Simply scanning a document into a computer or shared network folder creates an entirely new set of problems. You will have to search for a file, within a sub-file, within even more sub-files to finally discover that this one scanned document or file was still misfiled and difficult to find or resurrect.

In theory, IMS is basically a digital filing cabinet or hundreds of filing cabinets. Every document you manage usually has several defining characteristics that could be important when researching information. You may have a customer name, ID number, date, dollar amount, type of document, or many other attributes that vary from one document to another. All of these pieces of data can be imputed into IMS (up to 6 fields in IMS-PLUS).

Now imagine searching for a document under one method, maybe customer name. If this document was misplaced in your filing cabinet, you may spend hours searching. If this same scenario occurred after scanning into IMS, you could also search for this customer’s ID number, last name, first name, type of document, dollar amount, product, or something else. You can now search by any ONE of these mentioned fields or by MULTIPLE fields to narrow your search down to the exact document. This process is simple and takes seconds. Ultimately, if needed, you could perform a Total Text OCR search within portions or the entire database using the OCR search engine within IMS Enterprise or using a third party solution like ISIS.