ECM: Scanning the Options
Yesterday John Mancini, president of AIIM, put up a great post about the use and perception of the scanning function on multifunction products/devices (MFPs or MFDs) on his blog, ECM Industry Watch. He says end users are finally starting to use the scanning capability, and my experiences with customers certainly supports that data. Scanning from MFPs is becoming the norm. However, the new challenge is to get end users to use the scanning capability beyond scan-to-email, as part of a larger workflow strategy.
Since a solid scan-to-email capability is almost universally available, and is intuitive enough that it can be quickly adopted by most office workers as an easy way to move a hardcopy document into their desktop’s largely e-mail based workflow, it’s a common-sense starting point, Why do they do it? Put simply, scan-to-email is copying in the digital realm—people do it to share a document, file a copy, or to re-use it.
When working with customers to look beyond scanning e-mail, I have seen a range of “postures” from “We know we need to get started with scanning but aren’t certain what the answer is...” to very clear direction on how the scan-enabled MFPs are going to integrate with their ECM system and what the user experience should be. I am not an ECM industry expert, but I believe that the market forces are moving it (finally) into the mainstream. At the same time I believe that users will soon begin to acclimate to basic scanning capabilities – beginning to see them as “business as usual.” These two trends will come together over the next 1-3 years, and in the end more “advanced” applications such as scanning to ECM systems will be as scan-to-email is today.
Roger Ellefson
Manager, Office Solutions Marketing
Xerox