Intuition—First Impression, by David J. Drucker

"If you're in the market for an intuitive document management system from a company that's pioneered these types of applications with a keen focus on the financial services industry, keep an eye out for Intuition's release."

As promised last month, I've gotten a hold of a beta version of Laserfiche's Intuition product and reviewed it exclusively for this newsletter. Intuition is Laserfiche's new entry into the market for lower-priced document management systems appropriate for the smaller, independent advisory practice.

You might be wondering whether we really need more choices in the market for scanning software. If what you're looking for is an exceptionally intuitive yet robust document imaging system, then the answer is yes.

But let's start at the beginning. I received my beta copy of Intuition from Laserfiche along with a CD labeled “Starter Repository.” Jeffrey Green (Laserfiche's top rep for the financial advisor community) suggested I import the Repository file into my installation of Intuition. “My Repository” is the name Intuition gives to the entirety of what you import or scan into Intuition so, by importing Green's Repository folder, I was able to start out with a number of sample files. The final edition, I am told, will ship with a set folder structure and sample templates so that you, too, will have a convenient starting point. I also imported and scanned into Intuition files of my own.

Once up and running, I found Laserfiche under Start - Programs, along with a PDF Quick Start Guide. I opened both and attempted a test scan. Clicking on the Scanner icon opens the Scanning window, and clicking on the Scanner Options icon opens the Settings window where you can choose paper size, paper source, color and resolution before completing the scan. Clicking on Enhancements gives you the option to have your scanned page deskewed, despeckled or rotated, and there's also an option to remove lines that may be encountered in the optical character recognition (OCR) process.

This is a good example of how Intuition is as easy to use as a simple program like PaperPort®, yet more sophisticated. One of PaperPort's features I've always marveled at is its ability to OCR documents “behind the scenes” and create an index allowing the user to find a document based upon text in the document. However, PaperPort doesn't automatically make that text available; to get at the OCR'd text in PaperPort requires extra steps. Intuition does it all in one step—it scans, OCRs and then presents it to you for your use all in one window. You could then, for example, cut and paste the text right from that window into a Word® document, if desired.

But scanning is only one way to get an image or file into Intuition's My Repository. Files can also be cut-and-pasted in, imported, dragged or sent. To send a file, just open any Microsoft® Office® application and, once Intuition has been installed, you will find an option to transfer a copy of the file to Intuition. Just about every option you could want is available for making Intuition the central database for all your image files.

Like PaperPort and other scanning programs, though, if you really want to centralize documents for your clients, your business, etc., you can also bring Microsoft Office files (.xls, .ppt, .doc, etc.), PDFs and other non-graphic files into Intuition. However, when you want to view those files, Intuition treats each one differently. Say you've dragged a JPEG into Intuition's main window. Intuition treats it just like a scanned image, so clicking on the filename opens the image in a separate window. However, clicking on a Word file brings up Word so you view the file in its native application.

Of course, you can export as well as import documents. A page scanned into Intuition can be easily exported in PDF form—the default file format for exports. You can e-mail or print these PDFs directly from Intuition.

As with PaperPort, you will find the capability to annotate documents using standard tools like stamps (you can create your own), sticky notes and highlighting. Intuition also offers redaction, meaning you can highlight a section of text in a document, like a Social Security number, and then print the document to show that section of text blacked out. The uses for this annotation tool should be obvious. Any annotations you apply to a document lay on top of it as add-ons, meaning you can click on them at a later time and remove or change them if necessary. Annotations do not permanently modify the underlying document, which is essential from a compliance standpoint.

If you're in the market for an intuitive document management system with a company behind it that's pioneered these types of applications with a keen focus on the financial services industry, keep an eye out for Intuition's release.

Excerpted from “Laserfiche Intuition — First Impression” by David J. Drucker. Originally published in Virtual Office News, February 2007.
© Copyright 2003-07, Sunset Financial Management, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Reprinted by permission.