Desktop scanners are an easy add-on to your offerings.  Besides an affordable way for your customers to capture information—especially in a lean economy— desktop scanning is fueling growth for a variety of reasons, including simplifying document imaging.  Scanning documents is an essential component of many efficient offices, as not all information arrives digitally, but can be readily scanned and archived electronically. Those supply dealers who are widening their portfolios to include smaller, affordable equipment like faxes & scanners, can find an added revenue stream by providing these low- maintenance devices.

Maximize Scanning Value

You and your customers likely remember the advent of the digital age, including office equipment and cameras.  Most give us options; they let us index, edit, and distribute quality output with ease.  Similarly, desktop scanning allows intelligent capture (extract content) wherever workers are, both at your own dealership & for your customers’ offices. Scan uses include: 

•           Accounts payable can securely capture  tri-fold invoices for remote processing

•           College students scan documents for review via a folder on a university network

•           Healthcare admissions’ staff can secure sensitive patient files & doctor forms

•           Insurance agents can scan applications for quicker underwriter review

•           Realtors can scan client-brought information to catalogue total preview activity

•           Legal offices can scan lengthy contracts forwarded them; converting to digital

Scanning captures, catalogues, and stores data that is vital to many businesses.  Users typically understand the equipment and software, so documents can be indexed quickly.  Minimal training is needed, if any. Office data becomes useful at the start of the business lifecycle, helping to increase workflow and productivity.

Tips to help you make smart scanning decisions

1.Understand business drivers

Organizations and offices in general have many reasons to integrate desktop scanning with an easy electronic document management (EDM) software program.  Some need to secure sensitive information while others require instant, remote data access to meet strict timelines.  Eliminating costly paper file storage is often a goal.  Increasingly, organizations need the digital audit trails that their EDM software provides to prove regulatory compliance in today’s environment. Understanding business drivers will help you evaluate indexing requirements more appropriately.

In order to effectively market a scanner to a customer, the dealer needs to familiarize himself/herself with just what the scanners can do to enhance document use. That establishes credibility during the sales process. It is important to ask each customer beforehand, just what their workflow needs or challenges are to learn best how a scanner can efficiently help them address these needs more productively. Scanners have specific uses, so know when it makes sense to utilize them.

2. When scanning makes sense (and when it doesn’t)

•           A business unit receives specific document types multiple times daily

•           Sensitive information must be secured & archived quickly

•           Manually keyed documents result in slowdowns and errors in translation

•           Decision making is hampered by scattered documents

•           Compliance is a concern

•           Mailed in; dropped off documents need managing/converted to digital

•           Large hardcopy blueprints, maps, advertising signs need multiplication

•           Brochures, catalogues need converting

Tip: Don’t scan information that’s unimportant to the business or will never be referenced again.

3. Know the skill-set of the person or department that does the scanning

Who will actually do the scanning—customers perplexed by more than one or two simple prompts on a screen?  Administrative staff with minimal or no basic tech savvy?  Or, like most employees today, are comfortable with basic multi-step digital directions? 

Know if your customer’s goal is to index documents (preferably digitally rather than time-consuming manual methods) at the time of capture.  Or to store scanned documents quickly and then address detailed indexing afterwards?  Know your audience; their needs and uses, to help select the appropriate solution or method.

4. Tell your clients to aim for front-end capture

It’s usually best to scan documents on receipt rather than at the end of the business cycle to control information flow and maximize savings.  Computer on-screen access to files reduces waste and lessens distribution costs. What business doesn’t want that?

Learn to evaluate solutions carefully

When you or your clients evaluate desktop scanning devices and solutions look for:

• Those that enable high-resolution images to maximize the long-term value

•Compatibility with an electronic solution that enables detailed indexing to ease retrieval

•Ease of use, especially if the client will perform basic indexing functions

•Ability to handle increased volume when an organization grows

Summarizing the scanned, centralized digital storage process

Desktop scanning doesn’t end with capture.  Its real worth emerges as digital data becomes useful for routine processing and decision making.  Information is centralized, organized, secured, and delivered to those who need it, wherever they are, 24/7.

For most counter-top set-ups, users typically specify a document type and one or two other indexing criteria, sending scanned documents to a pre-specified network or folder.  EDM software resumes the cataloguing process where the end user finishes, adding indices from forms automatically or with the aid of staff.  Detailed indexing and targeted search results allow authorized persons to locate what they need, quickly.

Laurel Sanders is the director of public relations and communications for Optical Image Technology, makers of the DocFinity® suite of document management and workflow software.  For information, contact her at lsanders@docfinity.com or visit  www.docfinity.com.