some of the world's best-known organizations leverage their content to create new opportunities, enhance profits and realize greater savings and efficiencies. To learn more about Vignette's Enterprise Content Management solutions, visit
www.vignette.com.