Let's face it, other than scan to email how many people are using their MFPs to Capture documents? Of course there are examples of hospitals augmenting their scanners by scanning into EMRs and I keep hearing people "scan to sharepoint" but is this really growing?
What are the Capture tasks people would like to do but cannot on an MFP either because of cost or complexity?
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Geeesh, you ask a great question! I really not sure if there is an answer for that.
All of my accounts scan whether it's scan2email or scan2folder. Most are then moving those documents to a place on the server or another pc where they are stored in a windows alpha tree folder structure.
When I speak about entering meta data at the copier, so that they can perform a better search, it seems to have turned them off. Many users feel that they can find the documents that they've scanned and don't want to pay for something when they can find it on their own. Thus these accounts don't have any PAIN.
I also may attribute the above scenarios because most copiers out of the box are not capable of allowing the user to search for the correct folder on the network to scan to. Nor do most come with creating searchable /pdf's when they scan.
Just maybe if the user was able to see the network folders from the MFP, they might then embrace entering meta data when they scan the document. For instance in drop box.
Scan2sharepoint, not many customers doing that on my end, however many are scanning to dropbox, box, evernote and MS 365. Maybe what the industry needs and this may be possible with the new smart MFP's is an app that the customer can purchase and pay a monthly fee for and it includes a basic DM system. The app in nature would be some kind of "lite" version of DMS, and you could pay more to add more features.
It could also be that most sales people are not embracing Document Management, meaning in most cases this will slow down the box sale since other parties will need to be consulted with the purchase or lease of the MFP.
Would it be possible to bundle a lite version of a DMS system with the copier? Maybe a license for one user for one year?
Can anyone else add anything?
Art:
I certainly agree based on my past experience, people don't want to spend a lot of time typing information at the control panel. And I think I agree for some applications, having "auto-sorting" is the ideal.
But does anyone see the need for scanning and pulling data into an application for analysis not just indexing?
I actually have that application for two current prospects and even though both will benefit from the improved workflow, one is stalled and the other is scheduled for Feb time line.
On the application that is stalled we need to extract data from a form and populate the data in another format, the ideal format would be excel, however my support people are suggested MS365, and that's where the deal has stalled and I guess it's stalled because the solution would not be one that generates a lot of revenue for me. With a quota of 750K per year I need to focus on larger solutions and orders.
If there was just an easier way to demonstrate to the prospect.........
Well we might be able to make these sort of applications easier for you. We have a tool that automatically identies what type of form is being scanned and can store it automatically based on rules.
We also can automatically extract data and then pass it along to a destination app like Excel, MS 365, Oracle or something else.
End users will not embrace a solution that asks them to enter all the meta data themselves nor should they. It is simply not productive. In a busy environment you cannot have people fumbling with a virtual keyboard to input data for a scan job while the line behind them grows.
This is where software comes into play which will "read" the scanned image and capture relevant metadata to attach to the document for indexing in the DMS. Relieving the user of this burden and getting the most productive benefit from the MFP.
Even if you are simply scanning to a folder being able to embed metadata in the file name would help with the search process.
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