With ever increasing emphasis the world over on the importance of quality education, education sector is witnessing massive growth globally and more so in emerging economies. There is now an increasing impetus for Governments (focused on developing public education) as well as educational institutions to look at leveraging cutting edge technologies to make all aspects of their operations and delivery efficient and effective. Document Management Solutions form a very vital part of the solution framework for educational institutions.

Document Management Solutions are used extensively in multiple application areas in progressive educational institutions.

Some of the main areas of application in Educational Institutions are:

Streamline Document Intensive activities of Organization–
ViciDocs Enterprise solution for educational institutions enable organizations to address these challenges by providing a single system to capture, manage, store, and securely distribute information. ViciDocs Enterprise can store all kinds of images ,additionally relationships can be drawn between content items.

ViciDocs Document imaging transforms paper documents and faxes into electronic images and metadata that can be further managed by the ViciDocs platform. Once captured into the ViciDocs repository, documents can be searched, retrieved, routed through a workflow, linked to data in enterprise applications, and archived in a secure environment as business records.

Centrally manage content images – When records images are misplaced, unavailable, or slow to arrive, processes slow down and essential educational process may be delayed. As a result, educational staff spends unnecessary time and resources waiting for images and even requests for additional services or procedures. Part of the challenge is that images may come in many different format types, deriving from varied silos of information.

ViciDocs solutions for educational institutions enable organizations to capture, manage, and archive records images regardless of content type. Images can be converted into standardized formats, stored in the ultra-scalable ViciDocs repository, and managed as formal records to comply with government regulations. Educational staff can then securely access these images on the Web or on their desktops.

Key benefits of ViciDocs Imaging

Our document imaging solution provides organizations with:

• Seamless integration with best-of-class capture solutions – Deploy centralized, or distributed capture environments, process documents and forms with machine-print, hand-print, check-boxes, tables, and paragraphs.
• Advanced recognition technologies – Take advantage of sophisticated technologies for forms data extraction, barcodes, and image enhancement.
• High scalability – Scale from the workgroup level to high-volume production enterprise systems that handle hundreds of thousands of documents, faxes, and forms per day.
• Superior document management services – Leverage ViciDocs Enterprise features such as indexing, versioning, format transformation support – XML, TIFF, PDF, JPEG, Microsoft® Word, and ASCII – as well as search, workflow and lifecycle processing to manage and route documents.
• Enriched enterprise applications – Link documents and images to the structured data managed by enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), product lifecycle management (PLM), human resources management systems (HRMS) applications and School/College Management Software.
• Improved business process workflows – Increase the automation of business process workflows by capturing content from documents such as invoices, applications, loan forms, and insurance claims and streamlining the full process.
• Well-defined compliance and security – Ensure data integrity and process control through audit trails, records and retention management, access control, and secure export to storage media and backup storage arrays.

Research Organizations deal with lot of unstructured information. This information comes in multiple formats and from multiple sources as well.

• Paper based articles through news papers, magazines, journals etc.
• Electronic documents from the Internet like HTML, PDF, Word, PPT, Excel etc.
• Document attachments or body content through Emails.
• Faxes as well even if it is to a small extent.

The information that comes from multiple sources and in multiple formats is ultimately knowledge to the organization because different knowledge workers need different pieces of information at different points of time.

 Solution:

ViciDocs is ideally suited to handle the above set of requirements to ensure that the information is available at the finger tips of the Knowledge workers. ViciDocs is a suite of products and the rest of this document will highlight how each of the products would help a Research Organization user have access to information at his/her fingertips.

 ViciDocs Enterprise:

1. The users can create an appropriate folder structure depending on the hierarchy in which they would want to store the documents.
2. They can set the appropriate rights (View, Edit, Delete, Full Control etc) to ensure that only the appropriate documents are available for public access.
3. Scan the paper based documents using the Scanning module so that the documents are stored as multipage tiff documents.
4. Import the Electronic documents (PDF, Word, PPT, HTML etc.) directly into the appropriate folder in the repository.
5. Attach metadata and keywords to the documents, in case they feel that users would retrieve these documents based on that information.
6. All the documents stored in the repository in different folders are content indexed. This means that the ASCII data from the documents is extracted and indexed so that users can perform a search on the content of the documents and retrieve them.
7. Using the web interface the users can perform content searches on the documents and retrieve them with appropriate privileges. Users can search on Graphic documents like Tiff, Jpeg, Electronic Documents like Word, PDF etc.
8. Using the same browser interface users can access the documents directly from the Folder structure or can search on the metadata and keywords and retrieve them.
9. Use multiple collaboration Tools like Discussion Forums, Events, Polling, Documents Sharing, Bookmarking, Saved Searches the users can collaborate well and exchange information effectively.

