Prepress

KODAK i4000 Plus Series Scanners designed for advanced document recognition applications where fast data extraction is key

Friday 21. February 2014 - Interest in Advanced Document Recognition technology including OCR[1] has grown considerably as companies seek to automate key business workflows such as forms and claims management, invoice processing, mail, medical records digitising, along with providing support for powerful data mining applications.

To achieve this quickly and cost effectively, scanning hardware and software must do the ‘heavy lift’ image processing accurately while minimising operator involvement. This improves staff productivity, maximizes efficiency, and most importantly ensures the right data from documents is extracted.
Kodak Alaris announces today the launch of its next generation KODAK i4000 Plus Series Scanners, specifically designed to meet these demanding information processing requirements.
With upgraded CCD[2] cameras and the latest electronics, two scanners complete the range. The KODAK i4200 Plus Scanner is able to scan 100 pages per minute at 200 and 300 dpi in black & white or colour. It has a recommended daily volume of 30,000 pages. The larger capacity, i4600 Plus Scanner, can process 120 pages per minute and up to 50,000 pages every day. Both come with a 500 page adjustable feeder for documents up to DIN-A3 and charts up to 4 meters in length.
Advanced Document Recognition [ADR] combines multiple intelligent recognition technologies, business rules and automatic learning algorithms to determine the document type and where relevant information is located. It then extracts this information, and translates the content into machine-readable form to feed business processes and big data applications. Ultimately ADR provides a cost efficient method to reduce manual data entry and document handling to accelerate business processes and improve data quality.
Hauke Fast, Kodak Alaris’ EAMER product marketing manager for document imaging, explains, “OCR performance at 200 dpi is totally acceptable for human reading, but at 300 dpi you get better accuracy which is key for customers where image detail is required say for fine print or barcode reading. However the impact is the amount of raw data produced doubles. Historically, scanners operating at 300 dpi would therefore slow slightly which we’ve addressed with our new models – performance is the same irrespective of resolution chosen.”
Mike Spang, Vice President Research, Harvey Spencer Associates, a leading information management consultancy, says, “The market for advanced recognition is the fastest growing segment of the capture market. It leverages understanding of documents which requires excellent read results from scanned images. The new i4000 plus Scanner can assist advanced capture applications with higher throughput and image quality at 300dpi as most OCR engines are tuned to have optimum recognition results at this resolution.”
Total cost of ownership reduced through price competitive consumables
In terms of day-to-day use, the new KODAK i4000 Plus Series Scanners are designed to scan up to 500,000 pages per consumable kit which comprises a new feed module, rubber separation rollers, pre-separation pads and replacement tyres.
Fast says, “So, if an organisation is scanning 15,000 pages per day, that’s about 3.5 million per year requiring only one consumable kit priced at €273. Our competition charge up to six times more for consumables to scan the same number of documents. Once you add this up, you’re talking about €6,825 saving on consumables over a typical five year life span if you buy a scanner from Kodak Alaris.”
Managing your scanning assets just got easier
For easy monitoring and maintenance, the new scanners work seamlessly with KODAK Asset Management Software, a solution which allows customers to manage and update these capture peripherals remotely using a central server and web-based administration interface to reduce day to day running costs.
Fast says, “For initial setup, Asset Management Software allows users to register, install and configure devices. The software platform also enables technical staff to remotely troubleshoot scanners in the field such as setting alerts around paper feeding and the use of consumables. The software can also manage driver updates, scanner profile and user settings. It supports multiple administrative login accounts with different levels of privileges for secure operations.”
Features and accessories to make scanning easy
Both KODAK i4000 Plus Series scanners come with a variety of features to enhance productivity, including:
SurePath and controlled stacking automatically adjusts the scanner for a variety of document sizes, lengths and thicknesses, allows switchable straight through paper feeding, aligns stacks in the same order they were inserted, and stops paperwork getting mixed up once scanned so there is less post processing work to do;
Perfect Page technology that automatically adjusts images without user involvement to ensure best quality scans every time, especially with mixed and low contrast documents which are difficult to scan;
Smart Touch functionality to start business processes, scan to various predefined locations, all without the need to even open an application on a PC;
Pricing and availability
To offer more value to customers, pricing for both scanners has been kept the same as the previous i4000 models, with the i4200 Plus costing €10,495 and the i4600 Plus available for €14,695.
On sale today, both scanners come with a one-year warranty which can be upgraded to the Performance Plus suite of service contracts delivered by Kodak Alaris’ own field engineers. These service contracts keep the scanner performing optimally to offer peace of mind for those users where scanning is integral in their electronic workflows.
The KODAK i4000 Plus Series Scanners are compatible with TWAIN, ISIS-based scanning applications and are certified for KOFAX VRS. All current 32 and 64 bit WINDOWS operating systems are supported .