Intelligent data storage?

Samantha Sellers, Openda Ltd, asks how and why

Sunday, 19 October 2008

While flicking through an industry magazine the other day I was struck by sheer the amount of "Green" issues that were being raised. The downturn in the economy, as well as increasing costs, such as fuel, are and will continue to have a major effect on everyone. So will this negative landscape encourage us to use less and recycle more? Or will it overshadow the "Green" issues because we all have more pressing and important problems to concern ourselves with?    

There were two articles in particular that stood out. The first was of an environmentally aware Freight company who, despite facing massive fuel bills, are trying to offset their Carbon Footprint by planting trees in their Customers names, which is both admirable and encouraging. The second article was highlighting the benefits of a new "Intelligent" Data Storage facility, where a company has gone to the expense of building a warehouse extension along with racking, lifts and personnel to staff the new PAPER storage. Now I am sure that in this case the decisions made were correct and necessary for the company involved, but it made me wonder how much storage space and filing and retrieval time is wasted in a general business? That is without factoring in the cost of paper and ink used producing these documents, many of which will have entered the organisation electronically! 

Surely "Intelligent" data storage should be electronic? The benefits of this are not limited to "Green" issues and affect more than just space:

- Filing documents without printing saves paper, ink and electricity

- Physical documents can be scanned and then recycled, saving a few trees in the process

- Physical filing space is saved that can be utilised for office or warehouse space, allowing the expansion of stock or personnel to the maximum before extensions are considered, with all the energy that involves!

- Removal of filing eliminates the associated labour time in both put away and retrieval

- Last but by no means least, if electronic, these documents can be backed up, reducing the impact of physical damage due to fire or flood etc. 

Electronic data storage is known as Digital Image Processing (DIP) or Document Management. This is not a new concept. Putting document images on to film or disc has been happening for many years. The two most commonly used options at the moment are a great improvement on the above but do they go far enough to make the process worthwhile? They:

- Scan the documents and manually decide where each is filed, which is extremely time consuming and makes retrieval only as easy as the transparency of the filling system

- Scan the documents and use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to retrieve them by typing in words or phrases expected within the document while the software searches every document for a match. This can be slow and is based around your knowledge of the document's content. 

So how can we improve upon this? By tagging the documents in such a way as to uniquely identify them and automatically file them. This allows the scanning process to be batched and run as the last person turns off the light.

Creating the file is one thing but the retrieval is quite another. For optimum intelligence why not seamlessly link the DIP to the business software, so that documents are linked to the corresponding transaction and retrieved by a touch of a button. This can then be expanded upon to hold other relevant data such as Health and Safety data sheets, Test Certificates and signed Contracts. IF you can get to this point, DIP has evolved from a mere document log, to a comprehensive intelligent data storage tool that not only helps the "Green" cause, but can have a significant benefit to the growth of your business.

So how will we all react to the "Green" question? Well, only time will tell.

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