How to choose a suitable scanner for your business?

Whether you need to scan piles of financial statements, scores of documents, family photos, or even your daily expense receipts, and the occasional business cards. There's a scanner for the task.

The first step is understanding your needs and clarifying your requirements. Ask yourself the following questions:

1- What is the volume of the documents I have?

2- What is the quality of the original documents? are they old, delicate, very sensitive?

3- Is it a frequent process?

4- Does the speed matter?

5- Can I compromise technology and quality for the price?

6- Do I have enough space?

7- Do I need to integrate the scanner to be part of a complete solution?

The more the questions the better the decision. After clarifying your concerns and understanding your needs, move to the next step, list down the available types of document scanners to perceive the objective behind each type.

There are approximately 5 types:

1- Portable document scanners. These are best used with laptops, as they can be powered from the USB connection. Limited to A4 size, these document scanners are usually intended for ‘road warriors’, like a salesperson who is away from the office but still needs to scan documents. Whether scanning receipts, contracts, recipes, or plastic cards, it takes scanning beyond the desktop and into your mobile world. Usually, portable scanners are completely wireless and weighing a few grams, bringing mobility and wireless scanning to your PC or Mac as well as iOS or Android device.

2- Desktop document scanners. These often have features you get in workgroup or production models, inside a smaller unit. They’re good for low volume tasks. In small offices or home, they can be the main document scanner. These are usually limited to A4 size paper but may support double-sided scanning. These scanners are great at sorting information. It sorts all of your information - papers at work and home - in whatever way you desire. It enables you to find documents you need, build relationships through business cards, manage expenses with receipts, and share photos with your colleagues, friends, and family.

3-Workgroup document scanners. These fill the gap between high-end desktop document scanners and low-end production models. They can be used in a whole range of situations, often for A3 scanning or to handle larger volumes of material. Ideal for the medium-sized organization or single-department application, they are the foundation of your document management solution. You won’t sacrifice performance for affordable document imaging. some Workgroup Scanners include both flatbed and sheet-fed models, as well as models that can be customized to scan to e-mail, .pdf files, printers, or FTP sites.

4- Production document scanners. Production environments call for extremely high throughput, flexibility, and reliability. Production scanners satisfy these requirements, enabling users to scan thousands of pages per day. Production document scanners are like workgroup scanners that have been working out. Capable of scanning thousands of pages a day, they’re ideal for bureaus where speed, reliability, and capacity are crucial.

5- Multifunction devices (MFDs). These combine several different devices into one unit. These devices often allow you to print, scan and copy. Having a multifunction device could save space and money, not always true, but the compromise is quality and speed. Whilst they are adequate for light usage they are unlikely to be suitable if you need high-resolution scanning or high volumes.

Once selecting the kind of the scanner type, it's time to compare the features.

• Maximum paper size. The largest size paper can be passed through the document scanner. Usually, A4 or A3, unless you’re looking at specialist document scanners.
• Daily throughput or duty cycle. The number of pages that can be scanned each day. This will range from a couple of hundred to many thousands, depending on which category the document scanner falls into.
• Scanning side. Whether the scanner can scan one or both sides of the paper automatically. Simplex means single sided. Duplex is double-sided. If you will be regularly scanning double-sided documents, opt for a duplex model.
• Resolution. The level of detail at which your document scanner operates. This is measured in dots per inch (DPI). Although lots of factors affect the overall quality of scans, in general, a higher the DPI is better. Ignore ‘interpolated’ DPI figures – always look for the ‘optical’ figure.
• Colour mode. Can the document scanner handle full colour, black and white or greyscale? Most scanners can scan in full colour.
• CCD or CIS technology. CIS technology is less expensive than the traditional CCD models, but there can be some trade-offs regarding image quality, especially when it comes to scanning sensitive documents.

• Pages per minute (PPM) and images per minute (IPM). The number of pages the document scanner can scan in a minute. ‘Images per minute’ applies to duplex scanners, because the front and back are scanned simultaneously, giving double the number of single pages. Speeds are usually quoted for a particular type of documents like A4 black and white scanned at a certain resolution.
• Automatic document feeder (ADF) capacity. The number of pages you can load in for scanning in one batch. With a large capacity, you can set the scanner up, and do something else while it scans.
• Flatbed scanning. Flatbed document scanners can scan documents that cannot be loaded into an automatic feeder. These items include bound documents and books. Some scanners have both an automatic document feeder and a flatbed facility.
• Interface or connectivity. Make sure the computer to which you intend to connect your document scanner has the right connections. USB has become the common standard. 
• Drivers and compatibility. Drivers are files that sit on your computer and enable it to ‘talk’ to your document scanner. Make sure your chosen document scanner will work with your computer and its operating system. And if you’re planning to use your document scanner with software that doesn’t come with the scanner, check the drivers will work with it.
• Bundled software. Most document scanners come with software. This can range from a trial copy of basic scanning software to a full commercial product worth hundreds of pounds. Purchasing a document scanner with a comprehensive software bundle can reduce the overall cost of your scanning solution – as long as you need the software.

• SDK (Software Development Toolkit) availability. Some business cases and scenarios would need to customize a specific solution to integrate the scanner within a complete system. Thus, the ability to get the SDK is considered to be a very important factor to deliver a cohesive solution.

To sum up, before buying a document scanner; it is very important to understand fully the requirements and needs, then select the document type and compare the features taking into consideration your future needs, the return of investment ROI, and the total cost of ownership TOC.

Fujitsu is an established leader in the document imaging market, featuring state-of-the-art scanning solutions in the workgroup, departmental, and production-level scanner categories. Fujitsu scanners deliver speed, image quality, and great paper handling, along with easy integration and compatibility with document imaging applications.

We are at PFU Fujitsu are thrilled to share with you our experience and knowledge. You can always reach out for a consultation or any other needs.

Mustafa Al Binni,

PFU Fujitsu

Partner Manager - Middle East