Ease-Of-Use And Ease-Of-Storage Drive Distributed Scanning Success
Visioneer President Murray Dennis discusses how single-button
scanner functionality and UDO (ultra density optical)-based storage
combine to support decentralized, low-volume scanning operations.
By Tom von Gunden
Scanning hardware vendor Visioneer seems to live by the mantra, "Do only what you believe you can do better than anyone else." So, when it comes to designing and releasing scanners, Visioneer sticks to one segment of the market: low-end, low-volume scanners suitable for departments, workgroups, and individual desktops. But, that product focus doesn't limit the kinds of organizations Visioneer targets. Now, with the trend toward distributed and remote scanning, those low-volume devices are making their way across even the largest of enterprises, where high-volume, centralized production scanning has traditionally been the dominant way of handling document imaging.
Targeting only what it believes it can do best doesn't limit Visioneer to offering only scanners. Visioneer and key partner Xerox recently announced new Xerox-branded storage offerings well suited for supporting low-volume image capture operations. (In addition to marketing its own Visioneer-branded scanners, the company helps to market Visioneer-designed Xerox scanners, including the DocuMate line.) Available in April 2005 are Xerox UDO (ultra density optical) drives and media, which will likely be adopted primarily for document imaging backup needs in small offices and branch locations.
Shortly after the announcement of the UDO offerings, I spoke with Visioneer President Murray Dennis about the proliferation of scanning operations spread across distributed and remote environments.
Tom: Given Visioneer's emphasis on low-volume scanning needs, you must be particularly thrilled by the general market interest in distributed and/or desktop scanning applications. What market drivers point to growth in those applications?
Murray: Starting in the days of the Enron scandal, which forced a complete review of SEC rules and regulations regarding compliancy, we began to see companies addressing the relationship between compliancy and the documents they need to capture and store. More and more companies realized they need to scan and archive not only major contracts and papers but also many of the documents that come across the desks of their working professionals, whether those workers are in finance, legal, sales, or marketing. All departments were coming under scrutiny in terms of document and records retention.
Another threat came, obviously, with the attacks of 9/11. That was a strong wake-up call regarding the need to capture documents, digitize them, and store electronic copies off-site as well as on-site.
Once organizations commit to capturing more and more documents, they are going to have to decide where those documents will be scanned and who will be doing the scanning. What are some compelling arguments for scanning in a highly distributed fashion, across multiple employee desktops?
Well, price is certainly compelling. Not so many years ago, organizations had to spend anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 for a scanner that could handle 50 images per minute. So, because most organizations couldn't afford to buy several of these machines, scanning tended to be a centralized function. But, now the price point is being driven down, not only in products from Visioneer and Xerox, but also from other companies.
Back in May 2004, we released what we believe to be the first sub-$1,000 desktop scanner that can handle 50 pages per minute. More recently, with the Xerox DocuMate 262, we pushed the performance up to 66 images per minute while not allowing the price to exceed $1,200. There are flatbed ADF [automatic document feeder] scanners out there that cannot do 66 images per minute at two or three times that price.
Other vendors followed us, so now prices at the low-end are driving a revolution in capturing documents where they initially appear in the organization. That's often at an individual's desktop. Now, instead of spending $10,000 to get one scanner that can handle 50 images per minute and park it in a centralized area, an organization can buy 10 scanners and put them on desktops for the same amount of money. Cumulatively, they can still handle 500 images per minute, with the bonus in productivity coming from the fact that users don't have to leave their desks to do the scanning.
In addition to price and speed, are there other features of low-volume scanners you'd like to mention?
We market the Xerox DocuMate 252 and 262 models as compact, desktop sheetfed scanners. In contrast to a large flatbed scanner that could take up an entire desktop or workstation surface, the small form factor allows these scanners to take up a comparably tiny space. Kofax's VRS (Virtual ReScan) image enhancement software is another critical part of our solution. We bundle it into most of our document scanners, including those in the sub-$1,000 category.
Given that these small form factor scanners are likely to be used by employees who aren't document imaging experts, what can you say about the skill set required to keep a distributed rollout from being fraught with user frustration?
We consider ease-of-use to be the single most important factor in desktop scanning. We make sure that users don't need a sophisticated skill set or years of experience to successfully complete scanning tasks at their desktops. We understand that many of these scanner operators are professionally trained in their disciplines, but not in document imaging. They aren't, for example, systems administrators or mailroom specialists with years of experience scanning documents to remote network drive locations, importing them into particular applications, converting them into the file formats used by those applications, and then storing, printing, and/or sharing those documents.
