The term "document management" and "paperless office" is 
subject of countless articles and books. Everyone wants to achieve this lofty goal but not everyone understands what terms really mean. Before you can embark on journey of achieving total document management, it's important that you have a good basic knowledge of terms and concepts that go with it. Once you start investigating various software solutions that are available you're going to run into some document management abbreviations, acronyms, and general terms that you might not be familiar with. Here is a "cheat sheet" that will help you to understand material that you'll encounter as well as conversations that you'll be having with document management solution providers.
Electronic Document Capture (EDC)
This is generic term that refers to entire process of converting paper documents into their electronic equivalents. It covers concepts such as scanning, text recognition, image conversion and indexing for later retrieval. In other words, it is a catchall phrase for entire document management process.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
OCR is a process that recognizes printed words that are present on a physical document. OCR is generally used when processing documents that are printed in "normal" printer or typewriter fonts.
Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR)
This process is similar to OCR but is generally capable of also processing certain handwritten documents on special forms. It can also recognize and process "tick marks" and bar codes.
Electronic Document Management System (EDMS)
Sometimes referred to as Document Management (DM) or Document Management System (DMS), this term encompasses not just electronic conversion of paper documents, but management of electronically created documents including word processing and email. EDMS systems are used to locate and display documents as well as to maintain different versions of source document.
