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June 2000
High-Speed Payoff With Scanners
By Maria Medina
While many organizations would like to move toward purely digital transactions, paper
remains. For some, handling the myriad documents such as tax forms, bills, insurance claims and
account applications still means hand sorting, manual data entry and labor-intensive filing of boxes
full of paper records. However, nearly perfected imaging technologies now let companies automate big
volumes of paper with minimal production cost.
Users of high-speed scanners and production-image capture systems say the technology has reduced
paper- handling costs, speeded up workflows and simplified data entry and storage. While the cost of
some ultra high-speed scanners and capture solutions might shock some — with prices reaching
upward of $350,000 — users say they’ve realized a return on investment within one year.
High-speed scanner manufacturers continue to develop and improve their equipment. Over the last year,
several vendors have added image enhancement capabilities to their high-speed product lines. For
example, Kodak (www.kodak.com) has integrated
Perfect Page technology for better image capture into
the new high-speed 7520 and 9520 series. Perfect Page is an image enhancement technology that starts
with advanced CCD arrays that capture the image. It continues with software that performs contour
tracing around each document for more accurate deskew and ultimately, better optical character
recognition.
Fujitsu upgraded its built-in image processing software, ScanRight IPC3D. It’s included with
Fujitsu’s newest high-end scanner, the M4099D, which scans 90 pages per minute (ppm) or 180
images per minute duplex (ipm) at 200 dpi (bitonal scanning in portrait orientation). The upgraded
ScanRight has five prescan settings that let you adjust the scanner for five categories of image
types: Normal Background, Background/Foreground, Clean-up Noise, Forms and Magazine. The categories
are like job profiles, except you don’t need a technician to adjust and save the settings.
Instead, Fujitsu has done it for you. The M4099D is not only fast, it’s inexpensive — with a
low price point of $20,995. Most experts agree that color will be the next big thing in high-speed
capture. Currently two scanners in the 90-page- per-minute-plus range produce color images —
BancTec’s S Series, which runs 140 pages per minute (ppm), and IBML’s ImageTrac, which runs
110 ppm in color. Soon to join this category is IBML’s coming FasTrac, which will run 220 ppm in
color, grayscale and bitonal. Although color images are closest to the original, many users are
content to capture the best bitonal image they can get.
OCR Saves Taxpayers $11.4 Million
Ten years ago, the U.S. Census budget was $2.6 billion. This year, because of inflation, an estimated
26 million additional households and a bigger need to advertise the Census project, the budget
increased to $6.2 billion. While scanning and data extraction represent only a fraction of this total
budget, Dick Taylor, senior systems architect at Census integrator Lockheed Martin, says the latest
technologies helped the federal government realize an $11.4 million savings in labor costs. These
savings are linked to the adoption of optical character recognition (OCR) technology. Though Census
forms were scanned back in 1990, operators put the images on microfilm and keyed in the data manually.
While they used mark recognition, there was no OCR involved. Census 2000 will need 80 percent fewer
keyers, because the work will be done mainly with OCR technology. Taylor says this translates into the
need for thousands of fewer temporary employees to process the 1.5 billion Census form pages set to be
captured this year.
The big concern when integrating the new scanners and OCR technology was accuracy. Keyers have a 95
percent accuracy rate, according to Taylor. The goal for the new system was a higher 98 percent
capture accuracy rate. So far, the new system’s accuracy is running at a high of 99.3 percent.
Since 1790, when the first U.S. Census was taken, the government had relied on in-house technology to
process the forms.
“This is the first time in history that the Census was contracted to a company,” says
Taylor. “The government acknowledged the fact that the imaging business had advanced and that
they could take advantage of what was out there.” Taylor says all the technology used for the
2000 Census was already commercially available.
Unlike most users, Taylor says return on investment was not a big factor when choosing the scanners.
Instead, his main criteria were image quality, throughput, effective speed and ease of use. At these
super speeds, users want to be able to recover from a jam quickly and easily to keep effective speed
(vs. scanning speed) high.
