AIIM Webinar Q&A -- Part 2

I’m back again with more Q&A from last week’s AIIM Webinar, Document Imaging for Microsoft-Driven Environments”. In part one of this series; I covered questions primarily dealing with the process for ensuring proper indexing of documents in a distributed environment. Today, I’m going to address a couple of questions around the topic of MFPs, or multifunction peripherals.

The first question is around the operating environments of MFPs:

How soon do you foresee having a large number of Web services enabled MFPs in the market?

Well, today approximately 9 million (laser) MFPs are put into the market each year and a growing number of those will have a Web services operating environment. A few vendors, such as Xerox, Sharp and Toshiba, are shipping devices with these environments today. But even with that being the case, the main challenges for the ISV community remains that while each of these are Web services based, they still remain different -- and proprietary -- development environments.  The ideal for the ISV community would be a single, “standard” Web services based development environment. Unfortunately, that is not the development landscape available from the MFP vendors today.  What is available are document imaging platforms like eCopy’s, which works on all of the major MFP and scanner brands and provides a single development environment (SDK) from which ISVs and end users can connect to a variety of MFPs.

Today’s second question is about whether MFPs are appropriate for processing back files, and asks, “this can’t really be done on an MFP?”

Agreed, that is not what MFPs are designed to do.  MFPs are great capture environments for low-volume document scanning by office workers.  Back file scanning is task that is best suited for high-speed, high volume scan operations with a dedicated scanning professional. One thing to think about however, is if “one-off” documents enter the organization that would need to be added to an archive. In those cases, the ability to have an office worker scan that document to the archive at a later date using an MFP can be beneficial. So, it is not so much that it can not be done on an MFP, but there are certainly processes that are better suited for other scanning processes.

I’ll be back later this week with some questions around scanning documents into SharePoint.

Bill DeStefanis
Director of Product Management

Comments

[Steve]

In some cases, I believe back scanning can be accomplished with an MFP. As a Konica Dealer, we see customers utilizing our copiers all the time for high volume scanning, especially in the legal vertical. Entry level MFPs are now scanning at 70 pages per minute. To purchase a 70 ppm dedicated scanner is a costly endeavor, and if you add maintenance to the package, you are looking at a seroius investment. The Copier market does not yet support a "click charge" for scanning, and customers get the benefit of maintenance on their document feeder and scanning components at a nominal fee.

We do position the MFPs as day-to-day scanning devices, providing a one-to-many solution for the office environment, but they can also be utilized for mid-volume scanning operations with some limitations.

I have written some additional notes at the links below:

Scanning with Copiers

What to look for in a Document Scanner

[Tristam Wallace]

Steve - Thanks for the response. Yes, scan speeds of MFPs can handle this type of scanning and from a technical point of view, are certainly capable. The question that companies should ask is whether a shared scanning device like an MFP is the best piece of hardware to use for this process. It really depends on what their workflows look like, who is doing the scanning and where that scanning takes place. An MFP should be used for multiple tasks -- scanning, printing, copying and perhaps faxing. So, if back file scanning can be done in an environment that a shared scanning device is beneficial, then by all means, an MFP is a great choice. But if the device will only be used for scanning and used by a single operator, then there may be better options.

Also, you may want to add the links you mentioned...the hyperlinks didn't come through.

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