When your business needs to deal with large volumes of data and documents, you consider document indexing. Document indexing basically involves tagging the documents with the most frequently searched information and organizing it for a quicker search. Indexing is one of the most important aspects of Record management. You can either tag the entire text for searching or if it is a columnized file, tag specific columns for a quicker search. Document indexing offers many interesting and critical advantages to the businesses.
How does document indexing work?
Document indexing starts with identifying the columns or attributes based on which the document has to be indexed. These depend upon what�s stored inside the document and what are the most frequently searched columns or attributes in it. Supposing you are storing the invoice details in a file, the most probably columns to search on will be invoice no, invoice data and customer name. Document management services start from this process of identifying the keys to index upon. Once the keys are specified, retrieving information stored in the file now becomes much easier and faster with indexing.
Why index documents?
One of the major advantages of using document indexing is to make the data available on time. Here are some more benefits that document indexing offers:
Faster Searches
When you index the files, they are sorted on the basis of the key using which it is indexed. This makes it easier to search for a specific record or information stored in it. It is hence important to identify the right keys or attributes in the file to index it on. Even when you have a huge amount of data to search in for, indexing helps in retrieving the required information much faster.
Better Document Organization
Documents are better organized when indexed. Document indexing creates an additional internal file where the key and value are stored in sequential way. Document indexing companies take meticulous effort in identifying the right indexing attributes and their combinations. Once indexed, it is difficult to change the index. Some databases and file systems will not let you drop or delete an index once created and data is input. Once indexed, the organization will benefit from better efficiency since the indexes are stored such that they are accessed first and the rest of the documents are accessed later.
Faster knowledge sharing
Faster access to data means faster process completion and knowledge sharing. When the processes are completed faster, customers get more satisfied. Better customer satisfaction leads to better customer reviews and more recommendations. In effect, document indexing will help your business achieve better productivity and profitability.
Process Flow
With digital Document Indexing the processes are better managed because of digitization. You can also automate the processes once the data is digitized and indexed. Even in the MIS tools, data digitization is performed to ensure faster and more efficient data flow.
Document indexing requires expertise and specific tools. It is best outsourced because the biggest challenge is to determine the indexing attributes which an experienced resource or team can determine better.
