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Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 1 Table Of Contents User Friendliness – One Theme to Rule Them All 2 A Vantage 2.2 on the Industry – Conversation With ABBYY’s Bill Galusha 3 Capture Conference 2022 Sneak Peek: Ralph Gammon 8 Is the ‘individual’ becoming the key buying decision maker for distributed document scanners? 9 Security, Documents, and Digital Friction 3 1 Brother Introduced New Hybrid Work Desktop Scanners 17 Meet Infosource: Barbara Richards 20 21 Years of Fujitsu Scanners – The fi 8170 21 Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 2 User Friendliness – One Theme to Rule Them All I’ve mentioned ease-of-use multiple times in these pages over the past two years. But it’s never been clearer than when I was putting this issue together how central making things easy for the user has become for this industry. Every conversation I had with someone for this issue at least touched on ease-of-use and simplicity. This is being driven, in part, by two other overall market trends: □. Lack of IT skills – the easier these tools are for everyone to use, the less likely of□ce workers will be to break them or use them incorrectly. I’ve not read this anywhere, but it feels like there’s a goal to “idiot proof” everything (even more than before). Avoiding PEBCAC errors is a good thing! □. Work from home – even if IT skills were in abundance, accessing them won’t be as simple as when everyone was in an of□ce together from, sing it with me, 9 to 5. With this issue, we are of□cially over the half-way point of 2022. It’s been quite the year that shows no signs of slowing down. Thanks for reading, Bryant Duhon Editor-in-Chief, Document Imaging Report bdu@info-source.com Comments, criticisms, and witticisms welcomed. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 3 The companies with “intelligent process automation” generally have a broader set of automation tools (like work□ow) The RPA vendors call themselves intelligent automation IDP has been used for a few years and has taken hold recently, and the number of companies n the market keeps growing. Galusha jokingly noted that “I could create a slide with 50 today, and tomorrow there’d be 100 on the slide.” Regardless of the terminology, “in two years, it’ll probably change,” but the “intelligent” part of the name shines the light on the path forward. It will be about “using intelligence, around machine learning and other advanced approaches to document automation.” It is confusing. As Galusha said, “we de□nitely □t into the intelligent automation market.” Which is true, I noted, since that’s in ABBYY’s tagline. A Vantage 2.2 on the Industry – Conversation With ABBYY’s Bill Galusha Before we got into the Vantage 2.2 announcement ( ), we began with my current soapbox, the language confusion. ABBYY uses intelligent document processing consistently in their marketing and other writings. So the □rst question I asked Bill Galusha, VP of Intelligent Document Processing at ABBYY, was about terminology. you can read it here He made a couple of points: Which was a good segue into talking about the Vantage update from a process standpoint. While Galusha isn’t responsible for ABBYY’s Timeline product (a process mining software), he pointed out that they are bringing the products closer together. The ability to move from analyzing work□ow activity data into more elements of the process. It’s interesting to watch the capture and process industries continue to move more closely together, and in a single company in this instance. “As we move documents through a processes with Vantage, everything is tracked at a transactional level,” says Galusha. “So every time the document is touched, a part of it is logged. All of that information ties into Timeline which can then tie into data from an ERP or CRM system to provide a more complete end-to-end view of business processes.” Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 4 The Vantage Marketplace and Low-Code Today, there are about 120 assets in the marketplace ( ). Many are pre-built by partners. In this release of Vantage, ABBYY introduced an ID skill. Galusha explains this is idea for capturing documents associated with opening a new account. “In the past, you’d have to start from scratch,” says Galusha. “With this skill, we’ve pre- trained the skill to recognize the various document types needed to prove identi□cation – personal income statements, utility bills to prove an address, W-2s, etc.” www.abbyy.com/marketplace It’s been interesting to watch platform vendors in this space create marketplaces for their customers. ABBYY allows partners to create prebuilt skills that anyone else can use (free or paid at the discretion of the partner). There are different tiers in the marketplace. Some are framework skills, which have been trained and are “free” to be used if you have a license. Other skills are called “production” skills. There are roughly a dozen, invoices, point of sale receipts, and the ID skill. Pricing on use of these skills is based on a cost per document for processing. Partners do have some latitude in what they can charge and it can be a source of ancillary income for them from other partners using the tool. Of course, it also saves time for other partners so they don’t have to recreate the wheel for a problem already solved. Vantage 22 and a Still Green Industry Galusha is seeing a shift in ABBYY’s customers. While there are still many organizations looking for the low-hanging fruit of claims, invoice, and mortgage processing; he’s seeing a shift to moving IDP tools into higher value applications [perhaps more visible would be a better description than higher-value]. One example is customer onboarding and improving the overall customer experience. As the technology continues to improve, ABBYY emphasized that area within banking in this latest release. When Vantage was released a year and a half ago, a major piece of the announcement was the accompanying marketplace. “The strategy,” Galusha explains, “to build out a ‘catalogue’ of pre-trained models; what we call skills. These are speci□cally trained to understand and process certain types of documents.” Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 5 Galusha provided a recent example, “He’s a long-time ABBYY partner and he built one for certi□cate of when you buy a car, vehicle loans. He’s perfected the capture using FlexiCapture to support titles in all 50 states. It’s production ready skill and he could charge a premium for it.” Another is a turnkey solution for AP automation with Oracle, based on the skills ABBYY developed for invoices. Like other ISVs, ABBYY is focused on rolling out low/no code capabilities too. While the skills designer requires, well, skills to create; ABBYY does offer a no- code designer to train documents. Says Galusha, “upload a document, label the □elds you want data to be extracted from, hit the ‘train’ button, and you see the results. One document.” He thinks this is one of the mistakes vendors using AI and machine learning to get into IDP made. “We can do everything with AI, but when the customer started using it they had to gather hundreds/thousands of documents to train, which is a roadblock for simple use cases. This no-code design uses machine learning, but a business analyst, non-technical user can do the training.” This helps ABBYY address the real world, no-code for straightforward documents to the deep learning introduced in the Vantage 2.2 release for dealing with a “document type that has hundreds or thousands of variations.” Galusha thinks the combination of low-code on top of machine learning will broaden the reach of capture within organizations. Historically, if you wanted to capture a document, you had to go directly to a small group of experts off in one corner of the organization. He thinks this approach allows an enterprise to “build out a service around document processing within an organization that can help automation teams scale.” You don’t put this in front of everyone and tell them “have at it,” structure and governance is still needed. “But for a business analyst,” Galusha says, “sitting between business and IT, this gives them the power to solve problems and do it in a much faster way.” He noted another change over the past □ve years as to why he thinks this can happen. When RPA hit, Galusha noticed that imaging and capture teams weren’t usually part of the automation team. Today as ABBYY sells FlexiCapture into larger organizations, they are along with the AI and process intelligence strategies. It just shows that the document hasn’t gone away. Galusha echoes comments Ralph Gammon made in his sneak peek interview [turn to page 7 to watch the video] that the competition keeps growing. As the IT skills gap continues to remain, the low-code capabilities and continued development also help extend what in-house IT departments can do. For ABBYY, the increased competition simply cements their thinking that they’re in the “right spot.” Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 6 The Big Points of Vantage 2.2 The ID Skill is a highlight, as mentioned previously. He noted a Canadian customer downloaded the skill and it worked on licenses in the Great White North. He also has seen it work with licenses in Europe. Galusha says this gives them a competitive advantage over other IDP vendors in the space (at least for now). The release of the data warehouse as part of Vantage and the integration with Timeline will allow document data to be married with process data. [Note: process mining vendors are all beginning to understand this need.] There is an API for the warehouse, so it can be integrated into business intelligence tools. Galusha gave an example of how this integration works between Timeline and Vantage, “Say you know you have issues with invoices from a certain vendor. You can see where the bottleneck occurs within Timeline and be able to trace that back into Vantage to see the particular invoices that are causing the problems. From there, you can □gure out if you need to retrain the model, change validations, or whatever.” The initial release of the warehouse is only a foundation. Over time, Galusha notes, “We'll be able to expand it and add more analytics. So exposing details around analytics and accuracy and things like that.” The ongoing development of this library of trained skills is an important piece of ABBYY’s strategy and one Galusha is excited about, “In the last few months we've gone from very few to over 120 and more in the pipeline. There’s obviously more complex use cases too. I think people are just scratching the surface. Think in terms of all of the unstructured documents in corporate tax □lings.” While trying not to oversell his point, it was obvious that Galusaha – and ABBYY – are very excited about the possibilities here. He went on to add the complexity of claims processing and insurance underwriting. Simplifying the collection of data from these documents would be a huge help for businesses. I asked Galusha to break the new announcement down into what he thinks is most interesting. The marketplace. He’s pleased with the ongoing growth of the marketplace. From a handful to over 120 and he thinks they’re just starting to scratch the surface. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 7 ABBYY sees the warehouse, currently, as a database for enterprise customers to plug their BI and monitoring tools into. This will allow you to track everything that happened to a document through the process. It’s not real- time, with the API you wouldn’t want that, but you can set it to pull at whatever interval is desired. Customers will then be able to pull data from other aspects of their business processes to begin to see the interactions. Galusha says this will provide a “better picture of what’s happening end-to- end in a process.” Final Thoughts While not the analyst that Ralph Gammon is, this strikes me as a tremendously useful tool that will allow companies to really □ne-tune their business processes by seeing into the “black box” of documents tied to processes – what corrections are operators performing that could be automated. The □nal core technology addition to Vantage 2.2 is the introduction of ABBYY’s handwriting recognition capabilities (already available in FlexiCapture) into Vantage. Image quality is a continual focus and ABBYY is working on removing the need for users to make changes to settings for optimal image quality and do that “behind the scenes.” Galusha said that the ongoing war in Ukraine hasn’t disrupted their research or operations. They had contingency plans in place and have done all they can to ensure safe and continued operations for their employees. We concluded our conversation by talking about some of the newer companies. As in every industry, there’s new entrants promising to overturn the dinosaurs. The only problem with that analogy is that dinosaurs weren’t adaptable, companies can be. Galusha notes that many of the AI-centric vendors have pivoted to the IDP space to “grab onto the coattails” of a growing industry. There’s a lot of good technology, but it doesn’t always perform in a production environment. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 8 Capture Conference 2022 Sneak Peek: Ralph Gammon When I took over DIR just over two years ago, I recall seeing lots of concern over the ability of established vendors to play in a cloud-native, plug and play world. Given the depth of expertise and industry experience in many of these companies, that always struck me as overblown. Unsurprisingly, Galusha agreed, “I think the credibility and the experience does go a long ways. We □nd with some IDP vendors they tend to be narrowly focused, around invoices, for example. One of our strengths is that we're able to adapt to a lot of different use cases across many different Industries. The other thing, Vantage, while using existing R&D, like our OCR engine, was built from the ground up to be low/no code.” Watch it here: (It is amazingly hard to pause a video when both people have their eyes open!) https://youtu.be/J8W_vuX5Vt4 See an interview with , Senior Software Analyst at Infosource, conducted by of Document Imaging Report. Ralph will be presenting with at the Capture 2022 conference Sept. 7-8 about Future Opportunities in Capture. They will discuss their □ndings based on year-long research and projections about where the Capture market is headed. Ralph Gammon Bryant Duhon Petra Beck What do you see as the biggest change to the Capture market in the last 5 years? What do you think is the difference between Capture and IDP? What do you □nd most interesting about covering the Capture market as an analyst? Why should one attend the Capture 2022 conference and what can they expect What has your research for 2022 shown you about what will happen in 2023? Here's what we cover: Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 9 Is the ‘individual’ becoming the key buying decision maker for distributed document scanners? Prior to the pandemic the scanning industry was witnessing a somewhat modest increase in its SOHO user base, which for the scanning industry was manifesting itself as increasing demand for Personal and Workgroup devices. However, COVID supercharged this shift in the global labour markets which will undoubtedly have implications for the manufactures in our industry. For the SOHO user; ease of use, cloud connectivity, and security all in a small footprint have become essential considerations in the buying decision so scanner manufacturers will have to respond. A further consideration for the manufactures is the question as to who they are now marketing their products. Previously within the corporate environment the MIS manager was the key decision maker, today there is strong evidence to suggest that the buying decision has □rmly moved to the “individual”. Within this article we will brie□y look at the market characteristics of the three key areas of Europe, the Americas and the Asia - Pac region. With the advent of the COVID pandemic, there has been a seismic shift in work global labour markets furlough schemes, remote working, and even lost jobs. We’d like to thank our event sponsors, and , for their support. TWAIN Working Group Epson America Inc. We look forward to seeing everyone in Chicago on September 7 & 8. Don't delay, register today. CLICK HERE NOW! Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 10 The European Region – Mark Nicholson North America Region – Barbara Richards Research by Infosource’s Document Management Scanning Program shows that across Europe there was a clear surge in growth of Personal scanners originating from the onset of the pandemic. Our research indicates that the shift of the of□ce-based worker to the home has driven a demand for low- cost personal of□ce devices – including document scanners. Buying accessibility was an important consideration for this new army of homeworkers as the distribution network for of□ce machines effectively closed at the height of the pandemic. Homeworkers therefore had to buy essential of□ce equipment from those outlets still open to them - the e- tailers (e.g., Amazon). A further interesting observation shown in the European graphic is the observation that during 2019, when many small businesses employees were furloughed, the traditional user of Workgroup scanners, European shipments brie□y declined. However, as this shift in the labour force became more long term, this category of device began to follow the growth trend of the Personal category devices as more Workgroup scanners were purchased through the e-tail outlets. For scanner manufacturers in Europe, it is essential to understand whether this shift (as yet apparent) in the buying decision making from the corporate MIS manger to the ‘individual’ is permanent or a temporary phenomenon as the ‘buying priorities’ for both are ultimately different, which will have consequences for their own future sales and marketing activities. The North America Distributed scanner market represents the largest share of shipments accounting for approximately 42% of the scanner market worldwide. Like the Western Europe region, the NA market showed strong growth in personal scanners shipments in the earlier days of the pandemic, but this trend has subsided as the market has become oversaturated. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 11 ASIA PACIFIC REGION – Shinichiro Oda Furthermore, we continue to see a shift to a hybrid work model in this region where employees are still working from a home of□ce part time. As the collaboration process moves from short term to long term, companies have shifted to more robust work□ow digitization solutions but, with the need of the B2C consumer. This entails more user-friendly, compact design devices focusing on cloud scanning & work□ow solutions. In addition, the pandemic has also increased the inclination of consumers towards alternative solutions such as mobile based scanning apps. What’s changed is in the past only a small percentage of the workforce would be connected remotely, the pandemic has accelerated this trend. Now, they’re connecting from anywhere and everywhere, not just their home cities. This structural tailwind of cloud adoption, as well as a hybrid workforce, has signi□cantly changed how companies look at what they need to do. And, what they need to provide their employees. Infosource latest forecast highlights the shift to workgroup distributed scanners that align with the needs of these new “hybrid” users but still provide the ef□ciency and productivity of the business user. In fact, the shift to workgroup scanners has largely already occurred as unit shipments grew 14% YOY in this segment. Scanners with ADF have been mainly used to digitize, store, and share paper-based documents such as invoices and contracts that are used in large quantities in business transactions, to input receipts into expense reimbursement systems as vouchers for telecommuting employees, to digitize attachments when applying for various public services, to scan books and magazines for reading on the go with smartphone, and to digitize and record test results at school. