A document scanner should be a pretty easy and basic thing to buy, since it’s a commodity. It’s been invented so long ago that it’s practically a few dozen years old and it had time to grow, mature and become efficient and inexpensive. However, things start to shift when you need one that can scan large amounts of documents. And I’m not talking about 1000 documents, I’m talking about 50.000 documents all in different sizes, shapes and types of paper. That can be troublesome. So you go online and when you look at the prices, you’ll be amazed that you’re going to need to pull out at least 1000 dollars from your pocket.
So what are you looking for in a scanner so that you can get good document scanning capability out of it? You’re looking for speed, capacity, monthly volume, page size. Let’s start with speed. 100 pages per minute should do it. Monthly volume. Well, that’s easy, you can do the math on your own. Capacity? 500 sheets will do it. But if it can take more, it’s really cool because you don’t have to always refill it every time. Page size? Well, most of the documents that you are going to scan are going to be A4. Unless you work in a special environment such as a company that does architecture or engineering, you’re probably going to want to go for the A3, since they are cheaper, generally faster, more portable.
But don’t just buy a scanner yet. Think about outsourcing this stuff to companies that do document scanning services. Do you really want to go through all those documents by yourself? This can cost you time and a lot of money. If your employees are doing document scanning, they are not doing their actual work for which they are paid for, which generally means that they are being paid for a high-level work and in reality they are doing low-cost work. That’s why it’s good to outsource document scanning to companies in other countries such as Romania or India.