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Document Management Technologies
Avnet Technology Solutions is Europe's premier specialist distributor for document management capture and storage products.Sourcing only 'best of breed' solutions from top class manufacturers, Avnet and its associated companies are well positioned to meet the increasing requirements of the information management marketplace. Adopting a truly independent distribution model, Avnet works closely with System Integrators and Solution Providers to ensure that they receive expert, unbiased advice on the best ways to scan, capture and store customers' data.
Our solutions portfolio includes document scanners for all sizes of jobs, simple and intelligent data capture software, archive storage, high availability storage, document life cycle management, storage back-up development toolkits, including image compression techniques and unique display subsystems.
By providing in-house training, as well as consultancy and maintenance services, we are able to pass on a wealth of experience to our Business Partners.
Scanning Overview
With so many different types of scanners available, how do you choose the right one?The functionality of a document scanner is to create a digital image from a paper document as quickly, reliably and easily as possible. When choosing a scanner the most important considerations are matching the paper handling, image quality and speed of the scanner with your requirements and budget.
The thickness, sizes, edges and surface finish of your documents affect paper handling. To deal with this, there are a variety of mechanisms available to suit different document combinations. These range from automatic document feeders with capacities of up to 1,000 pages and advanced double feed detection to flatbed units for fragile documents or books. If you are looking at scanning in large volumes, it is well worth taking the time at this stage to try a selection of different scanners. Avnet's purpose built state-of-the-art THE [resource] is a custom built demo center where you can put the leading scanners through their paces with your documents. If you contact your Avnet account manager, they will arrange an appointment for you.
Most scanners will give a good crisp image from a clean black and white original. Unfortunately documents used in the real world, such as forms, invoices and correspondence is rarely perfect for scanning. They often contain creases, coloured backgrounds, text ranging from dot matrix printers to handprint in a variety of colours and effects including highlighter pens. These require more sophisticated technology to cut through the noise on the document in order to capture the data. Perfect Page with iThresholding from Kodak and Virtual ReScan (VRS) from Kofax, are designed to make scanning such documents easy by automatically adjusting the contrast and thresholds as required. These technologies also automatically de-skew the image of any document that was scanned slightly skewed and then crop to the size of the original paper document.
In the early document management systems all images were captured as a bitonal image (black & white) but modern systems now offer colour as it is easier for the user to recognise an image that looks like the original paper document. Nearly all scanners today are colour capable and are available across the price and performance range from all of the leading manufacturers.
Why is it important to consider scanning resolutions? Probably the key reason to scan at a lower resolution is the throughput of the scanner, as scanning at higher resolutions will slow the speed of the scanner. Most manufacturers will quote throughput speeds using an A4 document at 200dpi (dots per inch) in portrait mode, although some will quote A4 at 200 dpi using landscape mode, which will produce a higher throughput (pages per minute). The price of storage has been reducing year on year so the cost of storing the larger files produced by colour scanning is becoming much less of an issue. The increased capacity in network bandwidths means that moving these images around the network to the user is also much less of an issue. The same is true of retrieving via the internet although both are dependent on the volume of retrievals at peak times. Storage overheads are dependent on the resolution of the image - doubling the resolution quadruples the file size. Most automatic data capture packages recommend a resolution of 300 dpi to get good accuracy, but if the images are for visual reference only this can be dropped to 200 dpi for bitonal images or 150 for colour.
You also need to consider the durability of the scanner. Each scanner has a duty cycle that indicates the maximum daily volume that it is designed to process. This is calculated from the total number of scans that the manufacturer designed the scanner to achieve during the equipment life and then divided into a volume per day. This means that scanners will often perform well above the daily throughput but constantly doing so will severely shorten the equipment life.
There are a range of maintenance options designed for all requirements; from ad-hoc scanning to mission critical capture. If you have the equipment covered under maintenance then some service providers will charge a surcharge for scanners being operated well above the specified daily throughput.
Most units are connected to a Windows PC through industry standard USB or Firewire connectors or by dedicated high performance SCSI boards designed to extract the most from your scanner. There are however options available to allow scanners to be connected straight into a network, without a PC, for departmental scanning.
One major consideration is to understand the scanning topology needed by the business. For instance in a centralised scanning approach, the scanners might need to be capable of handling larger volumes. In a distributed scanning approach, where scanners are distributed throughout the site, easy of use and reliability becomes more important than the scanning volume.
Closely linked to this is the capture and routing software needed to extract the data from the electronic image and route it to a centralised document management system or repository. Ensuring that the capture and routing software supports your chosen scanner should be a consideration.
Best of Breed scanners from Böwe Bell+Howell, Canon, Fujitsu, Kodak, Panasonic, Visioneer & Xerox are all available from Avnet Technology Solutions. Feel free to contact Avnet today for assistance.
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