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 12 On the other hand, with the promotion of digital government, the development of IT infrastructure, and digitization of society, the certi□cates that used to be required can now be scanned only with images taken from of□cial personal ID cards, passports, and driver's licenses, all from home PCs, tablets, and smartphones, and COVID-19 has brought about a new standard for telecommuting. Telecommuting has been further accelerating the digitalization of society. Regional Characteristics The Asia-Paci□c region is a mix of countries with digital governments, ICT infrastructures, and societies that are digitizing globally, such as Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and China, as well as many developing countries in terms of economies and IT infrastructures. In terms of demand for DMS with ADF, there is a coexistence of countries where new demand is gradually decreasing and countries where demand is expected to increase in the future. Even in countries where economic development and IT infrastructure are lagging behind, smartphones are owned more than 100%. And governments in emerging countries tend to promote digitization of society by using smartphones or tablet PCs as key devices. Looking at the market by category, in the personal class scanners, overhead scanners seem to be outpacing the popularity of document scanners with ADF. Demand for conventional DMS with ADF is projected to be more concentrated in the of□ce segment. In the APAC region, each country has its own social and administrative digitalization, economic conditions, and political situations that vary greatly from country to country. Future DMS demand and sales strategies need to be researched and analysed on a country-by-country basis, and Infosource is continuously tracking the situation in each country. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 13 Before we being, Happy Birthday to Digitech Systems. They turn 25 this July and are one of the □rst companies I remember talking to about “software-as-a-service” back in the 90s. The last 25 years have been an amazing technological blur (which I think everyone mid-career thinks at one time or another going back millennia!). Looking forward to the next 25! Digitech takes security seriously and often use it in their marketing. As Robbins said, “As cybersecurity threats are always shifting, it feels like anything companies can do to help the average worker just become more aware to take advantage of security features that are probably already available but they may not have been using consistency consistently or even perhaps not being enforced by a corporate IT or a corporate security team so Amongst all of the trends in the IT space, security and user-centered and ease-of-use cut across every aspect of IT (Internet of Things, process mining, digital transformation strategies, data analysis, etc.). All vendors in IT are focused on keeping their product secure and making it as easy to use as possible. In April, Christina Robbins, Digitech’s Director of Marketing, wrote an article for ( , I referenced this piece in the 4/25/22 issue of DIR as well) in which they talked about industry trends, including cybersecurity. As, at the time, I had relatively recently spoken to Kevin Neal about cybersecurity issues in the context of network scanning (you can □nd that conversation in DIR 12.9.22), my ears perked up and I made a note to follow up with them. There’s been an increasing drumbeat of noise (merited) around the need to secure content over this year. work□ow Digitech Systems Identi□es 4 Important Trends to Simplify Work in 2022 The article also gave me a nostalgia feeling as it cited Osterman Research, which I had used frequently as a resource for copier dealer clients. So when Digitech announced a user-centric, security focused press release about an existing feature, I wanted to ask her about their perspective on documents and cybersecurity. The release can be found here: . One Step File Upload and Monitoring Security, Documents, and Digital Friction Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 14 Dumb/Careless Employees – Every Security Plans Achille’s Heel So we of course started a conversation partially inspired by security with paper. Paper is an overlooked source of security breaches. [MFP companies like Kyocera, Canon, etc.) have known this for years and partially address this with pull printing capabilities. The increasing use of network scanners, which don’t store anything on the device, by scanner manufacturers has the side bene□t of helping keep content secure by closing off an avenue of data breaches – content on network-accessible devices.] That sensitive document sitting out in the open on someone’s desk (or in an unlocked □ling cabinet/□ling room) as they get up to grab another coffee – potential security breach. Anyone remember the with their passwords on post-its on their PC monitors? guys in the Hawaii emergency agency I’m not a cybersecurity expert, but: DON’T DO THAT! It’s human nature to “default to whatever is easiest” as Robbins noted. Then layer on corporate passwords changing every 30 days and your personal passwords to dozens (or more) online apps and it gets cluttered. Robbins shared a relatable story about having to entirely start over with a travel account as she could remember the right answer to the random security question the company had established. That’s why the tool we’re talking about in the press release, which “takes it out of the users’ hands” can be so useful. Similar to paper documents sitting in a printer output tray, digital documents hanging out in various drives before they reach their ultimate destination is also a needless security risk. The utility in PaperVision automates the security step by automating the upload of documents from the scanning device into the document management system. Paper, Paper Everywhere and Nary a Digital 1 or 0 to Breach Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 15 Robbins noted that this isn’t a new feature – and one they’ve had for a while. However, as their existing and potential