Document indexing is the process of relating data to a document in order to make it searchable and also to provide information on what the document is about; e.g. whether it is an invoice, a check, a bank statement etc. The main purpose in indexing a document though is to make it search-friendly and help you find it as quickly as possible. A good document indexing system is the best preparation you can make to search and retrieve documents speedily.
Benefits of Document Indexing
Although the benefits of indexing documents are numerous, we will look at 3 major ones here…
- Quickly retrieve documents: If a document cannot be retrieved, there is no point keeping it. Thanks to document indexing, retrieving documents can become easy. Indexing can be done using data fields where you enter information about the type of document, date of its creation, time etc. Another method is full-text extraction, using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This makes documents like scanned PDF files searchable by their text content. Combining these two methods is the fastest way to search a document.
- Better productivity: The average employee spends several hours every month simply looking for documents. If your documents are indexed properly, employees will be able to find files faster. This will lead to an increase in their productivity as they get more work accomplished in the same amount of time.
- Better customer service: When customers call you by phone or visit your office to get some information, you may need to retrieve certain documents. If the documents are well-indexed, they are easier to find. This results in your customer service reps giving prompt assistance to customers, resulting in increased customer satisfaction levels.
Learn how your small business stands to gain
A great way to get these benefits for your small business is to invest in document management software that has good indexing features inbuilt. Sohodox is one such software that allows you to index documents using both – data fields as well as full-text indexing (that makes the entire text in the document searchable).
Save hours spent looking for documents, find them in seconds and improve productivity.
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