Green Light for Scanning
Published May 17, 2007 at 4:29 pm · Filed under Features
Scanning on MFDs has never been easier or more popular. James Goulding reports
The need to reduce paper consumption, cut costs, improve business processes and comply with regulations has led to a massive increase in the take-up of document management systems in the UK.
The latest annual survey conducted by AIIM Europe, the Enterprise Content Management Association, shows that 29% of UK organisations are now deploying and implementing enterprise-wide document and records management capabilities - nearly twice as many as in the 2005 survey.
AIIM found that 46% of organisations plan to spend ‘more’ or ‘much more’ on document and records management technologies in 2007 compared to 2006, with only 13% planning to spend less.
These findings are supported by IDC’s recent report Worldwide and U.S. Paper/Digital Document Management 2006-2010 Forecast. In the report, IDC predicts that from 2006-2010 the paper and digital document management market will grow with a CAGR of 20.1%, effectively doubling its 2005 size to reach $1.27 billion by 2010.
Front office scanning
As businesses place greater importance on integrating paper into digital workflows, scanning is moving from the back to the front office. This is having a significant effect on the role of MFDs within organisations, turning them from being just print/copy devices into hubs at the centre of digital/paper workflows.
One of the challenges facing MFP manufacturers and software providers is to make the scanning process as straightforward as possible for general office workers. It is not enough for users to be able to scan a letter to a network folder and then go back to their PC retrieve the letter, open a document management or other application and import and index the letter. Such a process is far too complex and time-consuming.
Instead, office workers need to be able to scan a letter straight into the appropriate application and index it at the MFD control panel itself. In order to do this there needs to be a ‘connector’ between the MFD and the relevant application that allows the two to communicate.
Most major MFP manufacturers now have application platforms embedded in their devices that enable developers to create such connectors. These tend either to be Java-based (e.g. Canon and Ricoh) or SOA-based (e.g. Sharp) and can be used to integrate MFDs with specific applications one at a time.
An alternative possibility is to use a third party document distribution solution that already has connectors to dozens of applications. The most popular of these is eCopy, which can be used with numerous products, either embedded or via an attached PC, touchscreen display and full-size keyboard.
Now, Kofax, part of Dicom Group, has launched what it claims is a much more powerful and flexible solution that can be embedded in Ricoh and Lexmark MFDs (with others soon to be announced) or used in kiosks and thin clients.
Called the Kofax Document Exchange Server (DES), it makes it easy for office workers to import paper documents from an MFP or scanner (and electronic ones from email and fax servers) into transactional business processes, such as invoice processing, new account openings, claims processing and sales order processing. Scans can also be routed to 130 enterprise applications supported by Ascent Capture.
MFD users can use DES in a number ways. They can scan a document to a specific application and index it at the MFP panel itself; they can send it to a Document Exchange Inbox and perform extended functions via a web server at a PC, including the creation of specific workflows; or they can route it to customised workflows. When a user logs on at the MFD, all workflows created by him or her are automatically displayed as routing options.
Other benefits of DES include activity logs; bi-directional communication so that someone at an MFD can retrieve and print a document from a document management system, say; coversheet support for automatic scan routing; and Kofax’s VirtualRescan (VRS), which automatically optimises scan quality.
As businesses come under greater pressure to improve business processes, many more will choose to leverage their existing investment in MFDs through the use of flexible solutions like Kofax’s Document Exchange Server.
www.dicomgroup.com