customers deal with hybrid work environments, Digitech decided to make a point of emphasis push about security. “When you start to think about it in terms of security, in terms of the need for just a general education of everybody who walks up to a scanner that it can be really simple. Any document that’s scanned automatically goes into your ECM. Once it's uploaded, every access and security setting from your document management system comes into play.” The release itself that spurred our conversation isn’t new functionality and it’s not unique to Digitech (they weren’t claiming otherwise). Set up a folder monitor to a location(s). The folder can be on the scanning device itself, network directory, etc. It then scoops up the documents in those folders on a set schedule so employees don’t have to do it. Given privacy concerns, it’s not blanket access into an employee’s computer, but only to the designated locations. The goal is simple – remove the burden of ensuring documents get to where they need to be from employees by automating it. Prior to our conversation, I had read the phrase “digital friction”, which is exactly what this removes. Digital friction is all the extra work that knowledge workers have to do that prevents them from doing the focused work they’re paid to do – like scanning documents and then having to move them to the correct location. This also seems to be a common thread many in the industry are talking about, even if they don’t use the phrase. The work from home movement over the last two years has really made organizations have to sit back and think through automating as much of this grunt work as possible, which is why Digitech decided to issue a press release on an existing feature – to bring attention to the fact that this level of automation is possible and it can have a “big impact on productivity and job satisfaction.” Robbins explains that the functionality had been embedded inside their document management services for a while, but “about a year ago, we pulled that out and said in a remote and hybrid work environment this becomes even more important because more and more people are not in the of□ce to be able to take advantage of corporate processes to get information into doc management and so we're all trying to □gure out how do we still maintain the security how do we get things make sure things get into the right records retention schedule all of those things.” Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 16 So they updated the tool to make it easier to use and pulled it out of the document management system or service and made it a free utility that they aren’t billing people for. Simple tool, big impact. Robbins said customers have responded well to the utility and it’s “kicked off interest with scanner manufacturers.” There’s no need to write a custom integration for devices because it works with anything attached to a network. In fact, Epson is giving away a free scanner to people who buy one of our scanning products that includes this functionality. It’s essentially a simple digitization package. Digitech is also working with large-format scanner vendor Context where Digitech will give three months free on their cloud ECM, PaperVision for a scanner purchase. [Note: this is similar to Raven’s approach to the market by including cloud DM software with their scanners, see DIR 6.20.22 for more.] WFH, PII, and Re-centralization Security Benefits Overall content security is enhanced because documents aren’t sitting in a less-secure holding area for someone to remember to move them. Once ingested into an ECM system, that system’s security protocols apply to the document. going to be a desktop but it's going to be going to a person you know an individual or very small work group There seems to me a potential personally identi□able information (PII) nightmare in a scanning and work from home environment, depending on the types of documents being scanned. I asked if that’s a concern their customers have and if they’re seeing a shift to recentralizing some IT functions, including scanning, in part because of the digital friction we talked about above. As the pandemic moved from the initial, “we just have to get work done, do what you need stage;” companies have begun to think strategically again. In part, that included thinking that having documents sitting on □le shares or being shared via email might not be great for the security of those documents. Robbins noted that they that shift toward the end of 2020 and all of last year. A move from “just get it done” to long-term thinking about the ability to incorporate the □exibility of WFH with security. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 17 New Brother ADS 3100 & ADS 3300W Series Brother Introduced New Hybrid Work Desktop Scanners In April of this year, Brother International Corporation announced a series of new desktop scanners built for the hybrid work environment and designed to help streamline the digitization process for organizing and sharing of documents while saving users time and resources. According to Brother, these new scanners offer enhanced productivity with reliable performance, easy integration into existing processes and systems with wide driver compatibility, versatile connectivity options, advanced image optimization features, and Triple Layer Security to help limit document and device access and protect against network intrusions. By Barbara Richards, Senior Analyst, Infosource Another shift she noted is that there’s a lot more conversations bout cyber insurance as companies realize it’s not a matter of “if” they’re going to be attacked, but “when” and how do you defend yourself. Cyber insurance can help you out of a ransomware situation and help cover the rami□cations of a data breach. Robbins said they’ve realized that this utility is another layer of security for organizations. They do talk about content security more now, and also focus on the need for training, given employees are the weakest link. Robbins says that the automation aspect is getting the attention of people in charge of security. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 18 New Brother ADS-4300N, ADS-4700W and ADS-4900W Series The new ADS-3100 and ADS 3300W desktop scanners are ideal for small of□ce, home of□ce, and work from home users. Feature set includes a bundles software package that includes document and work□ow customization valued at a retail price of $250. In addition, both high-speed USB connectivity and scan-to-cloud services are standard on these devices. Both models scan at 40ppm and include a 60-sheet auto document feeder which supports multiple media types. The ADS-3300W has a 2.8” color touch panel and supports wireless connectivity and mobile device scanning, a feature we are seeing more and more on new scanner models. