Document imaging

Clearing imaging bottlenecks: careful analysis identifies areas for performance improvement

Aptus worked with an imaging service bureau to clear performance bottlenecks for a client in financial services.

A five year contract was at risk when a new scanning and imaging solution did not meet agreed service levels. The set-up was suffering from a technical bottleneck and as a result documents could not be transferred to the central repository as quickly as they could be scanned. The service bureau requested Aptus's help with an analysis of performance issues.

Our analysis pointed to a number of factors that could be improved such as network set-up and repository configuration but the central culprit was the method for loading documents into the repository. Closer inspection revealed that it performed more than 200 queries for every object it transferred across, stressing the content management system and hogging bandwidth.

Aptus undertook to rewrite the script resulting in a solution that required only six queries per object. The change more than doubled the speed of loading document images into the repository.

The revised set-up meets the client's expected service level, even when allowing for the volume growth rates stipulated in the contract for the next five years.