Chapter 10
Document Imaging
What's in this chapter?
- Understanding document imaging and the Microsoft SharePoint as a document imaging platform
- Building a primitive document imaging system on top of Microsoft SharePoint
- Using Microsoft SharePoint APIs to create a document imaging system
- Leveraging the Microsoft .NET Framework to create a document imaging system
Most organizations are forced to deal with paper-intensive processes somewhere within their business. Some of these processes are unique to the industry with which the business is associated, such as the handling of loan applications in the financial industry or dealing with patient records within the healthcare industry. Other processes are common to many organizations, such as invoicing within the accounts payable department or applications within the human resources department.
Regardless of which paper-intensive processes are involved, organizations are plagued with large amounts of paper documents. Typically, these documents are stored in vast arrays of file cabinets that consume large amounts of physical space, and it is often difficult for users to easily find, let alone work with, these documents. Even companies that have begun to store documents electronically are often faced with large backlogs of paper documents.
As discussed in Chapter 3, storing these documents in paper format is both costly and inefficient. Table 10.1 highlights the drastic differences between storing documents electronically versus storing ...
