Document conversion has a stinky
reputation of being: (1.) Expensive; (2.)
disruptive; and (3.) difficult to cost-justify.
One of the reasons is that, historically, imaging
is thought of in a very binary way. You
either image, or you don’t. No gray area.
But that mood is changing. What used
to be the final act in a business process—
scan the paper and shred it—is increasingly
at the “front-end” of the process, and is
tied to the ensuing business process...whatever
it might be.
I talked this month with two very thoughtful
representatives of the imaging trade, who
come at the problem from very different perspectives.
And from these chats, I have come
away with two basic beliefs:
1. Imaging ain’t what it used to be; and
2. It probably never was.