Fujitsu Z Generation ScannersWin Editor’s Choice Award

THE WORKPLACE & TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE FOR SMES WWW.BINFO.CO.UK ISSUE107

PA P E R W O R L D 2 0 1 2 R E V I E W • S C A N N E R S • D I C TAT I O N

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Scanners

Desktop business scannersThe 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

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) and Web 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 personalcan focus on their core business role; knowledge workers don’t want to get involved in 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 GenerationThese 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

The fi-6230Z and fi-6240Z scanners feature an automatic document feeder and additional built-in flatbed unit.

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Certificate

BusinessInfo EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD

FUJITSUZ Generation

Scanners