A safe bet
KODAK Scan Station
network scanners
Editor’s Choice:
Business Info
What we liked:
• Fast return on investment
• improved organisational
efficiency and productivity
• cost saving
• saving to USB adds a further
level of security
• ease of operation
Fast, quiet and easy to use
The latest generation of network scanners from Kodak Alaris, the KODAK Scan
Station 700 Series provides an easy to use walk-up solution to simplify document
sharing.
The company has taken its photo kiosk and scanner know-how and combined it in a
compact, high performance, networked unit. The newest models allow people to efficiently
capture information from documents and route it into key business processes without the
need for a dedicated PC.
– 01732 759725
Digitising the thousands of paper
football coupons it receives each
week has enabled The Football
Pools to realise a return on
investment within just six months.
Founded in 1923, The Football Pools
is the oldest football gaming company in
the world, which in the last 90 years has
paid out over £3 billion in prize money to
60 million lucky winners. Implementing a
company-wide policy to digitise coupons
utilising KODAK Scan Station network
scanners has slashed the time and cost of
coupon processing and simplified all bet
processing throughout the UK.
To process coupons, The Football
Pools has two established channels:
individual collectors pick up coupons
from people’s homes and deliver them to
a main collector who in turn takes them
to one of 25 concession and satellite
offices around the country; alternatively,
customers send their coupons directly by
post to The Football Pools’ Walton head
office. Collectors visit on a Thursday,
coupons are collated at the concession
offices on a Friday and have to
be physically returned to
Liverpool that night
for processing on a
Saturday.
Conleth
Byrne,
Managing
Director
of The
Football
Pools,
said: “The
logistics
involved in the collector route are both
expensive and hugely time critical given
that we need to process coupons quickly,
declare a dividend to customers and pay
our winners.”
Installing desktop KODAK Scan Station
network scanners in its concession offices
has sped up this process. Operators load
coupons in batches and input a collectors
reference; the paperwork is then scanned
and quantity checked and the images
transmitted over an ADSL network to a
server located at head office. From start
to finish, it now takes around 30 minutes
to process each remote office site – vastly
improving organisational efficiency and
productivity, as well as saving money.
Physical coupons no longer have to be
collected and driven to Liverpool.
Images are stored locally on the Scan
Station’s hard drive, but in addition, a copy
is saved to a USB drive for redundancy and
to ensure no single point of failure.
Peter Dent, The Football Pools’ technical
manager, said: “Saving to USB adds a
further level of security for the data. If the
network were to ever go down, we could
simply take the drive to another office or
even courier it to Liverpool directly so that
we can start processing the coupons.”
In addition to the built-in hard drive
and ability to write automatically to a USB
drive, the network scanners from Kodak
Alaris were chosen as they are robust and
simple to operate for non-technical users.
Furthermore, the business has used KODAK
Scanners for over 12 years and has been
pleased with the quality of the service and
support provided.
Dent added: “Reliability has been
impressive and the Scan Station scanners
are pretty much maintenance-free with
the feeder rollers easy to replace when
required. Their lifespan is rated to about
120,000 A4 pages but given our coupons
are smaller, we get more than this. I’ve
stuck with Kodak Alaris as in my opinion
its products are superior to competitors.
They might cost more, but you get what
you pay for and the service and support
we’ve had has been excellent.”
Neil Murphy, Kodak’s UK sales
manager, said: “The project is a super
example of how a distributed networked
scanning solution can truly pay dividends
for companies with multiple geographically
split sites. Coupon processing used to be
an intensive all day, ten-hour operation
for staff on a Saturday. A huge amount
of money and time is now being saved
with The Football Pools able to bring
forward other work that staff can focus on
instead.”
19
Editor’s Choice Awards