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 19 Infosource Insight The new scanner series from Brother are part of a growing trend in the marketplace to a more B2C type feature set that focuses on ease of use/user-friendly designs( i.e., larger GUI control panels, compact design, cloud solutions, and security). The WFH Trend will continue as a becomes the new normal – the epicenter is collaboration from anywhere. The pandemic has accelerated the growth of inputs received via email and mobile devices, which we expect to continue post-pandemic. hybrid model In addition to the two new SOHO models, Brother also announced three new business class models, the ADS-4300N, ADS-4700W, and the ADS- 4900W series. Brother has emphasized that these scanners are designed for offering their customers business-class performance teamed with □exible connectivity options and seamless integration into existing work□ow environments. Both the ADS-4300N and ADS-4700W feature an 80-page auto document feeder while the ADS-4900W includes a 100-page capacity feeder to help support higher scan volumes. In addition, the ADS-4700W and 4900W models include a 4.3” color touchscreen allowing users to create customizable shortcuts for one-touch scanning of common scan jobs. A total of 56 shortcuts destinations are available. Additionally, the scanners are equipped with a powerful software suite that allows users to convert hard copy documents to searchable PDFs with editing capabilities for Word, Excel, and PPT □les. Furthermore, they support Kofax VRS Elite and Kofax Express for improved image optimization. The business class models include enhanced scanning to a variety of cloud applications including Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. how work now works Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 20 Meet Infosource: Barbara Richards According to Infosource’s most recent , the market is forecasted to grow at a 1.6% CAGR through 2025. The workgroup scanner segment is expected to grow at a 2.3% CAGR and, where the majority of opportunity lies for distributed scanners today, (see Scanner Forecast below). Brother is in an ideal position to expand their market coverage. The company is consistently in the top three in the distributed scanner segments that include personal, workgroup, and departmental. While there may be obstacles ahead, Brother seems ready and willing to take on these challenges with a focused plan to gain new business and address the growing needs of the Hybrid work force. North America Scanner Market forecast for Distributed Scanners Barbara is Senior Analyst with Infosource. She has made a career in the capture/of□ce equipment industry, spending seven years as a product manager for Konica Minolta before moving to InfoTrends as a Senior Consultant for nearly 17. We’re happy she made her way here. You can reach her at . br@info-source.com I am an industry analyst. How did I get here? Well, a long, long time ago, I started off as a temp at Merisel a computer distribution company in LA and that led to various jobs in product marketing at Digital Equipment Corporation, Konica Minolta and I then moved into consulting in the of□ce technology industry. What do you do and how did you get there? Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 21 21 Years of Fujitsu Scanners – The fi 8170 Scott Francis has been launching Fujitsu scanners for two decades. He came to Fujitsu in 1999. His □rst scanner launch was the last of 3000 Series scanners at the AIIM Show & Conference, the ScanPartner 93GX. Since then, he’s been part of the team that launched the 4 to 5 to 6 to 7 to now the 8000 series – the sixth major generation of scanning technology and around 60 products. Hmm, off the top of my head I would say, Real Clear Politics, I am a political junkie, Forbes, and lastly something light like BoredPanda or Pinterest. What are your three favorite websites? Top three ever written IMO, - Ken Follet, - Paulo Coelho, and – Charlotte Bronte, On my nightstand I am reading , the 9 book in the Outlander series, by Diana Gabaldon and by Hugh Aldersey-Williams What are the three greatest books ever written-- and what's on your nightstand today? Pillars of the Earth The Alchemist Jane Eyre Go tell the Bees I am Gone th Periodic Tales, A Cultural history of the Elements Of all time, I would say , and , Last movie I saw, I took my daughter to see and it did not disappoint! Great movie! What are the three greatest movies of all time – and what the last one you've seen? Gone with the Wind It’s a Wonderful Life To Kill a Mockingbird Elvis I am embarrassed to say that my □rst concert was KISS, a General Admission show! Three best songs for me would have to be “Wishbones” - Slaid Cleaves, “Fade into you” - Mazzy Star, “Tangled up in Blue” - Bob Dylan What was your □rst concert – and what are the three best songs on your iPod/fav music service? don’t think I can specify a “best” day. I think the days that I’ve completed a project or helped a client are the days that bring me a great sense of accomplishment. I am a list writer and if I have a day where I check off all my “To do” items it’s a good day! What was your best day at work? I Well, I can’t remember a speci□c worst day but, I’ve have to say once early in my career I was in San Francisco for a business event and had stayed out way to late with my colleagues – needless to say my presentation was less than stellar the next morning. I have not repeated that since Thank God! Worst? My daughter Ava What are you proudest of? Well, to □nish this darn questionnaire! Seriously, it’s Friday so I usually try to map out my week ahead and wrap out any outstanding action items. What is your number 1 goal today? Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 22 As with other scanner announcements we’ve covered recently, Fujitsu’s goal is ease-of-use and functionality for “people who do scanning that already have a day job” because scanning is happening where documents are coming into organizations today. The Speeds ‘N Feeds Francis took a moment to focus on how they design their product. The core is the image scanning technology and building on paper handling, reliability, and image quality. Engineers don’t just sit in an of□ce. They meet with customers and partners to see how the products are used. “We’re looking at each part of the scanning process to see where we can improve and innovate. And no matter what we do, we're going to maintain that reliable high-quality product, and we're going to make sure that we can manufacture those products at scale with safe and reliable manufacturing. Our goal is a zero point, zero percent, failure rate, and we're pretty close to it. So we really pride ourselves in our ability to make high-quality products and to manufacture them at scale.” I’d never heard a scanner compared to a car before, so I wanted to share Francis’ analogy on the speed improvements, “Adding speed is like souping up your engine. More horsepower is great, but you better focus on your suspension and brakes as well.” In addition to focusing on upgrading the “suspension,” the □ 8170 has two hardware processing chip and brand-new camera technology. Francis explained the thinking behind product functionality, “We're really looking at the total scan time. A knowledge worker knows that they have to scan until they can do their next job tasks. That's paper preparation, loading the scanner, initiating the scan process, and whether that's on the scanner, whether it's in software, the actual scanning itself, and then any post- process naming the □le closing out the software, taking the documents out of the paper tray.” The □ 8170 is an addition to Fujitsu’s lineup and the next generation of the □ 7160. The 7000 series products will still be sold. In the coming months, Fujitsu will add to the 8000 lineup. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 23 One chip is for color matching. The second focuses on improving their PaperStream software and image processing time on the device – auto crop, deskew, blank page detection, etc. Francis noted that there are 32 patents in this new generation of scanners (overall, Fujitsu spends over $1 billion on R&D, he noted, and PFU bene□ts). What’s new with the □ 8170: New camera technology. Sonic paper protection. Not unique to Fujitsu, but, taking a step back, using sound to detect a paper jam before it happens . . . that’s pretty cool. Overscan control. Patented technology that enables all of an image to be capture regardless of how the operator loads the paper. Auto separation control. Paper handling that allows the pick rollers on left or right to be individually controlled to straighten the next page if the previous one is crooked, this also helps paper stacking in the ADF. A New Image Capture Benchmark? Double feed detection improvement. Will detect a real double feed but allow a barcode sticker on a healthcare form to pass. A stacker supporter to help stack the paper in the ADF. Many of these improvements are focused on saving time, which boosts operator productivity. Clear Image Capture uses 3D color conversion to get 4,913 color settings. We didn’t explore that in detail, as Francis said, that’s what the engineers say. Traditional red, green, blue light sources can’t match that. Francis calls it a breakthrough technology that will lead to better than ever accuracy. He explains that CIC “matches every color for highly accurate reproduction and it modi□es the □nal scanned image to prevent color shift. We also recognize that crumpled folded or creased document can cause variances in the distance between documents and scanner sensor and affect resolution and cause line distortion. Clear image capture factors in variance to eliminate variances and deliver precise, crisp Images unsurpassed by anything previously possible. Clear image capture resets the benchmark.” It works equally well with monochrome output. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 24 One thing I’ve always appreciated about Francis is his mastery of the product (and ability to reminder the strings of numbers!) and his ability to make a point. It all boils down to better image quality as quickly as possible. Why is it termed a “hybrid.” Francis explained that the camera isn’t different, but the matching of the camera with the color matching chip combined with PaperStream IP and the line distortion algorithms combined. The upshot, as Francis points out, “is great image quality without having to be a color scientist to con□gure.” Scott also touted Fujitsu’s OCR recognition accuracy, “We think our Benchmark tests show that we are clearly the leading provider in terms of recognition accuracy. I think if you ask partners what gives them the best OCR accuracy, Fujitsu is on top every time.” Francis says CIC improves on both CCD and CIS (see image below). Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 25 Better Torque and Other Paper Handling Improvements Depending on the batch size, the roller torque changes: lower on small batches and dynamically increases based on the size of the batch. The sensors in the auto-separation technology “see” the load in the ADF. This is a default setting and no user involvement is required for this improved paper handling. Francis explains an additional level of detail to improve paper handling, “Our backside rollers are motorized, most other scanners simply have their backside rollers not motorized, some of them don't even move. They just guide the paper through.” Keeping with the car analogy, the 8000 series is “all wheel drive.” The improve roller ef□ciency also allows thicker documents to run through the □ 8170, up to .7mm. Because these scanners are often on the of□ce front lines, Fujitsu focused on preventing jams and skewed capture. If the document is skewed too much, scanning will stop – preventing damage to the paper. This is another default setting. Same if a staple is detected. Overscanning also improves image throughput. The scanner has three document sensors across the top – that means if a corner misses the right or the left hand sensor, the scanner “knows” that if it stops scanning at 11 inches, it might miss portions of the document Overscan functionality then kicks in to catch the entire document. This is another time saver for the end user from having to rescan. Other scanners have ultrasonic multi-feed detection. Francis thinks theirs tops the others because of the ability to successfully scan a mixed batch of documents of varying thickness without false positives. This is the same technology as the 7000 series, but enhanced with the three sensors to catch a larger number of skewed documents. Francis stressed multiple times that all of these paper-handling improvements are default settings. The user just needs to stick the paper in and push the button. Francis believes the □ 7000 line, with CCD technology, still has legs and they’ve been among their best-selling devices. Now they’ve improved the image quality inside the same scanner footprint – about the size of a shoebox, as Francis puts it. We’ve just discussed image quality. Paper handling also has improved. