Blogs

I have seen quite the plethora of news about scanners with embedded OCR recently.  Seeing the term “OCR” come across in my Google news feed is quite exciting, and a great way to start my day. Let me share some of my recent findings, and what they mean in the larger scope of automation.

Amongst other things, I read recently that Capture Components announced a new product that allows users to scan directly to the cloud. ccScan for SharePoint is a full-featured capture application that allows users to scan, import, identify, store and share documents directly to SharePoint. This is neat in it of itself and shows great strides towards industry wide use and implementation of cloud technologies and SharePoint. One of my all-time favorites for networking use, the Fujitsu ScanSnap N1800, made recent review headlines in ZDNet and eWeek Windows for Devices. As I’ve said before, I particularly like this scanner because it makes it easy for organizations to simplify and standardize document imaging, and provides a solution for a multitude of business processes.

Also recently reviewed by PCWorld was the Kodak i2400, a workgroup scanner that includes simple options for document management, editing documents, and sending scans by email. The HP Scanjet N6310 was reviewed this month as a good solution for small businesses.

Why am I listing off all of these new products? The answer is simple: scanners, both mobile and desktop, with embedded OCR are the first step for true automation. To some, digitizing paper through scanning is the end all, be all. However, for others this is really just a small piece to the automation puzzle. To round it out, we need to educate and simplify the experience for making data searchable, accessible and integrated into cloud and backend systems. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but it is important that we understand both the end users needs, and use cases, when designing our solutions. This will help us better understand the features that are important, as well as identify where to go next.

I will touch more on this, and various other pieces in the automation process, such as scanning, digitization, automation, and data and document capture, in the coming weeks when I get into ECM and ERM systems. Until then, which components do you think are most important for vendors to understand about the customer and their use case?