Document Management Best Practices Begin With Paper
Posted by Michael Ross | Under Business Thursday Feb 11, 2010With all the methods of dealing with electronic document management, the “paperless office” is still a long way off. Often, documents are printed and left in printers for varying lengths of time or inadvertently (sometimes not) picked up by others. This is particularly the case where printers are shared. Workers print a document, and, if the printer is a personal printer, they have a tendency to leave it in the tray for extended periods of time. Others walk by, the desk is unattended for periods of time, and a multitude of other situations occur where printed documents are unattended.
The absence of a reliable and straightforward method of document identification results in insecure and vulnerable information. In the event a document is misappropriated or misused, the consequences can be minor or catastrophic.
This situation is only too common in any number of companies and recurs every hour of every day. Paper documents are printed for review, collaboration, sharing or dissemination. The startling fact is that they are all too often printed without any type of identification indicating the intent or purpose of the document. For over a hundred years, a common practice was to use a rubber stamp in the top margin of the page. That was, and mostly is, the most common form of paper document management.
Using visible marking to documents should be done when the document is created. PDF documents produced from Word require additional steps to apply this marking and, if marking is required on specific pages only, the job gets more difficult.
As to the method, the document identification process must be thorough and capable of marking all the documents’ pages with appropriate and/or necessary indicia that is unalterable. The method must also be able to accept user-input to ensure that the marking is wholly appropriate for the document and handle extraordinary situations where truly custom stamps or legends are required.
While a stamp in the margin is better than no stamp at all, it doesn’t make much of an improvement over the old-fashioned rubber stamp. In order to be effective, the method must be automated. And the method must be capable of combining the text and the indicia in such a manner that it cannot be removed. User-friendliness is of paramount importance. If the use of the product requires data entry or command-line use, it is not likely to be used in an effective manner.
Shaded gray images (watermarks) are useful in small settings and where mishandling or misappropriation are low-risk. However, the security provided by this marking minimal given today’s copier technology. Using shaded color offer additional protection but still doesn’t prevent alteration or duplication and deletion of the marking.
Hollow/Outline, embedded non-contrast sensitive marking is considered the most secure form of document identification. This is where the stamp or legend is embedded in the text and is the same color as the text of the document. This prevents the stamp from being removed by a copier setting or just being covered up as can be done with a rubber stamp in the margin. The hollow/outline form of marking becomes part of the document itself – it cannot be removed. This is the most effective form of paper document management in an overall document management policy.
StampIt for Word is the standard for automated document marking and is the answer for eliminating the use of rubber stamps for paper document marking. StampIt combines the power of a word-processor with the clout of your printer. It’s like having immediate, total access to custom rubber stamps that are fully automated.