 ViciFlow – Workflow Solution:

1. Users can create custom workflow templates defining the route in which the documents can be routed across different users in the organization for verifications and approvals.
2. The route can be predefined or can be adhoc.
3. The document will get routed across the different users so that the users can add their comments, annotations (red marking, highlighting, drawing lines, Sticky Notes, Redaction etc.). This will not change the original document.
4. As part of the workflow, the users can create new versions of the document so that the history of the document can be viewed at a later point of time. For example a design document can be routed across different people for their comments and a new version can be created incorporating the suggestions and comments provided by different users.

EmailSafe – Email Archival Solution:

1. Users use emails as their primary mode of communication where in critical information is exchanged as well. All the emails can be archived so that they can be retrieved either from the mail client like Notes Client, Outlook or Outlook express.
2. The Emails can be retrieved by searching on the mail headers (To, Cc, Subject, Date etc), Body of the message and the attachment names and contents. The searches can be performed either from the mail client or from the Browser interface.
3. The mails can be automated to be routed to different folders on the repository, by creating appropriate rules for routing, so that common mails can be stored in public folders so that other users can have access to this useful information.
4. No need of requesting the Mail Administrator to Back up and Restore the Old Mails as they are available online even if the mails are being stored for 7 years.

 Fax Integration:

1. With Fax Integration, the faxes can be routed directly into the repository without physical paper(s) flying around.
2. These faxes can be indexed with appropriate information so that they can be retrieved easily from the browser based interface along with other documents in the repository.

Engineering Companies have several processes that entail flow of documents and drawings. A vital part of this is the ability to effectively manage the millions of documents and images spread out across an Engineering organization that comprise Design Drawings, Product/Part/Material Specifications, Consultant Reports and Client Contracts. This diverse, distributed content – required for decision-making by numerous professionals and staffers in the organization – may not be available when needed or may be out-of-date or inconsistent.

Document Management Solutions are used in a wide array of engineering environments including Structural Engineering Companies, Design Firms, Construction and Contracting Companies.

Key capabilities required for content management for Engineering and Contracting Organizations include:

Enable Project-wise Organization of Documents and Drawings: The repository should be organized logically with Project specific folder hierarchies for archiving various documents.

ViciDocs Enterprise provides rich off the shelf functionality for definition of hierarchy of folders as well as highly configurable user access levels for different parts of the repository. The application enables creation and sharing of a centralized, web-based document and drawings repository for all stakeholders of a project.

Document imaging – Efficient Engineering work requires vast amounts of information – Client/Project Requirements, external consultant inputs, design drawings, data sheets and material specifications – to be rapidly accessible by those who need it regardless of where that information resides. In many engineering organizations, however, factors such as the ever-increasing volume of paper-based information, the many locations that information derives from, and unique storage, records-keeping, and processing requirements work against rapid accessibility.

Vicidocs Enterprise solution for Engineering & Contracting Companies enables organizations to address these challenges by providing a single system to capture, manage, store, and securely distribute all this information. With Vicidocs Enterprise, Engineers and Design professionals gain immediate, secure, Web-based access – even in remote locations. Vicidocs Enterprise can store all kinds of images. Additionally, relationships can be drawn between content items and drawings, enabling staff to get a complete view of the project spanning organizational boundaries.

ViciDocs Document imaging transforms paper documents and faxes into electronic images and metadata that can be further managed by the Vicidocs platform. Once captured into the Vicidocs repository, documents can be searched, retrieved, routed through a workflow, linked to data in enterprise applications, and archived in a secure environment as business records.

Vicidocs solutions for engineering companies enable organizations to capture, manage, and archive engineering documents and drawings regardless of content type. Images can be converted into standardized formats, stored in the ultra-scalable Vicidocs repository, and managed as formal records to comply with government regulations. Users can then securely access these images on the Web or on their desktops.

Key benefits of Vicidocs Imaging

Our document imaging solution provides organizations with:

• Seamless integration with best-of-class capture solutions – Deploy centralized, or distributed capture environments, process documents and forms with machine-print, hand-print, check-boxes, tables, and paragraphs.
• Advanced recognition technologies – Take advantage of sophisticated technologies for forms data extraction, barcodes, and image enhancement.
• High scalability – Scale from the workgroup level to high-volume production enterprise systems that handle hundreds of thousands of documents, faxes, and forms per day.
• Superior document management services – Leverage Vicidocs Enterprise features such as indexing, versioning, revisioning across multiple document formats including TIFF, PDF, JPEG, Microsoft® Word, DWG, ASCII – as well as search, workflow and lifecycle processing to manage and route documents & Drawings.
• Enriched enterprise applications – Link documents and images to the structured data managed by enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), product lifecycle management (PLM), human resources management systems (HRMS) applications and Hospital Mangement Software(HMS).
• Improved business process workflows – Increase the automation of business process workflows by capturing content from documents such as invoices, applications, loan forms, and insurance claims and streamlining the full process.
• Well-defined compliance and security – Ensure data integrity and process control through audit trails, records and retention management, access control, and secure export to storage media and backup storage arrays.

ViciDocs is a market leader in Document Management Solution for Project based companies in MENA region, with deployments for leading companies.