IBM Datacap - Requirements Gathering

Requirements Gathering

Following are some guidelines to identify the application requirements and the details to design the capture system or solution using IBM Datacap Taskmaster Capture.

Requirements are classified into following sections... 

ü  Current capture or document processing environment

ü  Physical locations that receive and process documents

ü  Types of documents, their characteristics, and the data they contain

ü  Business rules that validate whether the data is valid

ü  Document volumes and time constraints

ü  Business requirements for dealing with exceptions

ü  Output requirements for data and documents

ü  Scanner requirements

ü  Hardware and software requirements

1.       Requirements for current capture or document processing environment

a.       Scanning

With this, you discover the characteristics and details of the business processes and systems that are currently in place. Identify the scanning requirements:

Ø  Are paper documents currently being scanned?

Ø  At what point in the business process are they scanned: upon arrival, in the middle of the process, at the end of the process, or a mixture?

Ø  What equipment and software are being used to scan the documents?

Ø  Will the current equipment be replaced, or will it be used with the new system?

Ø  Can the scanners handle the projected peak volumes based on comparing the scanner specifications to the scan volume?

Ø  Will the scanner handle de-skewing and noise removal?

Ø  For each location, will scanning be done by using thick-client ISIS or thin-client TWAIN scanner drivers? (The preferred practice is to test a specific scanner interface, driver, and scan hardware in a test environment.)

Ø  What happens to the paper documents after they are processed? Are they stored on-site, returned, stored off-site, or destroyed?

Ø  Will the new system change the way paper documents are handled after they are scanned?

b.      Processing

By explicitly documenting the current processes, you can identify the specific areas of process improvement.

Ø  How many people “touch” the document from arrival to completion, and in which departments or locations do these people work?

Ø  What is the current document handling process?

Ø  Are documents processed centrally or at remote locations?

Ø  How many people are involved in processing documents?

Ø  Which processing is currently being performed?

– Receiving documents, logging, counting, batching, and date-stamping

– Sorting documents for filing and distribution

– Preparing file folders

– Filing documents

– Distributing files or documents for processing

– Photocopying for distribution

– Manual typing of data

– Retrieving files from file cabinets

– Searching through files to find documents

– Matching documents against exceptions reports

– Refiling documents and files

– Pending or suspense file management

– Keeping calendars or diaries to track follow-up documents

– Searching for misplaced or lost files

– Reconstructing lost files

– Purging files and removing selected documents for disposition

– Transporting documents to and from storage rooms or off-site storage

– Filing internal forms or copies of correspondence

c.       Policies and systems currently in place

Identify the policies and systems that are currently in place:

Ø  Has our organization approved the destruction of original paper documents following scanning?

Ø  What systems are used for tracking and inventory of paper documents and files?

Ø  What ECM or other systems are currently involved in the current scanning or capture operation?

d.      Time frames

Identify the requirements regarding time constraints:

Ø  How long does it take for a document to be processed from arrival to completion?

Ø  Are there significant differences in time depending on document type? If yes, identify the differences.

Ø  What steps in the process take longer than desired?

2.       Processing location requirements

a.       Physical documents

Identify the requirements for physical documents:

Ø  How many physical locations create or receive physical documents?

Ø  Are the physical documents processed in the location where they are received, or are they moved to a central location for processing?

– How are they moved: by mail, internal courier, or external courier?

– Are photo or scanned copies made before they are moved?

b.      Electronic documents

Identify the requirements for electronic documents:

Ø  How many physical locations create or receive electronic documents?

Ø  Are the electronic documents processed in the location where they are received, or are they moved to a central location for processing?

– How are they moved: by email, electronic media, file copying, or file transfer?

– Are copies made before they are moved?

3.       Document type requirements

The questions in this section help to identify the documents types, how they are created, and their characteristics. You must identify and gather single and multiple page samples of all document types.

Identify the requirements for document type:

Ø  What are the document types and any subtypes, that we process? Consider the following examples:
– Packing slips for complete, partial, back ordered shipments

– Invoices, including purchase order invoices, non-purchase order invoices, preapproved invoices, trade     Invoices, non-trade invoices, and credit memos
– Attachments, including shipping confirmation notices and acknowledgement of receipt forms
– Loan applications, including the application form type by form number
– Insurance claim, such as the claim form by form number
– Tax forms, including the form number and year

Ø  Who creates the documents?

Ø  Can the design of the documents be changed if necessary to increase recognition accuracy?

Ø  If documents are created by external parties, approximately how many sources are involved?

Ø  What is the input source for each type of document: scanner, fax, email, or other systems?

Ø  For each type of document, does it have a fixed number of pages or a variable number of pages?

Ø  What is the number of pages per document?

Ø  For images, what is the image resolution and format (black and white, color, gray scale)?

Ø  What is the input file format for electronic documents?

Ø  Do documents contain more than one business transaction?