“We had to make [the production environment] easy to use, because the scanners are being run by
temps working for 100 days,” says Taylor. In November 1999, the company integrated 152 Kodak
9500Ds at four sites nationwide for the project. There is one permanent site in Kentucky. The other
three, in Maryland, Arizona and California, are temporary sites. The 9500D series is Kodak’s
highest-end floor model scanner. It has recently been replaced by the 9520 series that can scan 120
ppm (simplex) at 200 dpi.
Along with the scanner, Lockheed Martin integrated 24 scanning utilities for OCR, keying, quality
assessment and workflow. It divided the systems among the four sites, with as many as 45 units at one
site. Each scanner processes an estimated 57,000 pages per day.
California Tackles 200,000 Docs Per Day
A newly reengineered system for California’s Franchise Tax Board, which processes the
state’s income tax returns, promises substantial labor savings within the next few years. The
board’s data processing manager, Carol E. Ford, says the board is predicting a 10 to 1 reduction
in operators. The labor savings will cover the cost of the new system within five years; meanwhile the
tax board is gaining substantially improved service.
During its peak season, in April, the board processes 200,000 mixed documents per day, including tax
returns, payment coupons and checks. It wanted a high-speed scanner to support the new cashiering
system it was purchasing after getting state approval for $9 million in February 1999.
The new system had to be flexible so that it could handle mixed document types and mixed paper
weights. It had to be fast for peak processing, and it had to be the right price. The idea was to
capture and process the data during production so checks could be sent straight to the bank.
The board purchased three 9000Ts from Scan Optics (www.scanoptics.com). The 9000T can recognize hand
print, machine print and marks within the hardware. Hand print is recognized at 7,500 characters per
second (cps); machine print at 10,000 cps. The 9000T can run at 200 ppm at 200 dpi resolution. Ford
says automation with the 9000T has made workflow easier. ScanGen software from ScanOptics can read
document IDs and MICR lines and automatically identify each document. Employees no longer have to sort
documents, locate documents by number or update taxpayers’ balances manually with a calculator.
The system has also stepped up service. The board’s employees can now easily download taxpayer
files and tax returns using an internally operated system. Before the system was installed, employees
checking data on files and performing audit checks would have to go to the information storage center
to get printouts. Now employees can download a tax return using their PC.
Service Bureau Shifts From Manual Entry to OCR
For users like Kathleen Nessbaum, president of Data Specialists, investing in a high-speed scanner
brings down paper-handling costs. With a high-speed scanner, her company can handle the same volume in
less time and reduce operator costs. And by integrating OCR and ICR into production, Data Specialists
can now offer more competitive prices.
“We are an onshore data-entry company operating in a global economy, and we are constantly
feeling the pressure to be better, faster and cheaper,” says Nessbaum. Located in Denton, TX,
Data Specialists is a service bureau with $1 million in revenue and 50 employees. Nessbaum says that
while analyzing its business processes, the company realized it hadn’t been using the right
technology. The company integrated OCR and ICR software into its new imaging environment to lessen the
manual data entry load. As a result, Data Specialists can now handle larger-scale projects.
If Data Specialists had to manually key in all the data in large-volume projects, clients would have
to pay almost double the current rate to cover the labor costs. “[The investment] has put us
in a competitive mix where we would once never have been considered,” says Nessbaum.
In January, the company invested in the ImageTrac high-speed scanner from IBML (www.ibml.com). The
ImageTrac is a 110-ppm standalone workhorse that can capture 220 images per minute in duplex at 200
dpi. It has a touch screen and an open track vacuum paper transport. It is the predecessor to
IBML’s 220 ppm FasTrac, which will start shipping later this year. Both scanners deliver color,
grayscale and bitonal images.
Data Specialists spent about $190,000 on the ImageTrac, separate scanning utilities and storage
devices, and it expects to see a return within the year.
One of the main concerns when choosing the production scanner was ease of use. “We don’t
have a lot of highly trained technicians on board,” says Nessbaum, “we can’t afford
it.”
The company was also looking for reliability and durability. With the ImageTrac, it did not have to
hand-sort or route documents — the scanner and integrated SofTrac software handled
that. Nessbaum says she likes the diagnostic capabilities and statistics the software provides. The
SofTrac details how many documents you’ve processed per hour, notifies you of a jam, and tells
you where the jam is and how to extract the document.
