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Working practices evolve constantly, but never before has digital technology been more of a driving force behind changes in the ways we work. A growth in employees' agility and mobility has been driven by the popularity of smartphones and tablets, and this trend shows no sign of slowing down with IDC predicting that nearly 1.7 billion 'smart connected devices' will be shipped in 2014. Mobile technology is not limited to our personal lives anymore, as employees have started using the advances in smartphone and tablet technology to connect to their main office systems.

One of the most powerful benefits mobile devices can bring to a business is to help them become more agile thanks to improved information management processes; especially if they're connected to high-speed internet via Wi-Fi and to the cloud. The cloud allows information to be more easily accessible and for people to work collaboratively, even on the move.

While mobile employees have been able to access information stored in the cloud for some time, they haven't been able to add new documents into the business workflows when they are outside of the office. Just imagine a sales person who has signed a new contract at their customer's office. Traditionally, they had to return to the office to scan the contract and process it internally. There could have been a delay of hours or even days in processing the contract; leaving the customer waiting for the product to arrive or the service to begin, and the organisation unable to profit from the new business win.

However, we are now seeing a clear shift in the way documents are processed thanks to sales teams that are equipped with smart mobile devices and various apps supporting document processing on the move. They often use cameras on their mobiles and tablets to capture transactional business documents into central office workflow systems in order to speed-up document processing times. But the image quality results are often poor because of external light interference, shadows, improper page alignment and lack of image processing tools.

Having poor quality document images can negatively impact document processing times, for example when data needs to be extracted using automated recognition software such as OCR. Capturing multiple or double-sided documents using the camera would be cumbersome. This is where we see the increased need for a dedicated mobile scanner - light and portable, while also robust and feature-rich. Sales teams can scan a variety of documents quickly and conveniently directly to their smartphone or tablet devices, from which they can then share them to the cloud and add them into business processes. Many of these mobile scanners have an integrated document feeder and also feature dual image sensors to capture both sides of a document in a single pass.

Paper-based information that can be captured, dynamically validated and corrected against existing systems will be more accurate, helping to prevent unnecessary delays. With this being done in front of the customer any information that is missing or incorrect can be quickly rectified by the sales person; resulting in a more efficient process and better service experience for the customer.

Cloud-based software systems often serve as a conduit to easily connect external processes with on-premise systems. Linking remote branches and employees with the central system network enables the head office or other relevant stakeholders to access and process the information immediately - resulting in shorter processing times, and allowing services to be delivered faster to their customers.

Organisations need to be more agile than ever before to react quickly to changing economic conditions and market trends. Approaching mobile capture and cloud document management solutions in the right way, with employees able to access and send documents to the cloud irrespective of their location, offers the opportunity for businesses to achieve greater profitability and deliver an improved service to their customers.
More info: www.canon.co.uk