Getting lost in a sea of choices and acronyms? Today we look to help clear some of the confusion and mystery out of purchasing a document scanner for your organization.
When looking into a document scanner(s) for your organization, it's important to realize the difference between an "off the shelf" scanner from and office superstore and a true business use scanner. Quite often we see clients struggling with superstore style scanners, a backlog is piling up and the quality isn't what they had hoped for. There are few reasons for this:
- Consumer level scanners are in fact that, consumer level products. They are not designed to withstand the volumes of your typical office. These consumer products typically have a very low daily duty cycle when compared to more robust business level scanners and therefore require more maintenance and earlier replacement. Both of which plagues you with downtime and inefficiencies.
- Scanning speeds differ drastically between consumer and business level scanners. A typical consumer level scanner can capture documents at a rate of 4 pages per minute, whereas most entry level business scanners will capture 20 pages per minute.
- Rescans are a lot higher on consumer scanners has they typically do not have automatic image enhancement functionality such as cropping, deskewing, auto contrast and brightness. More rescans of course result in lost time and productivity.
I don't want to dwell too much on the difference between consumer and business level scanners; typically organization's know the differences either through education or through previous bad experiences. What I do want to cover though is how to select the RIGHT business scanner for YOUR SPECIFIC NEEDS. There are a few key points to consider when evaluating documents scanners and subsequently the vendor you purchase from.
- Base your requirements on peak levels, not averages. If your application has peaks and valleys, for instance enrolment forms coming in bulk at the beginning of a month and only trickling in for the rest of the month, you should calculate your scanning needs based on those peak times, otherwise you will fall behind when high volumes come in for scanning.
- If scanning plays business critical role in your organization you may want to consider redundancy. Having a back up scanner and/or scan operator can give your organization the depth it needs to handle increased workloads, or downtime on the primary scanner.
- Look for a scanner with built-in image enhancement features such as; automatic border removal, deskewing, image clean-up, hole punch removal, etc. These features will help eliminate rescans, lower your file sizes and improve productivity. A good option for this is the Fujitsu fi-Series scanners with Virtual ReScan (VRS) software or hardware acceleration.
- Double sided documents? If you work with a lot of double sided documents be sure to invest in a duplex scanner. Duplex scanners save you a significant amount of time as they capture both sides of the document in a single pass, negating the need to re-feed double sided pages.
- Don't trust the rated speeds. Scanners speeds are typically rated one of two ways Images Per Minute (IPM) or Pages Per Minute (PPM). IPM refers to duplex scanners and measures the amount of images (front and back of a page) that can be captured in a minute. PPM refers to how many single sheets can be fed through the document scanner in a typical minute. It's important to identify if the manufacturer is measuring in IPM or PPM so you can be sure you're making a fair comparison.
- Colour, greyscale and black & white. Make sure your scanner can handle colour documents if that's what your application calls for. Also you want to be sure to find a scanner that doesn't slow down too much in colour mode and ruin your productivity.
- Scanning resolution depends on the documents you're capturing and what the end result is going to be. If you're looking to do photographic reproductions then a higher resolution scanners (1200 dots per inch or higher) might be right for you. However, assuming you are capture typical office documents, we recommend scanning resolutions of 300DPI for black & white and 200DPI for colour. At the end of the day these settings will give you the best compromise between file size and image quality.
- THE MAGIC FORMULA. You shouldn't expect to get the full rated speed from a scanner during an eight hour shift. Many factors such as operator fatigue, breaks, load and unload the scanner, image enhancement features, etc. all slow down production times. One handy way to determine true production speed is by following this simply formula.
75% of the rated speed of the scanner x 50mins per hour x 7 hours a day = Expected production levels.
For example a scanner rated at 40ppm would work out like so
40 x 0.75 x 50 x 7 = 10,500 pages per day - Evaluate the maintenance. Buying a scanner online may seem like the least expensive option in the short term, but you should consider where the service is going to come from, what the response times are, any additional costs and most importantly does the warranty transcend borders? Once scanning because an integral business service in your organization can you really afford 2 weeks downtime while you ship the scanner away for depot service? Or worse yet realize that scanner you purchased from a US vendor doesn't have warranty coverage in Canada.
- When in doubt ask an expert, find a local authorized imaging reseller for a major manufacturer such as Fujitsu or Canon and get their assistance in selecting the proper scanner. Most imaging partners have extensive experience in configuring scanning operations and can offer valuable insight.
For more information about scanning technologies and business process optimization solutions, visit our website at www.mesltd.ca
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