Document Imaging Blog

Webinar: “Paper That Works” – Wednesday, Feb. 11

Just a quick plug for a AIIM Webinar that we are co-sponsoring with EMC next Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. (EST) on the topic of Distributed Capture. Click here to register.

 

Here’s the abstract…

 

Centralized imaging of large volumes of documents can deliver tremendous cost savings for organizations. Yet, centralized paper processing is not the right answer for everyone all the time. As multi-function peripherals (and desktop scanners) have proliferated, the ability to capture paper documents at the source — getting them to work for you faster — is available to any organization. Discover how to get started with distributed capture—and why you should.

 

Hope you can join us on Wednesday, but if not, download Frost & Sullivan's white paper: Distributed Capture Platforms: Reducing Costs, Removing Bottlenexks & Mitigating Risk for more information.

LegalTech Keynote on e-Discovery and Imaging

During yesterday's LegalTech keynote given by Fred Borchardt, a Partner at KPMG for 25 years, Mr. Borchardt talked about how law firms need to shift their e-Discovery strategy "to the left" in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) and take a more proactive approach to information management.  In the same speech he also mentioned how prevalent paper remains within the legal industry. 

 

 

Given the prevalence of paper in law firms, moving leftward in the reference model means law firms should scan paper documents and convert them into searchable text as early as is practicable.  The workhorse of printing and copying in many legal firms, the MFP, when outfitted with intelligently integrated scanning and OCR software will play a vital role in making this shift in electronic legal records management a reality.

Shared Scanners - When are they needed?

There was an interesting discussion on the Document Imaging Group on LinkedIn earlier this week around the following question: "Would customers be interested in a cost-effective and easy way to share a high-speed scanner over a network?"

In thinking about this, shouldn’t the question be “would customers be interested in improving the way that they incorporate paper into their business processes?”  Shared scanners, networked MFPs, non-networked desktop scanners, and operator-driven scanners, either distributed or centralized, all may have their place in many organizations. What we need to be discussing with customers is where paper intersects with business processes and what the best approach is for converting that paper to electronic form so that those processes can be improved, secured, managed and measured.

 

Instead of focusing on the technology itself, ask companies these type of questions: Where does paper enter your organization? Does it get moved physically? Does it get copied? Where does the content on that paper need to reside? Does it need to be archived?

 

Determine what the customers’ business processes are first. Then determine at what point in that business process paper can be scanned. This will tell you who should be doing the scanning, what type of scanning device is most appropriate and how the document needs to be handled once scanned (converted, OCRd, cleaned up, named, routed, etc.). Once you know this, look for a document imaging solution that can provide a common interface and process for employees regardless of the device (scanner, MFP) or brand. Give users a common interface and the ability to get paper-based content directly into the systems that process that information -- in the format that is needed -- and you will be delivering serious, measurable value to your customers -- not just another piece of hardware or software.

Moving Down the Paperless Trail

"It's cheaper, it's easier, it gives you and your employees more flexibility, your savvier competitors are doing it, and since it requires flexibility it gives small businesses an advantage over large ones."

Wow...that's a pretty compelling argument. What's it about? It's Slate.com's BizBox's description of "going electronic" in an article summarizing an interview that fellow blogger and eCopy employee, Bill Brikiatis, did with Forbes.

The full article provides lots of good information for companies to consider when working to reduce the amount of paper in their work environment, but here's a few high-level takeaways that BizBox called out to backup their statement above:

1. Electronic is faster
2. The transition away from paper requires institutional flexibility, and that gives small businesses a leg up over big ones
3. At this point, being primarily paper-based is inefficient, because everyone's already partly electronic-based
4. Don't forget security

All good arguments for why to move towards a paperless environment. Are you working on a paperless initiative? Tell us how you are going about it and how you are justifying your initiatives!

Ricoh, IKON and Document Imaging

Ricoh’s announcement this week that they will be acquiring IKON is big news in the office equipment industry and certainly is spurning lots of questions about the impact on MFP manufacturers, their sales channels, and customers. Let’s take a look at what this means for users of document imaging software:

1) This is the third acquisition of a large office equipment dealer. First, Xerox purchased Global Imaging Systems. Then, in April, Konica Minolta purchased Danka. And now, Ricoh purchased IKON. And many smaller office equipment dealers have been purchased by a variety of MFP manufacturers. We are certainly seeing a trend here.

