The SharePoint content model is quite capable of managing any kind of business document, including paper documents.  It can utilize document images and metadata using the same capabilities it offers for electronic documents, offering substantial business benefits in reducing processing and paper management costs.  From a business point of view SharePoint is in many ways the ideal vehicle for doing so because it is the easiest way to bring processing technology to the paper, as opposed to bringing the paper to the processing technology.

SharePoint however, does not supply is the capability for getting the paper documents into SharePoint.  For this, Microsoft relies on third parties.  

Scanning paper, extracting the content from the paper and mapping both the image and the extracted data into the SharePoint content model, and controlling the scanning process for individual users across the enterprise is not as simple as hooking up a scanning device and pushing a button.  However for businesses interested in doing that, it is easily do-able with the right kind of software.

This eGuide provides an overview of SharePoint's capabilities, reviews the requirements for capturing paper, and provides a review of a world class solution for making SharePoint a paper document processing platform.