What is Multi-Brand Cloud Scanning? Untangling the Scan Process

Are you curious about cloud-enabled digital scanning services? Modern scanning software boosts in-office automation and radically improves organizations’ productivity. There was a time when scanning documents required a bunch of manual data entry. Thankfully, enhancements in digital scanning mean that time is at an end.

Features like OCR technology, scan-to-email, and cloud based document storage are the newest tools to help uplift organizations’ document management structure. Multi-brand scanning simplifies document workflow management for IT teams. This allows them to focus on their mission-critical tasks.

This is just one of the many ways cloud solutions tackle bigger outcomes and promote business growth. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For now, let’s talk automated scan workflows and scanning in general.

Multi-brand cloud scanning are solutions that are brand-agnostic and cloud-powered. Agnostic software gives businesses the ability to choose multiple device brands and achieve consistent user experiences. These solutions drive scan productivity and enable digital collaboration.

Read on to learn how cloud-first, multi-brand scanning solutions can help your business become more productive and improve operational efficiency.

What is Multi-Brand Scanning?

Before we begin dismantling the scan process, let’s focus on what multi-brand scanning actually is. Modern offices will often use devices from various manufacturers, including print and scan solution providers. Companies will even use printers from two different manufacturers in separate branch offices as their standard (or default) brands.

This hardware ecosystem requires a digital scanning service that can bridge the gap with ease. Brand-agnostic scanning offers such a solution. It handles consistent document capture across multiple vendors’ devices, as well as online storage and document workflow.

Say Goodbye to Tedious Scanning with OCR Technology

Digital file sharing wasn’t always convenient. Before the advent of Optical Character Recognition (OCR), converting scanned paper documents into computer files was a time-consuming manual process. The repetitive nature of the task meant the employee working on it could easily get fatigued.

Luckily, OCR technology gives your organization a safety net. The software converts scanned images of documents into computer-friendly digital format files that other word-processing software can analyze. This process takes place over four stages:

• Image Acquisition: The OCR software converts a scanned image into binary data.

• Preprocessing: The image is cleaned up, realigned, and enhanced to make it easier for the OCR software to read.

• Text Recognition: OCR software identifies alphanumeric characters by one of two processes, pattern matching or feature extraction.

• Postprocessing: The OCR software converts the recognized text into a computer file, ready for analysis or review.
    

Our document capture capabilities within SAFEQ on-prem and Cloud use OCR technology to render extracted text in formats like Microsoft Word, PDF, or HTML. This OCR engine also supports over 200 languages, making it a scanning powerhouse.

Make Scanning to Email and Cloud a Breeze

Document digitization software like SAFEQ Cloud has re-imagined how companies store information. Despite the vast digitization of most modes of communication, document management has continued to lag with paper records.

Transitioning to a sustainable, future-proof method of the otherwise physical document handling process has been a critical step in modernizing offices worldwide. With hyper digitization and scan-to-email and cloud repositories integration features, we can rethink how data is stored and analyzed.

Digital scanning doesn’t automatically imply a paper-free workplace. In fact, a report titled “Global Print 2025 Study” by the research firm Quocirca found that 64% of the companies surveyed still expect printing to be an essential part of their day-to-day operations by 2025.

While office work and paper printing don’t seem to be heading for a break-up anytime soon, the same study also noted that a majority of its subjects were looking for sustainable ways to optimize their print infrastructure. A multi-brand cloud scanning solution can solve that.

Both the scan-to-email and cloud repository features allow organizations to reduce their reliance on paper without compromising data management or collaborations.

Scan to Email

Before print management software, scanning documents on a multifunctional device (MFD) was only the start of the document-handling process. Now, companies can complete the entire process in one move thanks to the scan-and-send document to email functionality.

This allows you to send your document to a specific email instantly. Users can send canned documents directly to their intended recipient, eliminating the need for a drawn-out process of scanning, data entry, uploading attachments, and manually sending emails.

Scan to Cloud

Misplaced documents can leave gaping holes in your organization’s knowledge system. With the help of digital cloud repositories such as OneDrive, Google Drive, or SharePoint Online, you won’t have to worry about a misplaced document again. Multi-brand scanning lets you send scanned documents straight to these cloud repositories, where they can be securely stored and easily accessed whenever you or your colleagues need them.

By converting your physical documents into cloud documents in cloud document online storage, you reduce the risk of information getting lost or ending up in the wrong hands. 

Supercharge Productivity with Advanced Metadata Searchability

Y Soft’s printing solutions give you more than just document digitization software; That’s because they are a comprehensive document management system. Advanced metadata searchability allows you to unlock an efficient one-touch workflow that streamlines searchability and helps you organize files better.

Adding metadata tags to scanned cloud documents to make them easier to search for essentially becomes a productivity and efficiency hack.

SAFEQ combines the two functionalities of metadata searchability and cloud document storage to give you unprecedented control over how you navigate your document management systems. Some benefits of having access to metadata include: 

• Improved Searchability 
  Automated metadata tagging makes it easy to discover files within your database. You won't have to rifle through storage cabinets in search of an old agreement.
  
  
• Enhanced Organization 
  The ability to add metadata to scanned files makes categorizing them a whole lot simpler.
  
  

• Improved Collaboration 
  Metadata searchability allows every employee to navigate the knowledge database with ease. Collaboration becomes a much more streamlined activity with no information falling through the gaps.
  
  

• Better Compliance 
  Using metadata for document management gives you a bird’s eye view of the entire knowledge infrastructure. This makes it easier to ensure that all files comply with regulatory requirements.

FAQs on Multi-Brand ScanninG

Q1) What is document digitization?

Document digitization is the process of converting paper documents into digital files, most commonly through scanning (using document digitization software). The advantage of digital documents over paper is that they are easily managed, safely stored, and retrieved when necessary—all without taking up any physical office space.

Besides saving space, other digitization transformation benefits include boosting productivity, promoting collaboration, and automating document processing.

Q2) What are the three steps of scanning? 

Scanning with document digitization software like SAFEQ is a three-step process. The three steps of the process are:

• Conversion: Where paper documents are converted to digital files

• Capture: Where information is extracted from the digital file

• Storage: Where digital files are uploaded into a server, hard drive, or the cloud
   

Today, organizations can automate the digital scanning workflow with modern document-handling solutions. The solutions execute the entire three-step process without human intervention while lowering processing costs.

Final Points

As the modern workplace continues to evolve in parallel with the digital world, multi-brand cloud scanning will become even more prominent.

With advanced scanning technology like OCR recognition, metadata searchability, drive scan, and so much more, modern document management solutions make it easier than ever to optimize the process of storing documents while meeting compliance standards.

Want to learn more about the solutions that help drive scan digitization transformation? Check out SAFEQ’s cloud features to learn how you can transform your document workflows today and let go of (i.e., automate) manual IT work and embrace hyper digitization.