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 26 The document stacker is built into the unit and pulls out. Competitors have a similar stacker, but it’s (usually) optional. The 8000 series gives users a stacking option without changing the form factor of the device. Management, Software, and Connections ClickScan is an ad hoc scanning application for quick scanning needs like scan-to-□le, print, email. It lives in the system tray of a PC and can create and send an image without a server. A user can be scanning to an EMR system in a hospital, quickly scan a document to email with a quick toggle, and return to scanning to the EMR system without having to change any settings. When a user scans their □rst document, ClickScan “wakes up” with default settings to take advantage of PSIP. Color LCD The manual feed mode allows for back and forth scanning – exceptions or documents like a passport. Users can select manual feed and scan without having to change any driver settings. Francis, “the way that manual feed mode works is we're turning off the separation, right? Because if that separation was on, we're going to separate that multi-page document. But as soon as we hear a paper jam, we're going to stop the process.” The ability to scan A3 means users don’t need to walk over to the copier (and □ghting co-workers making copies) or □nd a □atbed scanner and then email the image back to themselves to then import into their capture software. The 1.8-inch color LCD is small, but functional. At 8.5 font, I could read it without squinting. The control panel is also color, which makes it easier to highlight and □nd what you need. It’s got a document and consumables counter. It will provide information about a paper jam as well as alerts about expired/expiring consumables. As expected, the □-8170 and 8100 lineup has an increasingly common set of management and connectivity options, as well as Fujitsu’s PaperStream lineup of scanning software. The Scanner Central Administration tool (included in all RFI series of scanners) is a browser-based tool for centralized scanner management. IT can access a real-time scanner inventory, all connected Fujitsu scanners, consumable counts, push drivers to PaperStream software, enforce user pro□les, and more. PaperStream IP provides TWAIN and ISIS drivers that work with the hardware and software to support the image enhancement discussed above, which provides the foundation for recognition accuracy. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 27 PaperStream Capture is a complete capture product with zonal and full-text OCR. Fujitsu has partnerships with many of the major capture ISVs for more robust needs, but users can start batch capture immediately if needed. Finally, PaperStream NX Manager provides PC-less scanning to the cloud or a network-attached on-prem location. With PaperStream NX we're able to eliminate the one-to-one pairing of PC to scanner and the software essentially is living on a server. So one PaperStream NX Manager Server can control multiple scanners (including the □ 7300 NX). This is an extremely versatile scanner, and the additions to the line promise to be as well. Francis speaks to the dual nature of the □ 8170, as both an easy- to-use, straight out-of-the-box scanner, but one that can also be tweaked by someone who understands document imaging. “The scanner is really optimized for you. Easy to use, fast, and reliable capture, regardless of the scanning operator. Now, of course, if someone is in advanced scanner operator, they have access to dial out settings, but the default settings have been con□gured and engineered in a way to where anyone can scan with success. Its application is anywhere you need a scanner at arm’s reach.” As the IT press continues to go overboard on digital transformation and digitization and hyperautomation and et cetera, it’s always useful to remind folks (not in this industry) that all comes to a screeching halt if you bottleneck at the scanning device. You don’t want your point of failure to be your scanner – sophisticated software only can do so much if you’re getting crappy images or bad scans. The versatility is reinforced by the connectivity options. Francis went back to a hospital analogy to illustrate. “Customers can go with natural USB or they can use the network connection. If they decide to use the network connection, they can still use the scanner the same way that they've always used our scanners. Let’s go back to the hospital front registration counter. Has a bunch of hardware on it. The USB ports on the PC that has the EMR system has a barcode printer, a USB digital signature pad, a keyboard, a mouse, a printer. All of those are competing for those USB ports, but let's say in that front counter is crowded, but the counter behind that front desk is open and there's a network port on that back counter. Now, we can connect the scanner via a network connection, and still use the TWAIN or ISIS drivers if you like.” Plug it into a PC, plug it into a PC with a network connect, scan directly to a network using PaperStream – it’s designed to work however the situation dictates. Document Imaging Report - July 12, 2022 Page 28 Francis touted the duel nature of the scanner – it’s ability to be a network scanner as well as tied to a PC. For knowledge workers, plug the scanner directly into a network. With preset jobs, they can push scan and documents go directly to the server, where they can be further enhanced. Once they’re in the network, the documents can be pulled into the appropriate location. One scanner for either use: PC or network scanning. Francis argues this future-proofs the □-8170, “Use it with USB or connect to the network to use a TWAIN or ISIS driver. When ready to take advantage of cloud bene□ts and reduce the cost of deploying, maintaining, and supporting PCs; the □-8170 is a network scanning so you can eliminate all or some of those PC costs.” One □nal note: they’re holding their own in acquiring chips to maintain production. Francis noted that it’s amazing the number of chips used in just a single car these. DOCUMENT IMAGING REPORT Business Trends on Converting Paper Processes to Electronic Format DIR is the leading executive report on managing documents for e-business. Areas we cover include: DIR brings you the inside story behind the deals and decisions that affect your business. 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