Infiniti of Kirkland has been a Scan123 customer for 2 years. In this video, Ryan Anderson, their service manager, reviews the Scan123 Electronic Document Management System.

With Scan123 we've noticed that our file room has greatly reduced in size. Before we actually had to have portable containers installed on the dealership to give us that valuable room that we needed. With Scan123, we don't need that anymore. We actually get to use that as office space. Everything's been digitally formatted.

It's a really easy product to use. Once you open up your web page, all you have to do is enter a repair order number, and Scan123 will find any document you need at the push of a button.

There's a great lot of time saved with Scan123. There's no running to the file room to find a lost repair order. You just enter the last six of the VIN or the repair order number, and everything is displayed on your hard drive as you need it.

Before Scan123, to find a repair order was pretty difficult. We had to go back to the file room, and if it was put away properly, you might be able to find it. But now with Scan123, it's very simple. All we do is enter the last repair order number, and everything pops up on your computer screen within seconds.

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When you upload scanned files to Scan123 or another document management solution, you have the option to add keywords to a file. This guide will help you understand what keywords are and how to use them effectively. This includes some best practices to avoid common mistakes businesses make with keywords.

"If documents cannot be found, they may as well not exist."

What are keywords?

Keywords are searchable text associated with a file that you can use to find it quickly. Keywords can be words, names, numbers, dates – anything you need.

Why use keywords?

Keywords allow you to retrieve documents very efficiently because you are only searching through only the most relevant information for each document. Full-text indexing, such as is generated by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, can often return an unacceptably low number of relevant documents. The more files in your document management system, the more likely it is that your search will match many documents that are NOT what you're looking for. One study of a large, full-text indexing document management system found that less than 20% of the documents relevant to the search term were found. In combination with other search limitations, such as searching only the contents of a specific cabinet, keywords help you get to the file you want faster.

How many keywords should I use?

Not too many, not too few. Sorry, that's not very helpful. But it is true. Using either too many keywords or too few keywords carries unnecessary costs, but exactly how many keywords are the right number to use depends on a number of factors.

Every keyword that an employee has to manually enter increases the time it takes to add a document to Scan123. Each additional keyword may only add a few seconds to the process, but multiplied over thousands of documents, the cost of that extra time can add up.

Perhaps more dangerous though is using too few keywords. You may save time and money by using as few keywords as possible, but if that choice adds to the time it takes to retrieve that file when you need it later, it may be a false economy. Adding an extra keyword can take a few extra seconds, but that cost could pale in comparison to the cost of a more highly paid manager or executive taking several minutes to locate the file later on.

How do I decide which keywords to use?

Keywords should never be chosen without input from the people who create and use those documents. Identify who the primary users of a particular type of document are and find out how they ask for those documents. For example, in deciding which keywords to use for invoices from vendors, be sure to ask your accounts payable administrator how they would search for them. They may tell you that they need to be able to search for invoices by the vendor number and check number, keywords that might not have been on your list.

If you're filing vehicle repair orders at an auto dealership, talk to the automobile technicians, who'll tell you that they need to be able to look up repair orders by the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN). Other employees, such as the service writers who deal with customers directly, may want to be able to pull up a repair order by the customer's name.

How should I format my keywords?

The most important thing about formatting is that it be consistent. Every employee entering keywords needs to be inputting them in the same way so that those looking a file can find them.

Let's say one of your keywords for an invoice is customer phone. If you search for the customer's phone number as 123-456-7890, but the keyword that was entered was 1234567890, your search will not match the invoice you're looking for. At best, you may spend a few more seconds or minutes searching for or navigating to the file by another way. At worst, you may not be able to find the file at all.

A list of the keywords and their formatting for each type of document should be posted at each scanning station. A single entry could look something like this:

Type: Accounts Payable invoices

Keywords: Vendor name, vendor number, invoice date (YYYY-MM-DD), check number

Example: Chicago Janitorial Services 2116 2012-02-29 1258

Summary

• Keywords are any written text you can tie to a file to help you find it quickly later
• Keywords are often a more efficient means of indexing than OCR
• Don't use too many keywords, and don't use too few keywords
• Talk to the people who look up a particular kind of document before deciding what keywords to use
• Use consistent formatting for keywords and post a formatting cheat sheet by each scanner

Sources: Indexing Digital Documents

Many individuals and businesses have found the iPad to be just what they were missing to go paperless. Paired with a document management solution, the lightweight, easy-to-use device puts documents in your hands just like a piece of paper. Right out of the gate though, users wanted to be able to create and edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations just like they would on a desktop or laptop computer. A host of these apps, paid and free, sprang up to meet this need, including iWork, Documents To Go, and Quickoffice. The beginning of 2012 brought a new office suite competitor to the app store: CloudOn.

CloudOn has been an undeniable hit since it was released on January 3, 2012. On day one, “overwhelming demand” forced the company to remove the app from the app store. The app is back now in the U.S. and Canadian app stores.

One of the biggest reasons for CloudOn's popularity is the price tag: free. The other office suites mentioned earlier cost $10 - $30.

Other reasons to like the app are its seamless interfacing with Dropbox and the way CloudOn duplicates user interface of the widely used Microsoft Office 2010 so users don't have to learn a new program. These features have garnered the app many fans and positive reviews. The app currently has an average rating of 4/5 stars from over 1600 reviewers in the iPad app store. Comments like, “Mind=Blown! … Awesome App!!!!” and, “A must have for anyone using Word or Excel,” fill app store reviews.

But among glowing five-star reviews, you'll also find iPad users with mixed feelings and concerns. The most common criticisms seem to center on slow response times, an interface that is not optimized for the iPad, and some outright problems using the app. One reviewer claims that CloudOn deleted the version history for all documents in his Dropbox account. Some issues are to be expected with any new app, of course.

What's of greater interest is speculation about how CloudOn really works:

“Loaded it up and tried it out briefly,” writes one reviewer. “Sure enough, it's running Office – although it looks like some sort of client-side version (maybe from a virtual machine somewhere?).”

“Yes it's really running on a virtual machine,” writes another reviewer.

If CloudOn really is just running Microsoft Office 2010 on remote server, it raises new questions about the app. Is this a legal use of a Microsoft Office license? Are my files secure on a virtual machine?

CloudOn has responded to security concerns on their website:

“We also take both privacy and security very seriously.

"We enable you to be productive without overstepping our boundaries as a platform. Our privacy policy can be found at: www.cloudon.com/legal/privacy. We follow this privacy policy diligently across every part of our system.

"From a security standpoint, none of your files are stored permanently on any of our systems. Your files are pulled only when you need them. Once you’ve finished editing them, they are saved back to Dropbox and wiped from our systems. We encrypt your credentials and also have 256-bit encryption between our servers and your client. We take pains to audit our security processes and improve them on a regular basis.”

Whatever your opinion, CloudOn has generated a great deal of buzz in the last three weeks. This is definitely an app to watch.

If you've tried CloudOn, what do you think?