Like, just a scanner?
A dedicated document scanner will prove to be a good purchase for your office. The capability to turn paper documents into electronic files for more efficient storage and faster distribution is a change everyone in the company can benefit from. Once you decide you need a document scanner, there are a few considerations you should think about before making a purchase.
Speed
A scanner might brag about what appears to be an exciting page-per-minute rating, but be sure to dig a little deeper. Is that rating for black-and-white or color files? You should also know that a unit with duplexing ability, scanning both sides of a page at the same time, will be a huge time saver.
Quantity
If you need to batch scan a large number of documents at one time, you don’t want a scanner that can only manually scan one page at a time. You’ll want a machine with an automatic document feeder (ADF), one that lets you load at least 50 to 75 pages into the feed at a time.
Flexibility
If you want to scan materials other than standard, letter-sized documents, make sure the machine you pick can import items of different sizes, like smaller items and legal papers. Many scanners can also scan non-document items like ID cards, so be sure to look for scanners with these capabilities if you need them.
OCR
Optical character recognition (OCR) is a must for businesses looking to change the content of scanned items. OCR converts printed text into a format that is searchable and editable, allowing users to easily search documents for specific content and change or extract text and images.
Import
An important option for lots of scanners is software that lets users import scanned documents directly into programs like QuickBooks, Outlook, and TurboTax. Your employees can work with their scanned data in the applications they normally utilize to get their jobs done faster.
Happy shopping!
