How businesses can get the most out of a desktop scanner
It’s one thing to buy a desktop scanner for your office; quite another to use it productively. Nik Rawlinson discovers the best routes to scanning success
How do you use a desktop scanner productively? We discover the best routes to scanning success.
The rise of email and instant messaging may have decimated the morning mail drop, but head into any office and you will still find it littered with paperwork. As more of our time is taken up by reading and responding to digital correspondence, we have less and less to spend processing printed matter.
It’s not just about incoming mail, either. Legacy documents often need to be retained for legal compliance or reference, and many organisations invest in secure archive storage for paper-based assets to make sure nothing important gets lost.
These days, though, that’s an unnecessary expense. For a low price, you can equip yourself with all the tools you need to digitise and dispose of paper documents today.
That’s because scanning hardware is a lot more advanced than it used to be. Picture a desktop scanner and most likely you’ll imagine a simple flatbed device; these may still be fine for a small team or solo worker who only needs to scan documents once in a blue moon. But there are many more suitable options for SMBs, with high-speed document feeders and enterprise-grade software that simplifies the process of capturing, digitising, indexing and archiving documentation. In terms of time saved and the potential for increased
productivity, a business-class desktop scanner could be one of the smartest investments you make.
CHOOSING A SCANNER
Getting the right scanner for your business doesn’t necessarily mean splashing out on a high-end model. For small office duties, a consumergrade all-in-one device could be all you need. The HP Envy 5030, for example, can happily meet the scanning and printing requirements of teams up to half a dozen or so. It has both USB and Wi-Fi connectivity, so it’s easy to share its scanning capabilities across several staff, and HP’s Instant Ink scheme reduces the hassle of ordering and paying for refills: rather than waiting until your cartridges have run dry, you pay a monthly subscription based on the number of pages you expect to print.
The price starts at nothing for 15 pages a month or fewer, so if you have only very light printing needs you might never pay for ink again; if you need more, the cost rises through various levels to a maximum of £7.99 for 300 printed pages a month. However you use it, the printer reports back on the number of pages you’re printing, allowing HP to dispatch replacement cartridges before your existing ink runs dry.
Consumer vs business scanners
A consumer MFP might be fine for a small office, but if you’re scanning dozens of pages every day you’ll want to look for a business scanner that’s built for a professional workload.
Not only will a high-throughput scanner be more robustly built, it will also usually have additional features to improve productivity, such as document hoppers and feeders into which you can load several pages at a time for unattended scanning. Some even have duplexers that can automatically turn pages over for double-sided scanning.
For a medium-sized office, Epson’s £1,000 WorkForce DS-970 is a good example of a suitable scanner. It includes a 100-sheet document feeder
“In terms of time saved and productivity, a desktop scanner could be one of the smartest investments you make”
“An inexpensive scanner can capture images at very high resolutions, but to make the most of it you need the right software”
with a throughput of 85 pages per minute. This can handle paper weights ranging from tissuethin 27gsm paper to 413gsm card, so it should cope with any type of document – and it also features a long-paper scanning mode that can handle banners in excess of 6m. Just note that network connectivity is a paid-for extra (£230 exc VAT) as are service options, which cover either on-site swap-out or return-to-base cover, starting at £360 for five years.
Desktop sheetfed scanners
The biggest, fastest scanners all have automatic document feeders – but look around and you’ll also find some surprisingly compact scanners with their own feeders. Fujitsu is one of the biggest players here, having captured a large part of the market with its ScanSnap range.
One notable model is the ScanSnap iX1500, which can digitise documents at 30ppm and features a 50-sheet document feeder for unattended scanning. It has an integrated touchscreen for direct control, or you can use the Wi-Fi connection to scan wirelessly from a PC, Mac, iOS or Android device, or scan to the cloud without using a computer.
Other neat functions include feeder guides specifically designed for capturing business cards and receipts, and the ability to capture oversized documents that need to be folded in half before feeding in. What’s more, it’s technically two scanners in one: dual heads allow it to simultaneously scan the front and back of a document with a single pass, for fuss-free double-sided scanning.
The ScanSnap iX1500 is a lot smarter than a basic desktop scanner so unsurprisingly it’s more expensive. However, you could pick it up on Amazon for a very reasonable £425 ( pcpro.link/300fuj) at the time of writing.
Specialist scanners
So far, so conventional. But what if your business has unusual scanning requirements? Happily, there’s a whole range of scanners built to fulfil less common tasks. For example, if you need to capture text from published books, the 4DigitalBooks DL mini ( pcpro.
link/300mini) has you covered. It not only images the text in a book but mechanically turns its pages for fully unattended scanning. The manufacturer claims that it can handle both hardbacks and soft covers – including those tightly bound ones that have a tendency to automatically shut themselves as soon as you let go – and it can even cope with inserts and loose sheets.
A more cheap and cheerful option is the Libreflip project ( libreflip.org). This works by laying the book on its back, as it would sit on a reader’s lap, and dropping a scanning head into the “V” that this forms. A vacuum then picks up two pages – one on either side of the head – which are scanned simultaneously before being turned over. In this way it’s projected that Libreflip can process 700 to 1,000 pages an hour.
We say “projected” because Libreflip isn’t yet ready to ship. When it is, a kit is expected to cost around €2,500, with a fully constructed system coming in at around €4,000. Alternatively, since the project is open-source, you’ll also be able to freely download the full plans, along with detailed instructions and a bill of materials to build your own.
For a truly DIY approach, you can even follow the example of Google engineer Dany Qumsiyeh, who built an automated book scanner for the Google Books project during his spare time, using a domestic vacuum cleaner and parts salvaged from a flatbed scanner. The total cost? Around $1,500. If you want to know more, check out his Google Tech Talk demonstrating his invention ( pcpro. link/300dany).
What if you need to scan microfilm? Allied Images’ ST ViewScan 4 ( pcpro. link/300allied) combines full-page photography with OCR to turn historic papers and documents into a searchable database. While its most obvious appeal is to public and educational libraries, it’s also ripe for deployment in long-established research institutes and ancient corporations, which often in the past turned to microfilm as the most convenient space-saving archive option in the pre-digital era. It’s available as either a standalone product or a preconfigured PC, to which you simply need to add your own keyboard and monitor. A mouse is an optional feature as, ideally, it’s used with a touchsensitive display. Perhaps the most specialist scanner we know of is the WideTEK 36ART-600 ( pcpro.link/300wide), a large-format scanner built to capture artworks of up to 222m x 91cm. Because the original items are typically both delicate and valuable, it features a zero-contact design, in which the canvas sits on a platform and slides gently past a downward-facing scanning head. Museums use this type of technology to capture oil, acrylic, charcoal and pastel works, as well as mixed media and collages at 600dpi. That’s sufficient to allow considerable enlargements without any discernible loss of quality, and to capture a good likeness of the image’s original texture, as well as its tones.
SCANNING SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS
There’s clearly a wide range of scanning systems out there that cater for different needs – but the hardware is only half of the equation. Even an inexpensive scanner can capture images at very high resolutions, but to make the most of its abilities you need the right software.
Free scanning tools
If you’re thinking you will make do with the scanning software that’s built into Windows, think again: there isn’t any. You can download a basic scanning app from the Microsoft Store ( pcpro.link/300winscan), but this has no OCR features so it’s basically useless for businesses. If you really need to use free software, your best bet might be the standalone OneNote app (which is available from
onenote.com). This has the ability to recognise the text in documents you