“It has really made us work more efficiently, without affecting quality,” Nessbaum explains.
“It drives down costs, making us more competitive.”
Consultant Takes On Mixed Documents
“Did you know that American Express has 14 different bill designs,” asks Edward Owens,
founder of Altertek, an image conversion company based in Louisville, CO. With more than 25 years
experience in data processing, Owens, a member of AIIM’s Emerging Technologies Advisory Group
(EMTAG), has seen a greater variety of documents than most people are likely to encounter in a
lifetime.
Owens helps companies nationwide develop imaging systems to handle their paper problems. His specialty
is high-volume environments, and his client list includes government agencies, service bureaus and
remittance-processing organizations.
Though he has worked with a range of scanners, including Fujitsu, Panasonic and Kodak, Owens says he
has settled on the S220 from BancTec (www.banctec.com) for most high-volume applications, particularly
if mixed documents are involved. “If the bill or paper type is consistent, then the Kodak 9000
series is a good choice,” Owens says. “If there’s a variety of document thicknesses and
sizes, then I recommend the S220. The feeder does a great job of eliminating doublefeeds, which is
usually the problem you encounter with mixed documents.”
Aside from robust paper handling and a speed of 170 ppm/340 ipm, the S220 offers optional color and
grayscale scanning. It’s priced from $35,000 to $105,000; add-ons include a barcode reader, a
postscan imprinter and a four-pocket stacker.
Owens says he appreciates the ease of setting up job profiles with BancTec’s integrated
SpeedFirst software. The software helps you cope with a range of background colors, patterns and print
types. Once job profiles are created in the software, all the operator has to do is load the documents
and pick the right profile on the touch-screen control panel. The S220 has a straight paper path
from the automatic document feeder to the endorser and on to the paper tray. This means documents
don’t wrap around rollers, which Owens says improves paper handling and keeps things like sticky
notes from disrupting scanning (IBML and Scan Optics are among the other manufacturers that use a
straight paper path). Although only a couple of Owen’s customers have implemented color
scanning, he says forward-thinking customers definitely want the option of being able to scan in
color.
Nine Pre-Purchase Questions for High-Speed Scanner Buyers
When integrating a high-speed scanner into your imaging environment, Imaging Consultant Ed Owens of
Altertek in Louisville, CO, recommends asking the following questions.
1. Speed: What is the average number of pages you scan each day? Does the scanner’s duty cycle meet
your requirements? Loaded costs for scanner operators can be $26 per hour or more, so don’t think
you’ll save money using multiple midrange scanners.
2. Software: What kind of image processing is the scanner capable of? For example, can it perform
thresholding, deskewing, dynamic image enhancement, edge-enhancement?
3. Endorser: Is it postscan or prescan? If the endorsement has to be on the image, as in a litigation
support environment, then you have to use a prescan endorser. If it’s used only to track
documents, a postscan endorser will suffice.
4. Paper Path: Is it U-Shaped or is it a straight paper path? Owens prefers a straight paper path,
because documents don’t have to wrap around rollers.
5. Paper Tray/Pockets/Sorters: Do you need to sort documents? A good paper tray will stack paper neatly
so scanned pages don’t jam up or get in the way. If you handle mixed documents and need to
separate checks from remittance forms, for example, then you’ll want the option of adding sorters
and pockets so you don’t have to do this manually.
6. Ease of Use: How easy is it for operators to handle high-volume production? How accessible is the
paper path so you can recover from a paper jam? Does the scanner tell you where the jam is and how to
fix it?
7. Training: How long does it take to train operators? Are the scanner and its software intuitive
enough to learn in a day or so?
8. Maintenance: How easy is it to maintain the scanner? What do you have to clean, which transport
components are user replaceable and how much do they cost?
9. Lamps: How often do they have to be replaced? How much do they cost? Are there different color bulbs
that can be easily exchanged for color dropout? All of these considerations add up, so look beyond
the purchase price to determine the total cost of ownership over the long haul. A scanner that has a
higher purchase price but costs less to operate, both in terms of maintenance and labor, may be a
better deal in the long run.
—Maria Medina
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