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magazine
Scanners
Desktop business scanners
The desktop document scanner market
is growing strongly too. Fujitsu, which
dominates this space, has increased
desktop scanner sales by 170% in the
last 5 years and Rudolph is expecting
similar growth rates to 2016 as
organisations continue to move scanning
from the back to the front office and
as more businesses adopt enterprise
content management systems, currently
growing at a rate of 11% per annum.
“What’s driving our business is that
deploying document management
systems is an easy way of increasing
efficiency and bringing down the cost
of processes,” he said. “Companies are
looking to lower the costs of doing
business and document management is
a major contributor to that.”
At the same time, businesses and
employees are more aware of the
benefits of digitising other information
and incorporating scanned images
into daily tasks, such as expenses
management, invoice processing and the
electronic distribution of documents.
“A lot of knowledge workers are
being required to make use of paper-
based information in a
digital state and to speed up
processes by moving paper-
based information into digital
processes. They may have
experience of using flatbed
scanners in home-based
environments or an MFP,
but that is totally different
from using a sheet-fed
device specially developed
for professional
document capture and
non-attended batch
scanning,” Rudolph
explained.
He added that
the changing nature
of scanning had led
Fujitsu to some key
conclusions: “Scanning
needs to be easy so
knowledge workers
can focus on their
core business
role; knowledge
workers don’t want
to get involved in
At the conclusion of the last
Business
Info
editorial meeting, publisher
Neil Trim took a photo of the
handwritten meeting notes with his
iPhone and, there and then, emailed
them to participants. Under normal
circumstances, he would have scanned
the notes on an MFP once back at
his desk.
Another classic scanner application
that can now be carried out with a
camera-enabled smartphone is the
scanning of expenses receipts. Using
services like ExpenseMagic (www.
expensemagic.com) andWeb Expenses
(www.webexpenses.com) users can
photograph a receipt with an iOS,
Android or BlackBerry device and send
it to the cloud or company accounts
department for processing.
Such applications might be considered
a threat to the scanner business (along
with the scanning function on MFPs – see
article in next month’s issue of
PrintIT
for more on this topic). But according
to Douglas Rudolph, general manager
of marketing at PFU Imaging Solutions
Europe, this isn’t the case at all. In fact,
by making people aware of the benefits
of digitisation whilst highlighting the
many limitations of smartphones as data
capture devices, he suggests that they
might actually help increase demand for
desktop scanners.
Sales figures bear this out. Shipments
of personal scanners, those most directly
threatened by smartphones, continue to
grow strongly. InfoSource suggests that
the personal scanner market will grow at
a compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
of 17% between 2011 and 2015, making
it the fastest growing segment of the
scanner market.
Canon, which since 2009 has
increased its share of this segment from
5% to 20%+ (source: Infosource ISIS),
points out that portable USB-powered
scanners have diverse applications in
the office, on the move and at home,
from the scanning of business cards,
letters, forms and contracts to school
reports, bank statements and utility bills.
To meet this demand, Canon has just
launched a new USB-powered device, the
imageFORMULA P-215. Other scanner
and MFP manufacturers are also targeting
this space (see box overleaf).
Fujitsu’s Z generation scanners let users switch between enterprise
processes and ad hoc scanning with the click of a mouse
Getting personal
problem solving, preferring to rely
on IT administration and external
support; and when they do have access
to a document scanning device they
want to make use of it for more than
just input into an ECM system. They
want to use a device for personal
productivity reasons too.”
Z Generation
These observations drove the
development of Fujitsu’s new Z
generation of colour duplex business
scanners, which combine the ease of
use and spontaneity of personal ad
hoc scanning, epitomised by Fujitsu’s
own ScanSnap range, with the defined
processes and quality control required
for input into enterprise content
management systems.
The four new scanners, the fi-6130Z,
fi-6230Z, fi-6140Z and fi-6240Z,
achieve this balance through a number
of key developments, including:
1. Dual-mode Pull and Push
Scanning.
The Z Generation has two modes of
operation, Scan-to-Process mode for
scanning documents into pre-defined
processing routines or enterprise
applications; and one-button ScanSnap
Productivity mode for personal
scanning.
The latter provides ad hoc push
scanning, such as scan to email, scan to
folder, scan to print, scan to Microsoft
Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), scan
to Microsoft Sharepoint and scan
to ScandAll PRO for editing, with
automatic settings for speed and
ease of use. These include automatic
resolution mode; auto colour detection;
automatic rotation and de-skew;
automatic paper size detection; and
The fi-6230Z and
fi-6240Z scanners feature
an automatic document
feeder and additional
built-in flatbed unit.
...continued