Here’s your chance to discover what today’s businesses think about scanning, what solutions they’re looking for and how you can meet their needs – and drive your sales!
PFU (EMEA) Limited recently commissioned an independent research report from Quocirca, the print industry’s leading source of market insight.
The Scanning As An Enabler For Digital Transformation report explores IT employees’ views on scanners and paper use in the workplace. The pandemic proved to be a huge factor in organisations stepping up their digital transformation plans and one of the top drivers is having more agile IT infrastructure to allow for contingencies.
Despite remote and hybrid working pushing businesses towards digital
transformation, a staggering amount of documents are still paper-based.
The report finds that almost half (44%) of businesses consider scanning to be an important part of their digitisation strategy, with 75% of businesses intending to invest further in scanning technology.
The research highlights a stark difference in pre- and post-pandemic digitisation projects. In 2022, just 6% of respondents said they had no clear plan for digitisation, down considerably on the 35% with no plan when PFU EMEA surveyed the market in March 2020. Today, 68% even have budgeted plans for digitisation projects, citing the pressure of increasing customer experience demands and market uncertainties, which require more sophisticated and scalable IT infrastructures. This suggests that COVID was a huge factor in the shift towards organisations stepping up their digital transformation plans.
Another change are the different reasons given for digital transformation. Pre-pandemic, in the Fujitsu Image Scanners Organisational Intelligence Research Report 2020 the top drivers included efficiency and profitability. In 2022, the number one reason (53%) was having a more agile and scalable IT infrastructure to allow for contingencies. This is reflected in the fact that 36% think digitised data is easier to deal with, 30% recognise it as being easier to share, and 30% say it simplifies processes.
When it comers to their daily scanning operations, 77% of all organisations now scan all, or the majority of, paperwork directly into business processes, with speed, integration into enterprise systems (both 45%0 and image quality (44%) seen as among the most important capabilities of a scanning solution. On the flip side, the most disappointing aspect of respondents” existing scanning solutions is time wasted due to misfeeds and paper jams (33%). In fact, the four greatest negative impacts all arise from interruptions to scanning – such as having to rescan for various reasons – or unexpected downtime (a great opportunity to upgrade your customer’s scanning devices).
“Many organisations still rely on paper to conduct their day-to-day business, meaning that scanning has become a key foundational step towards digitisation, especially post-COVID. Using the right tools to digitise documents can help organisations better optimise their business workflows, enabling them to keep in line with company-wide digital transformation goals by managing paper coming into the business,” comments Louella Fernandes, Director at Quocirca.
Hiroaki Kashiwagi, President & CEO at PFU (EMEA) Limited, adds: “Despite the explosion of digital transformation, paper still plays a huge part in businesses today, with a large amount still coming through the doors from external suppliers and customers. This means that scanners play a crucial role in converting that information into a convenient, usable, accessible format – so there continues be a place for scanners in any business transition journey. However, the systemic impact of poor user experience on expected ROI makes it more important than ever to choose the right feature set, to make a scanning solution fit for end users’ purposes.”
For a copy of the full report or to view a webinar/podcast and download a variety of assets such as social media content and an infographic, visit the PFU EMEA Partner portal –
