How To Manage End-Of-Life Scanning Hardware

By Ken Congdon

By Ken Congdon, Executive Editor, ECM Connection

Document scanning hardware has come a long way from a technology and reliability standpoint since the early days of document imaging. Many of today’s scanners are durable and productive enough to last several years. In fact, your scanning vendors might give up on certain scanning lines long before your organization is ready to. I’m sure most of you have received that dreaded email or letter from a scanning manufacturer announcing that they will be phasing out scanner product lines currently in use at your organization. Typically, this means that the manufacturer will stop producing replacement parts and updates for these devices after a designated period of time. Furthermore, the vendor generally discontinues service and maintenance on this equipment after a publicized date. How you prepare for and react to these inevitable “end-of-life” announcements can have a profound impact on not only your document imaging productivity, but your overall business and economic effectiveness.

Don’t Roll The Dice

An all-too-common response to end-of-life announcements is to do nothing. Many organizations decide to take their chances and continue to operate discontinued legacy scanning hardware. These businesses may simply be trying to squeeze all they can from their hardware dollar, but this is a bad idea for countless reasons. For instance, as a device approaches end of life, support services for the scanner become more difficult to secure and exponentially more expensive. Eventually, you won’t be able to secure the parts or expertise to service or maintain phased-out scanning hardware.

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