Time is Money:
Data Capture Software Saves Government Agency Days
What began as a pilot program to improve timesheet processing is now transforming Montgomery County’s invoicing and accounts payable procedures into an adept system that dramatically reduces inefficiencies and greatly improves accuracy.
With more than 10,000 timesheets to process every other week, this Maryland county previously spent two days scanning documents and another three days reviewing them to correct errors in key pieces of data—such as employees’ identification numbers—during the process, said Mayland Lin, department of technology services at Montgomery County government in Rockville, MD.
The department knew that it wanted to increase the flexibility and speed of its data capture and began investigating data capture solutions that could integrate seamlessly with its existing document imaging solution. Montgomery County had been using a zonal OCR program. Unfortunately, that program was highly sensitive and all-too-often inaccurate, she said. In other instances, the county ended up manually keying in data—a more accurate but far more time-consuming process, said Lin.
Ultimately, they elected to use ABBYY FlexiCapture, a data capture solution which anchors on a document’s key fields and then extracts the information—vastly improving and abbreviating the once time-intensive process, she said.
"With the other program, there was a lot of manpower wasted," she said. "Now we’re able to cut down and do corrections in only one morning, rather than over the course of three days."
Multiple Choices
Like any organization, Montgomery County receives thousands of pieces of paperwork a week. Lin and her team considered different ways in which the county could use the same technology to save time and increase efficiency in other county departments.
Now, Montgomery County, which has more than 665,000 residents, also processes the Department of Liquors’ invoices for the state-run stores. In May, 2006, Ray Belden at American Heritage, a solution provider, integrated the FlexiCapture solution into its existing document imaging system. The county immediately enjoyed vastly improved accuracy and a speedier
invoice-processing schedule, said Lin.
But the county did not stop there. Satisfied with the results from its timesheet and liquor store applications, Montgomery County expanded its use of the capture solution into its entire accounts payable department, Belden said.
"They are a neat customer, because they process lots of different things for a lot of different departments," said Belden. "They save the scanned information into an image that is stored in their imaging program. They process all of the Department of Liquor’s invoices, but they also use it in accounts payable, so every vendor that submits a bill to Montgomery County comes through the capture system."
Implementation Process
Before launching its capture solution, Belden spent about six months discussing various solutions to Montgomery County’s paper nightmare. "They needed lots of technical support. Because they are a government IT department, they don’t have a lot of manpower."
To make matters even more complex, the county had many disparate paper-based systems in place—forms that used a variety of fonts, printers with varying degrees of clarity and a veritable rainbow of paper and print colors, said Lin. "If you look at the metadata, it’s gobbledygook," she said.
Unlike the earlier scanning system, the new data capture solution is flexible and forgiving of human or technical foibles, said Lin. "The technology intelligently analyzes the elements and data on the county’s timesheets and invoices, and captures the critical data elements the county needs to do its work," she said.
"With some solutions, if the document’s not aligned perfectly, it doesn’t work," Lin continued. "When the page was off a hair, our old OCR system couldn’t read it."
Forward-Looking Statements
Having enjoyed the initial results of its year-long work, the county plans to further extend its use of capture software, its partnership with American Heritage and its investment in computerized solutions, said Lin.
"Montgomery County is in the process of putting in an electronic system for timesheets, but it’s going to be at least another two years before it’s completed," she said. "I have a lot of potential to make use of the new data capture system. There are a lot of powerful tools that we can use to improve our productivity here. I want to leverage our continuing investment in technology and the training Ray provided to my department."
ABBYY is a world leader in document recognition, data capture and linguistic technologies. Product offerings include FineReader Engine, a comprehensive recognition SDK that combines full page/zonal recognition, PDF conversion and data capture; Recognition Server, a server-based OCR and PDF conversion solution; and FlexiCapture line of dynamic data capture solutions for forms and semi-structured documents.
ABBYY licenses its award-winning OCR and recognition technologies to many market-defining capture and ECM vendors. ABBYY is headquartered in Moscow, with offices in the United States, the UK, Ukraine, Japan and Germany. For more information, visit www.abbyy.com