Frequently Asked Questions - Document Conversion

Q: What image file formats can you create?

A: VIT services strictly adheres to open industry standards to ensure compatibility with current and future hardware and software. We scan, index and store digital images in a variety of file formats such as Group IV, TIFF, JPEG, PDF, etc. This flexibility allows us to better address your needs and protect your company (and ours)investments in hardware, software and VIT Services.

A: It depends on the complexity of the retrieval/output required. The time required to finish a particular job depends upon the size of the job (the amount of paper to be scanned or filmed). The initial set up of the indexing parameters can be accomplished prior to starting the actual scanning or filming. This set up is the key to successfully retrieving the scanned/filmed documents and is often the most time consuming part of the job. The time required to scan/index also depends upon our ability to automatically index from your documents. We have completed small jobs of less than 5,000 documents in less than two days.

We have converted larger jobs (300,000 to 400,000 documents) in 3 to 4 weeks. Since our company is a high volume document conversion center, the volume of documents is not a problem.

Q: How could we use OCR and ICR?

A: OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition software and traditionally refers to the conversion of scanned or digitally imaged machine print on paper documents into computer usable, ASCII data. OCR, in effect, changes a "picture" of text into its machine-readable, digital counterpart so that it can be used in word processors or any other computer programs. OCR will be more or less successful interpreting the picture into text depending on the kind of font used, the complexity of the recognition algorithms, and the quality of the original document image. For mission-critical applications, departments employ an OCR verification process that requires human intervention to manually correct questionable text characters.

ICR stands for Intelligent Character Recognition software. ICR primarily refers to the recognition of imaged, hand print data from scanned paper forms. Over the years, ICR software has expanded its functionality to include barcode recognition, mark sense (check boxes, darkened circles, etc,) recognition, detecting the presence or absence of specific information such as signatures, and other specialized functions.

Using OCR and/or ICR tools enhances your ability to find data not stored by pre-established index criteria and reduces the need to manually index many of the fields in pre-defined documents.

A: Your document retrieval requirements and record retention requirements will largely determine the media type best suited for your company.

Some companies have a need to view documents immediately to provide the best customer service. The "digital" image is perfect for these applications. The document is scanned, indexed and immediately available to the users. There is no delay for film processing. Typically, these documents have a short retention requirement and CD DVD or hard disk fulfills these requirements very well.

Typically, microfilm (analog) is favored for long/permanent term retention documents. Microfilm (analog) offers an archival retention solution for companies having very long-term requirements and for government entities with long term, or permanent retention requirements.

A: VIT Services offers a "hybrid imaging" solution to records retention. We can provide our customers with the "total" solution. We provide you with the "digital" image for immediate access and the "analog (film)" image for archival records retention.

A: Strict quality control procedures and automation of the indexing process are the keys to assuring an accurate index to your document images. Automation of the indexing process is accomplished through bar code recognition, OCR and ICR.

Key index fields are "lifted" automatically from your document and additional, associated index information is collected from the imported information to populate your index database. We manually key two index fields (or one field twice) for comparison purposes to assure the index information is correct.

The key to any successful document imaging system is an accurate index database and quality images. Our goal is to provide our customers with the finest, most professional product possible.

A: The number of documents that you can put on a CD will vary depending on the type and size of document that you are scanning. In a scenario of scanning typical, 8.5 X 11 business documents that are approximately 50KB per document, one would expect to get approximately 12,500 documents per 650MB CD (assuming that the index to the documents will also be written to the CD).