Ø  Do people stamp, mark up, or write on documents as they are processed?

4.       Captured data requirements

With this information, you can determine the data recognition requirements and other aspects of handling the data, including validations, lookups, verification, indexing, and data entry.

Identify the requirements for captured data:

Ø  What fields should be manually entered at the batch level (for example, Scan Date, Expected Number of Documents, or Expected Number of Pages)?

Ø  What fields should be captured at the document level (for example, Invoice Number, Invoice Date, or Invoice Total)?

Ø  What fields should be captured at the line item detail level (for example, Item ID, Item Quantity, or Item Price)?

Ø  For each document type, is data primarily machine printed or hand printed?

Ø  For hand printed documents, is the print constrained or unconstrained?

Ø  Are there pages that do not have data that must be recognized, such as attachment pages? It is common for forms to have instruction pages that are scanned but that do not have data on them.

Ø  How is data located on the pages where you need to use recognition to read the data?

– Fixed form layout. Fields are on specific zones where the location can be used to find the data.

– Variable form layout. Fields have text labels where a search for the text label can locate the field.

– Data is contained in a barcode.

Ø  Is data validated by using an external database?

Ø  What are the business rules for validating the values of the fields?

Ø  Do fields have lists of valid values?

Ø  Is it data optional or required?

Ø  Does the data printed on the page conform to a repeatable pattern? (For example, Credit Memo Number startswith the letters CR followed by six numerics, a hyphen, and three numerics.)

5.       Verification requirements

Verification intersects users with the documents. You must understand where these users are located and what tasks they are authorized to perform on each type of document. Business rules need to be applied that might mirror existing practices for handling paper-based data entry. Verification might also be desired as a quality control step to ensure that every image is readable.

Identify the requirements for verification:

Ø  Will verification be handled in a central location or from remote locations?

Ø  Are there business rules or policies that will require multiple verification steps?

Ø  Who will perform verification?

Ø  Does verification need to restrict access to specific document types by different groups of users?

Ø  Do we need to display every document or page or can we display only documents or pages were we have exceptions?

Ø  Will some documents require manual page identification by an operator?

Ø  Based on the information gathered on input documents, captured data, and export requirements, how should low confidence data, invalid data, unidentified documents, and incorrectly identified pages be handled?

Ø  When recognition results are high confidence, do you want an operator to view the document anyway?

Ø  Do operators need to visit all fields with low confidence characters?

Ø  Under which circumstances can the operator split out a document from the batch to finish processing the other valid documents in the batch? How should the split-out documents be handled?

Ø  Should operators be able to mark document for deletion (documents will not be exported)?

Ø  Should deletion trigger a follow-up process or automatic notification?

6.       Export requirements

Identify the format, content, and target system or systems of the data and images for export:

Ø  What is the document format for the exported documents for each type of document: TIFF, PDF, PDF with text, PDF/A, original input format, or other?

Ø  Is the original image or the enhanced image used for export?

Ø  Are color and gray scale images to be exported as color and gray scale?

Ø  Is a specific file naming convention needed for the exported document?

Ø  What are the document properties of the exported documents?

Ø  Do the images have areas that need to be redacted?

Ø  What are the target application systems for the exported data?

Ø  What are the interfaces that are available in the target systems for ingesting the data?

Ø  What data fields are exported to target application systems?

Ø  Does the data need to be reformatted to accommodate the needs of the target application?

7.       Volume and timing requirements

You must size and appropriately install and configure various Taskmaster components (remote/local clients, background processing, Fingerprint Service, Fingerprint Maintenance Tool). To assist with this task, create a matrix based on the following information:

Ø  Sources of input

Ø  Input volumes for each source

Ø  Approximate number of unique documents (number of fingerprints)

Ø  Peak periods

Ø  Timing (processing windows) requirements

Identify the volume and time requirements:

Ø  What are the input sources: scanner, fax, email, or other systems?

Ø  How many document or image files are processed per day from each source?

Ø  How many documents per document type are processed per day?

Ø  For highly variable documents, such as invoices, how many different document formats are processed?

Ø  What is the peak volume of documents and image files? Are there peak processing cycles daily, weekly, monthly, or annually?

Ø  Are there peak volume requirements per day, or are there specific service level agreements about how quickly documents will be processed?

Ø  Do existing paper files need to be scanned (backfile)? Quantify the volume and time frame for digitizing. Are the processing requirements different for historical documents compared to new documents?

Ø  Is the ability to prioritize batches or to change the sequence in which the batches are processed required?

Ø  What are the availability requirements for the system?

8.       Administration requirements

Ø  What are the production reporting requirements? Compare Taskmaster standard reports to determine if custom reports formats are needed.

Ø  What information needs to display for job monitoring? Compare Taskmaster monitoring views to determine if additional fields are required.

Ø  What is the organization model for administering the system?

Ø  What are the security requirements for authentication?