Scanner Planner

Scanner..scanner..bo..banner, me..my..mo..manner, Scanner!

I have been working on a scanning project for well over a year now. Here is the deal. The area I work in generates a huge volume of paperwork. Why? Well, U.S. Customs regulations state that you must keep files of all your import shipments for five years. You would be surprised at the number of documents just one import shipment generates.

Ok, so we have a lot of paper and a lot of filing cabinets. What to do? Scan the bad boys into an electronic format, of course! Sounds easy? Yeah, right.

A good high speed scanner (I'm talking between 40 to 60 pages per minute) will run you anywhere from $8,000 up to $20,000 depending. Luckily, we have this very cool Canon Imagerunner copier with integrated high speed scanner, but I am still needing the software to manage the scanned images. I have looked at several different types of software packages and the one I really like is some software called Laserfiche. No, it is not the plastic sheets with pictures on them, if you are wondering.

But, in an effort to keep all options on the table, I drove down to Tyler, Texas to a scanner conference put on by IKON. I was able to see some additional options, but the real cool thing was that they were giving away prizes during the conference. Wouldn't you know that my name was called. I won a very nice polo shirt. And then my name was called again! This time I won a memory flash stick (only 64 MB, but whose counting). I was thinking that life was good. So I went and grabbed a cup of coffee and settled down to listen to the last speech. Wouldn't you know that they haul a few more prizes out. What are the chances that I would win something a third time? Must of been pretty good, because they drew my business card out again. This time I had my choice between a HP color printer or a 4 Megapixel digital camera. I chose the camera.

So, this scanner project is really starting to pay off. Maybe I can drag it out for another year!