NexGen Digital Document Solutions

As business sophistication continues to grow, enterprise decision makers are increasingly demanding that data used to determine important business situations be delivered in new and flexible formats. Users must be able to share and view information at both global and corporate levels. They also must be able to dissect and drill down into different levels of that information, which may include geographical territories, product lines, financials, and business units. Such requests are not new; however, the speed at which users receive the data is now critical to keeping a leg up on increasing competition. Furthermore, the information must be as up-to-the-minute as possible so users can make decisions with as much knowledge as possible. Corporate facts and figures such as these have been around (even in the days of flat-file systems and microfiche), but they were not readily accessible to those who needed them the most.

Times have changed, however, and now technology has pushed the data-at-the-fingertips concept up the corporate ladder. Although relational databases have reigned supreme in the database arena for some time, newer near-line imaging platforms are now successfully competing for current as well as archived corporate data.

Imaging solutions have grown in popularity due to the reduction of costs for data storage systems such as disk, RAID, and CD-ROM. While storage costs have decreased dramatically, the amount of data that needed to be stored was increasing even faster. Most companies that deployed new mainframe applications due to the Y2K problem are reporting that the new solutions have doubled or even tripled the amount of data output and storage required. New payroll and human resources applications also require vast amounts of data storage. The new storage problems all stem from the additional capabilities of today’s software solutions that provide necessary intelligent decision making tools.

Imaging’s advantage is not only the initial and ongoing costs, but equally important is their ease of use. Users can make intelligent business decisions at their desktop with minimal effort by utilizing the vast indexing capabilities of an Imaging system. Imaging has grown from simply a paper or microfiche replacement solution into a critical component of corporate data warehousing and workflow solutions. Imaging is proving to be the backbone of WEB based data sharing solutions. Corporations can now share client information via the WEB or on an internal intranet. Imbedded security features insure the integrity of the data and protect it from change.Imaging can scale from a simple standalone CD-ROM solution for small databases to a large RAID repository storing millions of pages of multiple databases shared by hundreds of networked users.

Don Mende is the President of NexGen Digital Document Solutions located in Research Triangle Park, NC. NexGen provides EDM services and turnkey Imaging solutions to clients across the United States. Don can be reached locally at 919-544-9693 or toll free at 1-877-221-6111.