Our integrated OneTouch ease-of-use functionality enables users to complete anywhere from 12 to 14 scanning tasks with the press of a single button. The button comes preconfigured with common scanning steps, or it can be reconfigured by the VAR or end user to accommodate particular workflow steps required by the organization.
When we design our scanners, we constantly remind ourselves, "If the scanner doesn't operate as simply as a copier, it won't be accepted by a desktop user." That's the reality of a distributed rollout. So, that's why we also built in a feature called AutoLaunch, which essentially tells the scanner to grab the document the customer is placing into the machine, scan it, and automatically bring up the application the document will be dropped into. This is an example of patented technology Visioneer owns. When users are at their desks, they don't want to struggle to hold a piece of paper to the scanner with one hand while attempting to use the other hand to press keys to make the whole process work.
Which common scanning activities can the one-touch approach accommodate?
In July 2004, analyst firm InfoTrends issued a survey of some 800 end users regarding their most common scan-to destinations. So, in considering typical scan-to destinations, we not only make sure our One Touch feature addresses the five most common, but we also allow for customizable scan-to destinations. For example, according to the survey, 74% of the time, users are simply trying to scan a document and convert it to a PDF file. That's the number one scan-to destination. But, if you ask IT staff about the questions they frequently receive from their internal users, they'll tell you that the conversion of a simple file into a PDF file is high on the list. Even companies that have loaded Adobe Acrobat onto users' desktops have employees that struggle to get documents successfully scanned to PDF. The process is simply not intuitive at the desktop-user level. So, we created a single, OneTouch Scan-to-PDF solution. The customer has the option of either scanning to a PDF as an image or scanning to a searchable PDF. By scanning to a searchable PDF, they can then do keyword searches on the document.
The second most common scan-to destination is storage. Seventy percent of the time users are trying to send the documents they're scanning into some type of storage systems or archive. And, we're now addressing that need.
I saw that Visioneer and Xerox recently announced UDO solutions that, in part, target distributed capture environments. Why might it make sense for lots of users to have UDO devices on their desktops?
As I mentioned, for compliance-driven reasons, more and more organizations are looking to make sure the images they capture are retained in unalterable, unerasable form. And, increasingly, they want that proof to be in place not long after the documents first appear in the organization. In remote offices and branch offices for real estate companies, insurance companies, brokerage companies, medical providers, and so on, most documents have traditionally been stored on alterable drive technologies. Or, if organizations were conscientious about storing to unalterable technologies, their only affordable option was MO [magneto-optical] drives and media, which could handle only about 10 GB per platter. But, UDO technology has tripled the capacity — from 10 GB to 30 GB. And, forecasts show the density of UDO media doubling every two years, increasing to around 120 GB within the next five years or so.
Are the Xerox UDO devices integrated with the Xerox scanners' OneTouch functionality?
Yes. A user can hit a single button to scan the document, convert it to a PDF file, and send it to a UDO drive that resides either on the desktop or in a network attached library.
Are you seeing much interest in mobile scanning? That expands the concept of distributed scanning to include laptops and PDAs, as well as desktops.
Absolutely. Mobile scanners in our Strobe line come in form factors about the size of a common hole punch. When we designed the first mobile scanner, we had patents on how to incorporate a fixed CCD [charge coupled device] lens and a roller system to transport the paper. Those features allow the devices to be very compact.
In any organization that has a large sales force, productivity can be increased if workers in the field can do scanning while they're on the road. We sell a lot of our Strobe XP 100 and Strobe XP 200 mobile scanners for salespeople that need to do expense reporting.
We have customers in the trucking industry using mobile scanners attached to laptops in the trucks. When drivers drop goods at a receiving point, they can scan in the bills of lading right there. Before the drivers return to the depot, the documents are already back at headquarters and entered into the accounting system. So, the company can bill on a much more timely basis. That example confirms the fundamental benefit of distributed scanning: Putting the scanner as close as possible to where the document is first recognized, whether that's at a desktop or laptop, accelerates an organization's flow of information and its ability to respond to it in an increasingly competitive global world.
Visit Visioneer's listing on ECM Connection.
Visit Xerox Scanners' listing on ECM Connection.
Tom von Gunden is chief editor of Data Storage Connection and ECM Connection