Access and Feeds

ECM: Low-Cost scanners Encourage Distributed Document Capture

By Dick Weisinger

Prices for document scanner hardware are dropping quickly and making some people rethink their approach to document capture.  At lower price points, a distributed document capture model begins to make a lot of sense.

Surprisingly sophisticated desktop scanners are now available at price points of around $2000 and below.  While you can’t use these devices to replace high-volume mailroom-style scanners, for many businesses with regional offices, capturing documents at the source with desktop scanners can reduce costs and streamline workflows.

The throughput speeds on most of these newer low-end scanners is in the range of 25 ppm, and for many applications, that is speedy enough.

These new powerful low-cost scanners often come complete with features like:

  • recognition capabilities (OCR, ICR, OMR, and MICR)
  • multi-feed detection
  • dual streaming
  • image enhancement

Distributed scanners open up possibilities for improving office workflows that include:

  • elimination of costs involved in over-nighting documents
  • elimination of intermediate workflow steps where documents are Faxed between offices
  • streamlining processing times, getting information in the system and started on processing more quickly

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