2) There is likely to be more consolidation in the MFP industry because margins are shrinking and there are simply too many players.

3) If you are a customer of document imaging software that is used in conjunction with office equipment, it is more important than ever to invest in software that supports multiple platforms (vendors) so that you are protected from these events.

We have often talked on this blog of the importance of using document imaging software that works across multiple brands and types of scanning devices. This trend of acquisitions is another proof point for that message. As we noted in our blog post following the Danka acquisition, platform agnostic software is required if you want to make sure that you are not locked into a particular brand of MFP.

If you have any questions or comments about this acquisition, or its impact on you, please post a comment.

Protecting Security at Your Document Hub

Document imaging makes it possible to integrate paper documents with existing workflow processes and business applications, e.g. e-mail, fax, and electronic document management systems. But before introducing paper into electronic-based processes, you want to be sure that document imaging is safe and document integration secure.

Whenever shared office scanners and MFPs connect to a computer network, security is a primary concern. To help companies understand some of the security concerns, Ed Schmid, eCopy’s CEO, put together the following tips on security at MFPs for Business Week’s Tip of the Day.

a. User Authentication. MFPs can be set to require network passwords, a basic level of access control that prevents non-employees from using the MFP and ensures asset control.

b. Permissions Authentication. Require users to enter passwords to gain access to specific business applications from the MFP, just as if they were entering from a PC.

c. Document Encryption. Applying document encryption at the MFP helps safeguard confidential information before it is transmitted across the network.

d. Delete Temporary Files. Most MFPs automatically keep a record of files that have recently been scanned. If these temporary files are left on the MFP, sensitive information can be accessed by unauthorized users. Set up your device to delete these files automatically.

e. Activity Tracking. MFPs can be set up to create audit trails that can identify who sent what document, where, and at what time.

For the full Business Week article, click here.  Or, for more in depth information, download the white paper “Addressing Document Security Issues”.

MFP SDKs –Survival of the Fittest for ISVs

Brian Bissett, in his most recent MFP Report newsletter, covered recent developments in MFP SDKs from HP, Canon and Sharp, as well as the eCopy SDK. In the article, he noted that there is a lot of advancement in MFP SDKs happening, but that there are some significant challenges ahead for ISVs in terms of writing to MFP platforms:

“Expensive MFP software development endeavors with multiple MFP partners and the need to navigate increasingly complex partner programs are together setting the stage for a financial survival-of-the-fittest battle among ISVs in the MFP world. The likely survivors will be among those early developers who’ve already achieved a critical mass of MFP software revenues across multiple vendors.”

This is troubling…especially as more and more ISVs and corporate developers seek to connect their applications with MFPs and other scanning devices in order to get the information that is trapped on paper into digital form and into their electronic workflows. One solution for them is to write to a document imaging platform such as eCopy ShareScan, allowing them to use a single platform to connect to any piece of hardware – regardless of device brand or type. This hardware agnostic approach is also far more aligned with end users organizations, which typically are not tied to a specific brand of MFP or scanning device.

As Brian also pointed out in his article, this approach has gained a lot of traction to date.

“Although eCopy is not an MFP vendor, its ShareScan software integrates with more third-party applications and has a greater user footprint than any specific MFP vendor has with its own software. In fact, it is quite possible that ShareScan has more connectors and market presence than all of the MFP vendors’ software platforms combined.”

Beyond the need to write to a single platform, I also covered some of the other factors that ISVs use in choosing a development partner in an earlier post. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on other factors as well.

MFPs in Distributive Scanning

Because of the proliferation of MFP devices in the office, the accessibility to scanning has increased.  Awareness and use of the MFP scanner have risen because of the ease of integrated solutions and openness to share the device.  At InfoTrends, we believe that the acceptance of scanning due to this proliferation of MFP devices has exponentially increased scanning activity (the overall pie has grown). More workers in the office are becoming accustomed to scanning Ad Hoc documents; therefore, this is no longer a specialized application in the office environment.  As workflow solutions begin to play a greater role in the office environment, scanning and scanner technology are becoming vital elements for knowledge workers.  The following interesting statistics are from a recently published study (conducted at the end of 2007 and published in early 2008) from our Image Scanning Trends practice area entitled US Document Image Scanning Report 2007:

·         70% of companies using document scanners report that MFPs are used for scanning in their organization.

