While scanning documents is an excellent first step to your company’s digital transformation, you need to organize files in order to quickly and easily find and retrieve them afterwards to make the project a success. Document indexing achieves this by capturing unique information from each document such as an invoice number, date, vendor name and PO number on an invoice for accounts payable or the name, address and social security number from an employee application for human resources.
Manually entering this information into your existing systems is possible, but is time consuming and error prone. It’s important to automate this business process as much as possible when there are multiple index fields and millions of records to ensure accuracy and minimize exceptions, which are records with incomplete or questionable information in the index fields.
Variable lookup indexing (VLI) is an advanced indexing option that simplifies a complex and time-consuming process. VLI differs from standard indexing processes of populating index fields by combining layers of automation involving database look-ups with manual review processes. VLI is only offered by the most experienced document scanning companies, such as MetaSource.
Reducing Exceptions for Dependable Document Retrieval
Exceptions occur when no match is found between an index field and a database, such as trying to match someone’s name to a social security number. This may result in manually researching and processing these records. VLI minimizes exceptions by using multiple databases to populate index fields. The lower the exception rate, the more complete and accurate the indexed fields will be, ensuring faster and more dependable retrieval of your scanned documents – which means less headaches for you.
Choose Your Document Scanning Company Wisely
If your scanned documents require several indexing fields, some of which can be automatically populated by auto-matching with a large number of data records across multiple databases, VLI can dramatically cut indexing time, reduce errors and minimize exceptions that you need to resolve. VLI is a powerful solution for applications with high volumes of document scanning and index fields, including social services documentation, collection agency client files and human resource employee files.
The complexity of VLI means that few document scanning companies are able to recognize when it can be used effectively and utilize it, so make sure to look for one with a proven track record.