Image-based document management: aggregating collections of handwritten forms

Many companies still operate critical business processes using paper-based forms, including customer surveys, inspections, contracts and invoices. Converting those handwritten forms to symbolic data is expensive and complicated. This paper presents an overview of the Image-Based Document Management (IBDM) system for analyzing handwritten forms without requiring conversion to symbolic data. Strokes captured in a questionnaire on a tablet are separated into fields that are then displayed in a spreadsheet. Rows represent documents while columns represent corresponding fields across all documents. IBDM allows a process owner to capture and analyze large collections of documents with minimal IT support. IBDM supports the creation of filters and queries on the data. IBDM also allows the user to request symbolic conversion of individual columns of data and permits the user to create custom views by reordering and sorting the columns. In other words, IBDM provides a "writing on paper" experience for the data collector and a web-based database experience for the analyst.