CaseStudy

From Document Manager Magazine Vol 18 No 03 - June 2010

Scanning services provider documentscanning.net needed to become more competitive: scanning higher volumes in shorter timescales, while driving down their costs per scan. Technology from ibml has helped them achieve their goal

Allan Webb Ltd has been providing technical and documentation services to blue chip clients for 50 years. The company's document management division, documentscanning.net, provides a range of bulk document scanning, document conversion and data capture services to clients throughout the UK. With more than 100 employees and a turnover in excess of £4 million, the business is an established leader in the UK bureau sector.

In search of speed
Throughout the 1990s documentscanning.net was heavily involved in scanning projects for the Ministry of Defence. As the company moved into the 21st Century its commercial business grew, and by 2007 the need for high volume scanning was apparent. documentscanning.net was operating a mix of Kodak i620 and 3590 scanners; this solution was ideally suited to relatively small projects, but the amount of pre-preparation work required to service high volume contracts was hindering productivity. In order to bid for larger projects documentscanning.net had to run three round-the-clock scanning shifts, and the cost-per-scan began to rise.
documentscanning.net's Managing Director John Hardcastle and IT Director Gareth Jones drove the initiative to upgrade the bureau's scanning capability. "As a business we needed to become more competitive and better-placed to bid for large contracts," comments Jones. "We needed to scan higher volumes in a shorter timescale, and drive down our cost-per-scan. We also needed to reduce the amount of pre-preparation required to support these contracts."

Testing times

The management team was familiar with a variety of high volume scanning solutions, having monitored trends in the market as reported in the UK trade press over many years. A number of products were trialled, but they fell short of documentscanning.net's throughput requirements. Those that came close failed to deliver a measurable increase in processing speed.

In June 2008 Jones and Hardcastle visited the AIIM Roadshow. They arrived, with documents in hand, intent on conducting live tests using their own samples to judge the suitability of competing solutions side-by-side. A number of high volume scanning solutions were on display, including ibml's ImageTrac high volume colour scanning solution. The ImageTrac fed all of their documents straight through, with no jams or interruptions and with very little preparation.
Other contenders didn't fare so well, says Jones: "The ImageTrac is a processing powerhouse. We were impressed by its speed and versatility and its potential to expand and diversify our business. We heard several excuses from other providers to explain why they were unable to feed our documents effectively, but we're only interested in bottom line results and they failed to deliver."

Unrivalled support

Another key factor was that ibml's solution was recommended by Kodak, with whom documentscanning.net has a strong, long established relationship. Kodak is a reseller for ibml throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and provides international support for the ImageTrac Scanning Platform. "We have a lot of respect for Kodak, its engineers and their support, and the fact that the ibml solution is sold and supported by them is a big bonus," explained Gareth Jones.
The decision to purchase an ImageTrac 3ex was made; the unit was ordered and installed in June 2009. "The ImageTrac will help documentscanning.net to capture millions of colour images for all kinds of customers. Its very high speed, built-in intelligence and excellent image quality has enabled us to re-deploy staff from routine pre-preparation to work on value-added projects."

Rapid payback

The ImageTrac paid for itself almost immediately, when documentscanning.net secured a very large contract that would have taken much longer and been more costly to service using the previous Kodak solution. The Kodak scanners are far from redundant, however; they remain alongside the ImageTrac, and are used for smaller, intricate jobs. The main benefits of the ImageTrac are clear:

=  Volume of documents processed has doubled
=  Shifts has reduced from 3 per day (and night) to 1 per day (07.00hrs to 17.00hrs)
=  Number of operators per shift has reduced from 4 to 1
=  Support engineer visits are down from 4 per month to 4 per year
=  More competitive bids for large contracts; shorter timescales, lower cost-per-scan
=  Significant reduction in pre-preparation time and related manpower
=  In-line image processing and indexing increases productivity and eliminates post-scan manual processes
=  Business growth through diversification into higher volume, value-added projects

Best of both worlds

Since installing the ImageTrac documentscanning.net hasn't looked back. Having reviewed the market for high volume scanners in depth, the company is confident it has the best of both worlds.

According to Gareth Jones: "Our business is flourishing; we're using the industry's most reliable, leading-edge intelligent scanning technology combined with the most trustworthy, dependable support you could hope for. The fact that we don't see a support engineer for three months at a time is pretty incredible. It speaks volumes for the reliability of the ImageTrac and the quality of the overall solution."

More info: www.ibml.com

CaseStudy