·         Respondents using MFP scanners estimate their weekly average scan volume is greater than the weekly average scan volume reported for Workgroup scanners - The mean volume per scanner per week is estimated at 2,672 pages for MFP scanners and 1,892 pages for Workgroup scanners.

·         Many respondents (56%) estimate that their MFP scanning volume will increase - 31% estimate that their MFP scanning volume will stay the same, while only 13% estimate that volume will decrease.

·         The highest percentage of documents scanned on MFPs is for ad-hoc purposes (40% of documents). However, increasing numbers of users are scanning for more advanced applications such as records management (62% of users) and for business process applications (54% of users) - The percentages of documents scanned for records management and business process applications are not as high as for ad-hoc scanning, but the percentage of respondents who are broadening their usage of MFP scanning is significant.

·         Many respondents expect they will be scanning more documents to use as part of business processes - 40% of those that use MFPs for business-process applications report that their use of scanning to enable business processes will increase. 24% believe that they will increase the number of documents scanned so that data may be extracted from the documents and used as part of a business process. 33% believe that the volume of documents scanned for archiving, document management, and records management will increase.

·         Higher percentages of users who use single-function document scanners in addition to their MFPs scan for business-process applications than those who use only MFPs - Users with only MFPs tend to do a higher percentage of ad-hoc scanning (52% of documents) than those who also have distributed single-function scanners (34% of documents). More respondents who have both MFPs and single-function document scanners use the MFPs for records management (70% of users) than those who use only MFPs (44% of users). We therefore speculate that users who employ distributed single-function scanners may be more inclined to extend the applications they perform on distributed single-function scanners to their distributed MFP scanners as well.

For the near term, InfoTrends believes that MFP scanning will largely continue to be used for low-volume applications rather than high-volume applications, primarily because sharing a device with those who are copying and printing is not practical in a high-volume situation. It is likely that numerous small companies that wish to scan and have very little equipment will turn to MFPs in these situations, rather than buying a low-volume, single-function scanner. At the same time, many companies will still appreciate the capabilities that a single-function scanners bring to the office in terms of image quality, usability, and paper handling, and will opt for these devices. Single-function scanners are also beginning to be equipped with some of the same features as MFP scanning devices, such as large screen displays, networked (shared) capabilities, and application integration support.  At any rate, we believe that scanning, whether it is from an MFP or scanning device, has acquired a significant role in the office environment.

Document Capture in a Down Economy

Because of the mixed effect of general economic conditions here in the USA many economists and industry analysts have opined that IT spending will continue at a flat rate through 2008, although the majority of IT spending that does occur will be heavily focused on ROI in addition to technologies that address and promote knowledge-worker efficiency.  We see this as a grand opportunity for the document capture, workflow and the document management markets.  As companies continue to focus on reducing costs and invoking parallel cost avoidance measures, so are vendors looking to provide solutions to help companies achieve these goals.  InfoTrends has observed an important trend unfolding in our market and it has to do with the growing interest and activity around the optimization of MFP fleets and the initiation of workflow improvements to increase work efficiency and reduce costs.

 

In our on-going research in this area, we continue to measure companies’ document related output spend and that in  many cases we have observed SMB and enterprise class businesses spending upwards of 6% of their annual overall revenues on document output related activities! InfoTrends believes the first step toward the realization of cost savings can most easily be achieved through managing output spending more effectively via fleet management – Sharing MFP devices and eliminating from the fleet inefficient devices that are costly.  The next step in reducing unnecessary print output and also improving efficiencies is through capture, workflow and document management initiatives.  Interestingly enough, when C-Level executives first experience the savings from both of these initiatives, they are much more inclined than not to act upon these reasons than any other.  In a recent Multi-client study entitled,” Document Assessments and Cost Optimization” InfoTrends found that, on the average, companies that have performed document assessments have saved 15% to 20% on output related costs. Furthermore, 90% of these very same organizations implement strategies and tactics to continuously improve document workflow across the enterprise in their drive toward operational efficiency. When asked “What types of software solutions has your company incorporated in your organization due to implementing document assessment and workflow services?” – The top 2 solutions mentioned were document management/electronic storage and scanning/capture technologies.

Jon K. Reardon - Group Director, InfoTrends

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