"We'll have a digital nightmare," says Novakovic, if Whirlpool simply converts all of its paper-based processes to digital ones without any standardization or business process improvements.

Raymond James also plans to use OCR to extract content from document images. One challenge, however, is that clients sometimes hand-write changes on the form. Rules must be created to flag such contract changes, Harris says.

Ultimately, Harris would like to create business processes that allow the processing of incoming fax orders to be fully automated. "If we could do that, it would make a huge reduction in staffing requirements," he says. But that isn't likely to happen anytime soon. Raymond James currently uses an automated fax service from EasyLink Services Corp. in Piscataway, N.J., that captures incoming fax images, routes them and attempts to extract some content using OCR. The system does a good job routing document images, and the OCR pilot has been successful, but that process doesn't work for all forms. "There's no way to guarantee the accuracy rates Raymond James requires," says Bill Fallon, vice president of marketing at EasyLink, so each fax must also be manually reviewed.

Bank of New York has also faced challenges in extracting data from imaged requests. "We're largely dealing with an institutional client base where they each have their own formats -- or no formats. We're doing OCR selectively," Thum says.

The bank has had imaging systems in place for years but has reached a point of diminishing returns. Most business transactions have moved online, but, Thum says, "paper nonetheless remains." Although incoming paper documents are scanned, many originals must be stored for compliance or legal reasons. But while the total percentage of documents remaining in paper form may be relatively small, the absolute numbers of documents coming in by mail and fax are still significant.