Technology Reseller - v15 2018

technolog y reseller.co.uk SCANNERS 33 PFU EMEA’s Brian Fortune explains why he remains optimistic about scanner sales fruits in any organisation is to look for the paper. Organisations will try to remove paper wherever they can by making deep changes to processes, but even just taking paper, digitising it and triggering workflows based on that can significantly change how organisations work and interact with customers and suppliers. Then, there are things like Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Imagine a scenario where scanning an invoice and extracting the information it contains triggers a myriad of different processes that require no human intervention. Instead, a machine makes rules-based decisions, providing consistency throughout an organisation and reducing the potential for error. These sorts of thing are driven by digitisation, whether the content is created digitally or converted from a paper document by scanning, so we are optimistic about the future for capture. TR : What right now are the big growth areas for you and your resellers? BF: We see significant growth in workgroup/ departmental devices. In the past, organisations would capture documents centrally and have someone responsible for doing that in one location. Now, organisations view scanning as something that everyone should do as part of their daily routine. The technology is so intuitive that people whose main focus is something As Fujitsu launches two new scanners and announces the sale of its 5 millionth ScanSnap device, Technology Reseller caught up with Brian Fortune, PFU (EMEA) General Manager Sales, to find out more about what Fujitsu offers the reseller community. We started by asking him about the state of the overall scanner market and the opportunities that exist for scanner resellers. Technology Reseller (TR) : How are scanner sales? Is it a difficult market at the moment? Brian Fortune (BF): Scanner sales are relatively stable, if not growing slightly, in volume terms. There are a lot of things driving the requirement for the scanning and capture of images. One, which organisations don’t have a choice about, is compliance. In the future there is likely to be even more regulation around how we, as a country, interact with Europe and the world. Companies must make sure new hires have the right to work in this country and our technologies are being used to capture, record and ensure compliance in relation to that. GDPR is massive as well. Organisations need to secure the information they hold about people and it is much easier to secure that in digital form than in paper. Then, of course, there is business transformation. One of the low hanging In September, PFU (Fujitsu) reached another milestone when it shipped its 5 millionth ScanSnap personal document scanner since launching the series famous for its intuitive interface and one-touch scanning technology in 2001. Since then, Fujitsu has continued to simplify scanning for office and home users. Its latest model, the newly launched iX1500, takes this even further, effectively turning the scanning process on its head. Instead of scanning a document and choosing what to do with it every time, the iX1500 lets users press a large colour-coded button on the 4.3-inch touchscreen to activate a pre-programmed scan, such as scanning a receipt into a spreadsheet or into a particular folder. Through the provision of multiple licences, a number of users can share the same iX1500 and pre-programme their own tasks. In addition, the iX1500 can automatically name files, recognise different document types (e.g. photos, receipts, business cards) and send them to a preferred destination without the user having to adjust settings. Another useful innovation is ScanSnap Home, which combines a user’s favourite ScanSnap software functions into a single application, enabling them to organise, preview, tag, search and retrieve documents in just a few clicks. Featuring both Wi-Fi and Direct Connect modes, the iX1500 can handle documents up to A3 at speeds of up to 30 double-sided A4 colour sheets per minute. www.scansnapit.com/iX1500 else entirely can easily use it. So, there is massive growth in distributed capture. At a product level, we believe the newly launched fi-7300NX (featured in Technology Reseller, Issue 14) is going to be a significant product for us, because it talks to the need for distributed capture and because it is such an innovative product. It combines many different technologies that we have had separately in one device; it has the imaging capability, but also security: it has NFC and keypad security, so you can record who scanned what and when. The other thing about scanners that has challenged some organisations in the past is that the minute you put a peripheral device on someone’s desk you have to manage it – there are drivers to install; if you have a new operating system you have to make sure the technology works with it. Over many years, we have developed remote management technologies to address these issues, but the 7300NX has so much flexibility that it can be deployed very easily and can even be PC-less. You don’t need a PC to use this technology. Five million ScanSnap users can’t be wrong Fujitsu turns scanning on its head Continued.... fi-7300NX