Enterprise Content Management
Enterprise Content Management, abbreviated, as ECM is a process in which the documents or other contents, which talk about an organization or an enterprise’s processes is organized and stored. Enterprise Content Management encompasses the strategies, tools and the procedure that is used till all through the content’s lifecycle.
ECM uses a combination of components, which could be also used individually without having to be incorporated in a system as wide as an enterprise. AIIM was the first to define the 5 components and also the technologies to be used for an ECM. These are namely
- Capture
- Manage
- Store
- Preserve
- Deliver
Capture – The process of capture involves the conversion of information, which could be on papers, into the electronic format with the help of scanning technology. Capture is also helpful in collecting files and information, which could be in electronic form already, so as to have consistency in structure, which becomes easy for management. It also encompasses the process of creating metadata, which describes the attributes about the documents so that it becomes easy to locate with the help of search technology. For instance, in medical charts, a particular patient can be found with the help of a particular data like the name of the patient, his ID, visit date etc. any of which could be used in searching the required data.
Previously, systems in document automation used to photograph the documents to store on microfiche or microfilm. Today, optical scanners copies the paper documents into the digital format. Digital files can also be copied or can be linked to depending if they are available online. Semi-automatic and automatic capture can use XML documents or EDI, ERP or business applications or current special application systems for use as sources.
There are various technologies for the recognition process that are used for extracting information from digital faxes and scanned documents, which include –
Handprint Character Recognition, also abbreviated as HCR, is the process in which the text, written by hands is converted into alphanumeric values. This yields better results in case of short text, which are in fixed places than freeform text.
Optical Character Recognition, also abbreviated as OCR recognises typeset text and converts them into alphanumeric values.
Intelligent Character Recognition, also abbreviated as ICR, is helpful in improving recognition from both HCR and OCR as it compares data, attempts logical connections, checks with the current master data and reference lists.
Barcode Recognition helps in decoding the standard industrial encoding of products, along with other data, which are commercial.
Optical Mark Recognition also abbreviated as OMR does the reading of special markings like dots, checkmarks across predefined fields.
Image Clean up does the work of straightening, rotating, adjusting the colours, zooming,
Page-separation, alignment, de-speckling, transposition and annotations in documents.
Forms processing refers to the process of capturing of printed forms through scanning. Very often, recognition technologies are used here as forms that are well-designed mostly enable automatic processing, which are useful in capturing electronic forms like the ones submitted through web-pages, provided that the structure, layout, contents and logic are familiar for the system of capture.
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