Flatbed Scanners

A scanner that provides a flat, glass surface to hold a sheet of paper, book or other object for scanning. The scan head is moved under the glass.

The type of image scanning device you’ll see most often around the office is a flatbed scanner. This looks just like the work surface of a photocopier, where you put the page to be copied, and that’s pretty much what a flatbed scanner is. You can also use them to scan thick original items, like books or magazines, as well as single pages.

Most printer manufacturers offer multi-function laser or inkjet printers with scanning ability built in, so you don’t need to make space for a separate scanner that might not see a lot of use. Multi-function printers give you the additional perk of acting as a copier or sometimes a fax machine, as well as printing and scanning. That makes them a good option in a small office.

SHEET-FED SCANNER

Sheet-fed scanner is smaller in size than flatbed scanner. This type of scanner works like a flatbed scanner except that the document is fed through the scanner and moves along the beam to be read rather than the beam moving along document. This type is not useful for books, but only single sheets.

These scanners are also called Automatic Document Feeders. Sheet-fed scanners use digital imaging system that is specifically designed for scanning loose papers.

Large-Format Scanners

Flatbed scanners and sheet-fed scanners are both versatile business machines, but they’re usually pretty limited in the sizes they can scan. Usually, if you routinely need to scan anything larger than a legal sized document, you’re out of luck. If you work with larger pages in your business – such as blueprints, architectural drawings or posters – you’ll need to get a large-format scanner. These rather resemble a musician’s electronic piano, with a flat scanning mechanism mounted atop a stand that brings it up to desk height. To use it, you slide your oversize original into the scanner until the rollers grip it and position it for scanning. From there, it works much like a jumbo sheet-fed scanner, with the document sliding through the scanning mechanism and coming out the other side.

DRUM SCANNER

Drum scanner is used for scanning a document and produce at very high resolution rate. There is no any type of scanner that will give you the kind of resolution, detail, sharpness, dynamic range, and color rendition that drum scanning can give you. There are only a few companies that make these scanners, considering the high cost of producing a scanner such as this. It is considered as a tremendous upgrade to a regular flatbed scanner.

A drum scanner uses a photo-multiplier (PM) tube, which is a light sensing device. That’s why it offers a high sensitivity and good signal-to-noise ratio. The image to be scanned is placed on spinning.

HANDHELD SCANNER

Handheld scanner is much like a flatbed scanner. Handheld scanners are small helpful electronic devices that are widely used for digitizing printed documents. Handheld scanner provides lower quality scanners, they are still very popular because they are small and less expensive than their flatbed. They are able to scan items that could not fit in a flatbed scanner due to size or location. Their function includes moving them over the material being captured with the aid of a tray to keep it in a straight line. Experience is required to operate and handle the device since it is very important to keep the scanner straight so that a distortion-free scan is possible.

Low cost and portability is the advantages of handheld scanner but poor quality is its drawback.

 

Now is the perfect time to think about changes you can make around your business to reduce your environmental impact. While there are many earth-friendly practices you could implement, there’s one change you can make that will have a positive impact on the environment and on your bottom line: going paperless.

Today’s technology makes it easier than ever to collaborate digitally instead of by sharing paper documents, so now’s the perfect time to ride that wave and create a paperless workplace.

What does it mean to go paperless?

Essentially, there are two steps to going paperless. The first step is to reduce your reliance on paper by digitizing your documents, and the second step is to maintain your new paperless environment by securely storing, sharing and managing your digital documents using document management software. Implementing a digital mail room is the final step in going paperless as it stops paper from entering your organization at the point of entry and digitizes it for distribution.

Organizing existing documents

Having your documents digitized is simple when you work with a trusted document management partner. They’ll systematically prep, scan, and index each document, creating crisp digital images that can be easily stored and managed with document management software. Not only are digital documents easy to store, but they’re easy to access, too. Whether they’re on the road or working remotely, your team will be able to access documents in the cloud from any authorized computer or mobile device.

Documents of all sizes can be digitized, including oversize blueprints and engineering drawings. Specialized scanners even make quick work of scanning delicate bound books that could be damaged by a flatbed scanner.

Keeping the paper from piling up

Once the documents you already have are digitized, you’ll just have to handle the ones that continue to come in by mail and email. That’s where a digital mailroom comes in. With digital mailroom services, incoming mail is received at a dedicated PO box, then brought to a document scanning facility where it’s prepped, scanned, and indexed. The end result? Digital images of each document provided to you for storage in your document management system.

Digital mailroom services can also be used to manage incoming email. Your incoming email is directed to a monitored email inbox and goes through a quality-controlled data capture process. From there, the captured data is ready to be loaded into your business systems or kick off a workflow, totally eliminating the need for you to waste paper by downloading and printing emails and attachments.

Going paperless wastes fewer resources

Did you know that trees aren’t the only resource that’s used to produce and distribute paper? It takes electricity and other energy to process wood into paper, to transport paper to companies, and to distribute paper, for example by mail or by courier. The less paper you use in your business, the better it will be for the Earth. Practicing sustainability also attracts loyal customers who want to do support businesses that are socially responsible.

Need some more concrete reasons? Here are five earth-friendly reasons to go paperless for Earth Day:

1. Prevent unnecessary deforestation by using less paper
2. Lessen the energy required to cut down trees and manufacture, transport, copy, and store paper
3. Decrease the emissions of paper factories as well as the trucks, trains, and planes that transport paper to you
4. Reduce emissions from distributing paper documents by mail or courier
5. Shrink your business’ carbon footprint and get closer to qualifying for green business tax incentives

Less paper means better efficiency

There’s much more to celebrate in addition to the earth-friendly factor of going paperless. Without paper documents holding you back, your business processes will go much more smoothly without the bottlenecks that are common when a coworker is out of the office or when a document is buried in a pile on someone’s desk. That’s because digital document management enables you to set up automated workflows that seamlessly transition between steps in a process and provide helpful alerts when documents are missing or actions are delayed.

In addition, being able to easily search for documents with a keyword instead of digging through filing cabinets cuts back on wasted staff time, allowing your team to spend their time on more critical work that adds value to the business.

Digital document management is more secure

It’s difficult to store paper documents securely. Not only can they easily get into the wrong hands, but they’re also susceptible to disasters like fire and flooding. Keeping digital documents secure, on the other hand, is easy thanks to redundant backups and customization levels of permissions.

Storing less saves on real estate costs

Real estate is expensive, so it’s a waste of money to use your valuable square footage to store documents. Digitizing your documents frees up the space you’re currently using for file storage, allowing you to repurpose the space for revenue generating activities instead.

Ready to do your part for the Earth and go paperless in your office? Here’s how to choose a document management partner to help you go paperless.