Raul Cuevas and Devlon Huff discuss Crisp Imaging's scanning/archiving business.
By Ed Avis
A dozen IRgA members met in Newport Beach, California on April 11-12 to learn about two key markets: Scanning/Document Management and Color Graphics. (Click here to see a photo gallery from Day One of the workshop.)
Panelists for the scanning/EDM discussion included Devlon Huff and Raul Cuevas from Crisp Imaging; Kevin Ohea from Academy Reprographics; and Doyle Cryer from National/AZON. Cryer, Huff and Cuevas also were on the panel for the color graphics discussion, and they were joined by Joe Cushing from Cushing in Chicago.
Devlon Huff, Raul Cuevas, Kevin Ohea and Doyle Cryer were the panelists for the scanning/EDM discussion
The event kicked off on April 11 with a visit to Crisp Imaging’s location in Costa Mesa, where the group learned about that company’s successful scanning, document management, and color graphics businesses (thank you to the Crisp family for hosting the group!).
Here are five things we learned during the event about the scanning/EDM business. (In an upcoming edition of the newsletter, we’ll review five things we learned about the color graphics market):
1) Preparation pays: When Crisp approaches a large scanning job, they do an on-site assessment before quoting a price. They take photos and video of the documents so that they can estimate quantity and condition. And when the write the agreement, they include a clause that says the price may change if they find unexpected issues, such as water damage or many documents with staples.
2) Create a chain of custody: When Crisp scans a job in one of their locations instead of at the customer’s site, they create a written chain of custody from the site to their location and back, so that the client always knows where their documents are during the process. This is especially important for sensitive records, such as personnel files.
3) Learn the rules: School districts, which can be big scanning/archiving customers, have rules about document management, destruction, etc. By learning those rules, the scanning service provider can become a true partner with the school and create an ongoing flow of scanning/EDM work.
4) Follow the money: It’s worthwhile to learn about the funding processes for schools – if you can help the schools access the money that is due to them, you’ll be better positioned to get a scanning project. Schools can be great customers because every year they generate new documents that need to be scanned, the Crisp team pointed out.
5) Consider offering OCR and ICR (intelligent character recognition) services as an add-on to your scanning. ICR is how hand-written notes can be indexed. This is especially important when scanning school projects, where teachers often write progress reports and other documents by hand. It may also be useful when scanning medical records, especially those created before electronic medical records became prevalent.
Stay tuned for a future article with take-aways we learned about color graphics!