Customer Profile
Cleardata is the largest single-site user of scanners from Kodak Alaris in the UK. The scanning bureau, which is one of the biggest in the country, captures over four million images per month on behalf of its nationwide client base. The company provides a range of document scanning services and document management solutions that help organisations go paperless, save valuable office space, automate manual processes and reduce business costs. Accredited to ISO 27001 for information security, Cleardata is also one of the first companies in its industry to be certified to BS 10008:2014, The Evidential Weight and Legal Admissibility Standard.
Preparing for Growth
Achieving steady business growth requires adapting to change to stay ahead of the curve. Cleardata has continued to invest in the latest generation of scanning solutions for production environments, ensuring it is well positioned to anticipate and address the changing needs of its customers.
The business has gone from strength to strength, the company recorded a 22 per cent turnover increase last year and is on track to grow revenues by one-third this year. With two major new contract wins with a combined value of £1 million under its belt, Cleardata made a strategic decision to further boost its production armoury and invest in two new Kodak i5850S Scanners.
"Our rolling investment strategy designed to deliver additional capability and improve productivity has paid dividends over the years,” said Managing Director David Bryce. “In a market where margins are tight and the ability to provide value-add specialist services and capabilities is key, we see our commitment to purchasing the very latest technology as a key differentiator,” he added.
Productivity Gains from High-Speed Bulk Scanning
The productivity-boosting KODAK i5850S Scanner has integrated sorting capabilities that cut handling time dramatically. It delivers patch, length, and multi-feed sorting advantages, separating mixed batches of documents into three output trays, that are configured through simple TWAIN and ISIS driver controls.
"In particular, we like the fact that the new scanner has three output trays to separate different document types and neatly collect patch separator sheets for re-use, delivering excellent post scanning efficiencies, as it removes some of the manual effort," David said.
This high-speed scanning solution boasts a throughput of 420 images (double-sided) or 210 pages per minute, it powers through batches of mixed documents, eliminates time consuming pre- and post-scanning manual paper handling and automatically separates documents by length. David added: "Maximising throughput is important to us and the i5850S perfectly combines speed and output quality in a small footprint. We handle a myriad of different document sizes and this model delivers the flexibility we need, it’s a great fit for our business."
Cleardata’s fleet of document scanners is complemented with Kodak Capture Pro Software, a complete high to low volume batch capture software application offering robust data extraction and delivery to repository and business applications, that’s engineered to work seamlessly with any scanner from Kodak Alaris.
With Kodak Alaris as a technology partner, our business is future-proofed; as a single-vendor bureau, we have optimized our in-house resource via a single user interface, common look and feel and one software solution, making it easy for staff to move from device to device without the requirement to re-train. David Bryce Managing Director
Benefits
Four years ago, Cleardata was the first UK company to take delivery of the Kodak i5000 Series and it was also the first to order two Kodak i5850S Series pre-launch. "We were very excited about this new launch," David explained. "This new model has a number of innovative features to improve efficiency, enhance productivity, and lower operating expenditure."
The business has grown organically and the firm has continued to invest in Kodak Alaris’ technology to deliver the extra capacity required to manage and support this growth trajectory. Fast speeds, reliability, and superb quality ensures that Cleardata can continuously meet customer SLAs.
The new scanning solutions have delivered additional capacity and improved productivity for the firm and the now 15-strong fleet has provided Cleardata with capacity for further growth, the ability to cope with additional new business and accommodate unexpected workload peaks.
A number of unique features including automated sorting during the scanning process which eliminates potential errors and wasted time, the ability to separate multi-feed documents and identify them more easily, to feed documents into the back of the scanner, automatically separate short documents from other pages, and re-use sorted patch sheets, are bringing additional cost and time saving benefits to this slick operation.
"Quality is hugely important to us and we are the only bureau that uses two sets of eyes to check every single image we scan," David explained. "One of the key advantages of the software is that we can see eight images on the screen at any one time, and when you’re processing at speeds of 420 images per minute, that represents a massive time saving."
According to David, the two-pronged time-intensive manual checking process is mission-critical and a key component of its commitment to delivering a consistent quality service. "We are leveraging the benefits of intelligent features such as Perfect Page technology which optimises the image capture process and ensures unparalleled image quality, barcode reading, content-based blank page detection and deletion and Intelligent Document Protection to defend against damaged documents and lost data, to improve our efficiency with no compromise on quality control," he added.
Further expansion is on the cards, Cleardata has just secured a £300,000 grant and plans to build a £1.5 million purpose-built scanning and archiving centre in Deeside, which will see it create 18 new jobs.
"In our business, we need to ensure we have the right hardware, software and manpower in place. With Kodak Alaris as a technology partner, our business is future-proofed; as a single-vendor bureau, we have optimised our in-house resource via a single user interface, common look and feel and one software solution, making it easy for staff to move from device to device without the requirement to re-train," David said in conclusion.
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