http://www.capsystech.com/static.asp?path=5646

Monday, March 11, 2013

Document Scanners, MFPs, and Mobile Phones

Mobile capture is a hot topic. A couple years ago, Harvey Spencer Associates projected a 50% CAGR for the mobile capture software market through 2015 - at which time it would reach $1.5 billion. Last time, I talked with Harvey, he wasn't backing off that figure. Capture market leader Kofax, whose Transform conference I am currently attending in San Diego, has also been bullish on capture opportunities - and probably with good reason. If you remember, it was by far the hottest topic at last year's event. And I'm looking forward to the breakout session on "Creative Uses of Mobile Capture."

But this column is not being written to argue whether or not mobile capture will take off, let's just assume it does - even with some help from oddball products like the Scandock. The question is will it cut down on the sales of document scanners? I think the answer is no, as most people will consider any mobile capture being done as additive to the batch scanning that is done with document scanners. After all, not many people are going to do batch scanning with a smartphone, which is typically what you do with a document scanner. Of course, I guess mobile capture could potentially reduce the size of the batches that need to be scanned.

However, it's my opinion that MFPs are the hardware that is in real danger with the continuing penetration of smartphones and tablets. Tablets especially are great devices for viewing documents - meaning you don't have to print the docs - which directly impacts the MFP space (and potentially hurts the document scanning space as well but less directly- because there still has to be governance built around any business documents viewed with anything, which is why multi-channel capture becomes so important to ISVs and VARs going forward).

What prompted this post was a conversation I had last week with someone who was doing ad hoc scanning on their MFP and couldn't figure out why MFPs just weren't going to replace document scanners. I tried to explain that this was a conversation we'd been having for years...but he was not convinced. And that got me thinking about smartphones and why they wouldn't replace scanners either...but MFPs.

Let me just draw one picture for you. In today's computing market, people want to do more with less. You want 100 apps on your smartphone, not 100 computing devices. And for the past 10 years, document scanners have done nothing but pack more functionality into a smaller footprint. Document scanners are sleeker, simpler to use, and higher quality than they ever were before. Can the same really be said about MFPs? I don't know the MFP market as well, but I've certainly seen a few devices in recent years that looked a lot like Frankenstein's monster due to their having so many add-ons and moving parts and pieces.

The bottom line are living in an increasingly digital world, and document scanners have always been about promoting that digitization. In contrast MFPs are still pushing printing as the primary driver. And, although they do a great job at printing, it's a dying market. Lexmark has come to this realization and that is why it has invested so heavily in software - led by its investment in long-time imaging leader Perceptive Software.

No, MFPs will never replace dedicated document scanners - but smartphones/tablets could replace MFPs.







8 comments:

Unknown said...

We provide the services of document scanning and converting with their security for life time. We also provide the services for different types of documents like software and hardware etc.
Document Imaging Services

Mike Spang said...

Ralph you are right about the conversation concerning about MFP versus dedicated scanners. I was on the panel discussion you hosted at the Harvey Spencer Document Capture Conference in 2004! I think you are right about the continued need for dedicated document scanners. MFPs have improved document transport and software integration, but for many applications are the best solution. I am not as strong an advocate of the tablet replacing the need for print over the next few years (...maybe you are leading edge here!) For example the vendors I spoke to last week at HIMSS are not currently seeing a decrease in print and document scanning volumes.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
John Menth said...

So, are you saying it may be possible to scan a document with your mobile or smartphone? Can it cnvert it to a doc format of some kind?
Cause that is something that could benefit me quite alot.
Thanx

DIReditor said...

Most available apps will not format as Word - but you can certainly extract through OCR that you can paste into Word files.

Anonymous said...

We provide the services of document scanning and converting with their security for some time but I think you are providing the services for life time if yes so post other details here which is also related to that.

New York Best Scanning Services

Anonymous said...

Hey, nice site you have here! Keep up the excellent work!






Document Scanning

Voyance sérieuse et gratuite said...

I really love this post I will visit again to read your post in a very short time and I hope you will make more posts like this.