Blowback is the practice of printing electronic documents to paper (blowing them back to tangible form). The typical scenario is when hardcopy documents are scanned, but then hard copies of the scanned electronic documents are needed.

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ProjectCenter is a single-source service company providing marketing and document solutions to small, medium and large-sized businesses in the U.S. area. ProjectCenter is based in Phoenix, Arizona and its services include graphic design, web design, printing, copying, scanning and mailing. For more information, please call (602) 252-6655 or visit  www.makepapereasy.com.

There are different levels of service and pricing when scanning is needed. Here are some brief details to help clients understand the scanning processes:

Straight Run Auto Feed- Originals that are rubber-banded or loose documents. This type of work does not require any preparation by the operator to being scanned. The orginals must be in excellent condition (one-sided, same size with no staples, clips, tabs or folders).

Light Litigation- Originals that are thick stapled and clipped sections of documents. Occasionally, small sections of stapled or clipped documents of only a few pages may be mixed in, but not to the extent of slowing the output of the scanning. This category includes originals that are all 2-sided, even if considered “auto-feed”.

Medium Litigation- Originals that are primarily stapled and clipped sections of both letter and legal size documents, including file folders, folder tabs, numeric and alpha tabs, which are to be scanned. These jobs require more handing and organization. Occasionally, small receipts or smaller-sized originals may be mixed in, but not to the extent of slowing the out put of the job.

Heavy Litigation- Originals described as “Medium Litigation”, but with fewer pages in the stapled or clipped sections (5 pages or less), mixed sizes of originals, such as receipts, envelopes, half pages, and poor contrast documents that will require adjustment to product an acceptable scanned image. Included in this are documents marked, “Scan Tagged or Clipped Documents Only”.

Hand on Glass- Originals require that the operator place the documents directly on the scanner glass for scanning more than 50% of the time. Extremely poor quality originals, receipts, checks, etc., that require extensive handling and analysis on a page-by-page basis in order to produce a quality image.

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It is very common for an attorney or legal client to make a request regarding Concordance or Summation. This request is usually part of a project that would possibly entail scanning, Bates labeling, indexing, image conversion, etc. A common example would be a paralegal requesting to have legal documents picked up, scanned, electronically Bates labeled (i.e. BS001-BS1001) and brought back on a CD/DVD in a Concordance (or Summation) format.

Concordance and Summation (http://law.lexisnexis.com/concordance and http://www.summation.com/) are proprietary softwares to the legal industry that allow a firm’s staff to organize case files in an electronic format. Hence, legal firms will request one of the two formats, so that they can automatically load the electronic images in the database. That is to say, if they own one of these software packages.

ABOUT PROJECTCENTER:

ProjectCenter is a single-source service company providing marketing and document solutions to small, medium and large-sized businesses in the U.S. area. ProjectCenter is based in Phoenix, Arizona and its services include graphic design, web design, printing, copying, scanning and mailing. For more information, please call (602) 252-6655 or visit  www.makepapereasy.com.

ProjectCenter recently had a common client project where color images were to be scanned to a digital format, image-keyed, and given back to the client in a specified format. The hard copy images were scanned into a PDF digtal format.

Unfortunately, there arose an issue where eScanIT would not recognize a great portion (98%) of the images brought into the program. eScan IT would pick 2 random pages and key them, but leave the rest unrecognized. This was the only occurance experienced.

The solution to this issue was to simply convert the PDF files to individual TIFFs. Once that was completed, the IPRO eScan-IT program was able to recognize all the images.

ABOUT PROJECTCENTER:

ProjectCenter is a single-source service company providing marketing and document solutions to small, medium and large-sized businesses in the U.S. area. ProjectCenter is based in Phoenix, Arizona and its services include graphic design, web design, printing, copying, scanning and mailing. For more information, please call (602) 252-6655 or visit  www.makepapereasy.com.

Earlier this month, we spoke of the benefits of scanning and document repository- services that are typically utilized by the legal industry.

One point that was not mentioned was the importance of handling such materials, in terms of federal regulation. With the weight of such policies, it would seem even more beneficial to have a service provider handle the scan and depository work.

Read more about these regulations here: http://www.tlrcblog.com/2006/11/articles/guest-posts/how-to-convert-from-paper-to-electronic-files-start-with-a-policy/.

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Online Repository (a.k.a. Online Depository) is an outsourced, off-site place where electronic files and documents can be stored. This service is often tied to scanning, meaning clients that use scanning services also use Online Repository services on occasion. In addition to the benefits of scanning, such as the reduction of physical space and more efficient organization of documents, Online Repository allows a client to hold these documents off-site. Here are some benefits:

1) Off-site backup might be considered most important for minor and major distasters occurances. Moving locations, fried computers, stolen equipment, stolen data, fires,  and destructive weather are all issues that can be overlooked until they happen. Needless to say, having information off-site protects clients from lost data.

2) Lately, with the ever-mounting traffic problems, people are working from home. Online Repository allows clients to access information from anywhere. This saves time on the management needed to give outside users access to vital documentation.

3) Off-site backup reduces the space needed for onsite backup, allowing clients to reduce the budget needed for storage in their I.T. departments.

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A client asks, “What are benefits of scanning?”

One may think that the answer is obvious, but scanning is relatively new to the I.T. industry. Scanning is a process by which hard copy paper documents are entered into a scanning device, that device scans the images on those documents, and it makes an electronic copy that becomes stored on a computer/storage device.

The most common benefit of scanning is the reduction in physical space. There are industries that require that a business collect and maintain several years of data. In this case, as a business grows so does their storage of documents. These days, electronic storage devices such as hard drives and DVD/CD’s have become inexpensive, so converting stacks and stacks of documents to electronic files has become a common practice. Think of how much square footage is being used for the document storage in your facility, and then multiply that by your rent per square foot. You might find that the space is better utilized for something else, such as revenue growth (i.e. sales).

Another benefit is the ease of organization. Electronic images are much more manageable in terms of searching documents. The legal industry, due to their massive amount of documentation, utilizes this functionality to be more efficient when working a case. In fact, attorneys go so far as to purchase proprietary softwares (Concordance, Summation) to help sort the electronic documents. Think about the time, which equals money, that can saved by having documents at the tip of your fingers, while maintaining your sales/service price (can you say margin increase?).

The only downside is that it takes a considerable amount of time to execute this process, so it is recommended that the documents be picked up by a scan service company (hint), and let them handle the dirty work.

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