Scanners are not a luxury for businesses, they are an important tool. These days, document scanners are just as much of a must-have item of business equipment as a computer and printer are. They can increase efficiency, cut down on the expenses involved with creating and storing paper documents, and make doing business easier. Choosing the right document scanners for your business greatly depends on what kind of scanning your business does most and in what volume. For heavy duty scanning, high volume scanners are available. Don’t scan much? Renting a scanner may be a good solution. Scanner rentals are also ideal for companies that don’t want the hassle of repairing or maintaining equipment-rental companies will take care of that for you. Space at a premium? Investing in a multifunction device that combines a scanner, printer, copier and perhaps even a fax machine, may be the perfect solution for you.

For everyday scanning, a simple flatbed scanner may do the trick. These scanners are able to accept a wide variety of documents from legal-size papers down to business cards. Many models expand to allow the scanning of pages from thick bound volumes and most scan photos and images beautifully as well. If your company only scans a couple of thousand documents a day a flatbed will work well for you, but if you need to scan much more than that, a high volume scanner is a much better solution.

Network attached scanners make things even easier, allowing everyone on your network to scan and share documents with each other easily. They don’t need to be attached to a PC to operate and offer the ability to scan to a designated network storage area.

While you’re trying to decide what scanner solution is best for your company you may be wondering how a scanner works. A document scanner works much like a copy machine. Both are able to copy an image or document and reproduce it. While a copier reproduces that image on paper, a scanner reproduces the images it copies digitally and stores them on a computer. The resulting digital image can be posted on a website, emailed, or edited and printed out on paper.

There are several types of scanners including the flatbed and multifunction units already mentioned. There are also sheet fed scanners, which have more limited abilities, and small portable business card scanners. All scanners have a scan head and a glass plate the document lies against as it’s being scanned. It’s extremely important to keep the glass as clean as possible because any dust, dirt or scratches on it will be replicated on your documents and images. Most scanners use special software and often come with additional graphics software for editing and enhancing images and OCR software for scanning documents. Scanned documents are saved as PDF files to preserve their original appearance and formatting.

To help you choose the best scanning solution, consult a document imaging service. They can assist you in making the right decision for your company.

Author Bio: Inception Tech is a document imaging company that offers document scanning solutions to fit any budget. Find data capture systems and more by visiting http://www.inceptiontech.com/ today.

Category: Computers and Technology
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