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Digitalizing documents has becoming inevitable for any organization in regardless of the size or industry type. Organizations begin to understand the importance of improving their document management processes so as to drive better business performance.  

Business documents constitute the lifeblood of an organization. When business documents are effectively managed, organizations can reduce on their costs, increase productivity, lower risk and drive higher profits.

According to study conducted by InfoTrends in 2009 over 50% of respondents stated that their scanning needs had increased significantly for the past one year. More than 60% expect this trend to grow substantially over the next 3 years. Many highlighted that the key purpose of digitizing documents are for easy archiving, managing, sharing and retrieval of documents.      

InfoTrends believes that scanner providers will launch various types of document scanners to meet the growing demands, especially in the personal, workgroup, and production environments, as document scanner is a dedicated device that is specially designed to fit environment according to its volume and quality imaging needs. A document scanner is ideal for any business which requires fast speed and reliable scanning operation of all documents types. Its’ multi-image processing capabilities simply converts information on the documents into searchable digital database for easy distribution and retrieval of data.

The differentiating features of a scanner are generally underlined by its usability, speed and bundled applications.

Usability

Depending on your ongoing daily scanning volume and scanning needs, you may choose the right scanners that comply with it. General offices may have low scanning volume with few hundreds of papers to scan daily, whereas service bureaus will have incredibly high volume of scanning usage daily of up to thousands of papers. By considering the daily duty scanning volume allows you to maximize the scanning output and time spent to the fullest and efficiently.

The resolution of the image output is essential, determined how detailed the digital image will be. Resolution is measured in dots per inch (dpi). Document scanners have resolutions from 100dpi, up to 600 dpi, making the digital image exceptional clear and legible.

Most offices are space conscious, maximum every little area to the fullest is necessary. Savvy scanner manufacturers should strive to offer a wide range of products to meet their evolving needs. A good document scanner should be designed compactly in a way that they have small footprint, occupying a tiny corner of your workspace and manageable enough to be carry around without much difficulty. That’s why some scanner manufacturers see the need in this area, and come out portable light-weight scanners, for the benefits of road-warriors and travelers.

In order to be environmental friendly, document scanners should meet the ENERGY STAR Program guidelines for energy efficiency, which means that it requires less energy and low cost to run. In addition, an ideal document scanner should be able to preset to automatically turn on and off according to the status of the connected PC.

Scanning Speed

If speed is the key element of scanning, high scanning speed is required. Generally, there are two kinds of speed ratings, namely pages per minute (ppm) and images per minute (ipm). Document scanners scanning speed can range for 8ppm and goes as high up till 100ppm, allowing you to complete your scanning task ahead of its time. In addition, with the aid of automatic document feeder (ADF), you are able to handle large volume of documents simply by loading them onto the feeder rather than manually feeding a sheet at a time for scanning. The better ones will be embedded with dual sensors, which enabled double-sided documents to be scanned in one pass as fast as single sided pages.  In short, a document scanner with ADF duplex scanning is a huge time saver.

Bundle Applications

Bundle applications refer to the software programs that come with the scanner package, allowing you to quickly store, manage, distribute and retrieve documents. Some scanners manufactures have their renowned software, that gives you a wide choice of file-saving formats and file distribution options to boost your document management productivity. Other software applications allow complex scanning tasks to be executed within a few steps’ operation, simplifying the scanning process, having a searchable digital database, for fast retrieval and improved data management, hence reducing errors and saved valuable time. Moreover, it is good to have a document scanner that is able to incorporate with ISIS/TWAIN driver which gives an unparalleled bundle of mighty image processing functions. Other than that, these document scanners could be used with a wide variety of ISIS- or TWAIN-based software available in the market.

All in all, by consideration all the above mentioned criteria of choosing a scanner, allows you to stretch your dollar to the maximum and value for money. In return, it will be able to assist you to reach a new level of productivity and improve information security at an efficient and effective environment.