Digitising data: definition, stages and benefits for businesses

What is data digitisation? This is the first process in your company's digital transformation. Your company uses digitisation software to extract and capture data, then sends it automatically to your business applications for direct use. This data is also classified and filed according to your own rules in an EDM (electronic document management) solution for structured archiving of your files.

The main benefit: improved information processing and real-time accessibility. The main challenge: staying in the race in an increasingly digital market, where everything is speeding up. To improve the quality of public services in France, the government itself is digitising them.

appvizer takes you through the basics of electronic data capture:

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Understanding data digitisation

What is document digitisation? While private individuals can scan a document or an image and reuse it as is, it is in the interests of professionals to look at document scanning from a data perspective. Here are some explanations.

Document scanning: definition

Digitising a document using specialised software refers to :

• the action of copying and converting an entire document from paper format to digitised file format, known as digital, which can be used on a computer or on the Internet;
• the act of capturing data from a document, whether in paper or digital format, extracting it according to its own rules and sending it to third-party applications on the Internet or on the user's computer so that it can be used;
• the action of recognising and classifying digitised documents according to its own storage criteria in an online document database for preservation and legal archiving.

Note: most of the time, digitised information is text and images. In some sectors, the digitised data may be sound, audio or video, moving images with an audio track.

The diagram below explains how document digitisation works and how the data is used:

Dematerialisation: definition

Dematerialisation refers to the digitalisation of processes and working methods within a company. In other words, employees no longer handle (or handle less and less) paper and instead use software and the internet to process data more efficiently.

Here are some concrete examples of successful dematerialisation in companies:

• employees use digital documents from which they can extract part of the data to carry out a specific task ;
• a content management system centralises all the company's digital documents in an orderly fashion, so that each business area can easily find the documents it needs;
• each business expert uses the documents or part of the data by importing the information into software to perform his or her tasks;
• the processing and use of information and documents is streamlined;
• employees improve their workflows, save time and are more efficient;
• The company as a whole sees its productivity increase;
• the company also saves physical storage space, formerly dedicated to archiving paper documents.

Data capture and extraction at the heart of digitisation

Digitising documents enables processes to be dematerialised and information processing to be accelerated. The relationship with data is completely changing the established order: data is captured, extracted, sent to the software of its choice and used in real time.

The digitisation of documents and the capture of data enable dematerialisation, but they are not the only components.

Automated digitisation now makes it possible to :

• restore the quality of the data identically, eliminating errors caused by manual input,
• exploit data like never before and improve internal and external exchanges.

The 5 stages of document scanning

To explain the 5 stages of document scanning, let's take the example of the ^{IRISPowerscanTM 10} scanning and data capture software in the following video:

Let's look at the 5 stages of document scanning in detail:

Stage 1: scanning documents and importing data

The software scans and imports documents from all kinds of sources: paper format, import from documents stored in the Cloud, from email, from different scanners or even multifunction devices.

The solution recognises and processes all file types (JPEG, TIFF, DOC, PDF, PNG, BMP, etc.) and all document types (invoices, ID cards, driving licences, orders, delivery notes, contracts, etc.).

Stage 2: pre-processing and classification

The solution makes the document more legible using more than 20 image enhancement techniques (deparasitisation, removal of black edges, autorotation, etc.).

It then automatically classifies the document according to your own rules and criteria, using integrated technologies such as character recognition, barcode recognition, OCR zone recognition, etc. ....

The software also uses automatic recognition of standard documents (ARD) to classify CVs, passports, invoices, delivery notes, etc.

Step 3: Intelligent data indexing

The tool recognises search fields and zones, data type and regular expressions such as a company name, invoice number, IBAN number, SIRET number or logo.

It detects the data to be indexed and extracted.

Stage 4: checking and managing ambiguities

The software automatically checks for matches and detects anomalies by requesting that they be verified.

If an error is detected, the manager can be immediately alerted by email to rectify it later or immediately.

Step 5: Export to business applications

The scanning and data extraction software allows you to export the document in the format of your choice (PDF, hyper-compressed PDF, TIFF, JPG, DOCX, XLSX, ....) and send it to your archiving or document management solution (Google Drive, Therefore, Dropbox, Dokmee, SharePoint, etc.).

Relevant data from a supplier invoice, for example, can also be sent automatically to accounting or ERP software to automate or pre-assign entries, or to other business software for further processing.

Advantage of digital data: the complete picture

Using scanning software such as ^{IRISPowerscanTM} 10, Kofax Capture or CaptureOnTouch Pro to capture data from a variety of documents offers many benefits to businesses in all sectors.

The first advantage of digital data for businesses is the dematerialisation of invoices:

• You no longer have to manually encode each invoice: the process is automated. The scanning software recognises and extracts the relevant information itself.
• As a result, each invoice is recorded in the accounts as soon as the data is captured. The information is processed and added to the accounting entries according to the rules you have established.
• You then export the invoice in PDF format, for example, for archiving, a format enriched with metadata that will enable you to find the document if you need to.
• This saves you 50% in processing costs and gives you more time to manage your business.

Here's an example of invoice scanning in Kofax Capture (mobile version) in the image below: the data is recognised and extracted automatically.

The table below details the various benefits of digital data depending on your sector of activity:

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Conclusion: 5 reasons to use scanning software

There are 5 main reasons why companies use scanning software:

1. They automate their administrative tasks and save time.
2. They avoid errors caused by manual data entry.
3. They can continue working while the solution is running in the background (depending on the software).
4. They can use the data in their business applications.
5. They can easily archive and retrieve their documents.