Statewide Court System Distributed Scanning

Situation
To comply with government mandates, most courts across a large U.S. state were required to move to a state-administered digital document management system.

Objectives
Find the scanners and software that offer the most reliable, productive performance and integrate smoothly with the state’s capture interface and custom image archive.

Solution
After evaluating scanners from various manufacturers, the state purchased more and more scanners from Kodak Alaris each year for courts to use throughout the state. As court needs have changed and scanner capabilities have grown, the state has replaced older scanners with next generation models from Kodak Alaris.

Results
Great reviews from extremely satisfied customers due to excellent image quality, speed, and durability. Ongoing productivity assured with their next-business-day scanner replacement warranty. All these factors have led to additional scanner purchases each year.

From Paper to Digital

It began in one county near a major city in the early 2000s: the idea to transition from paper-based processes to a digital document management system for their court records and transactions. First, that one county purchased a high-volume Kodak Scanner to provide centralized document capture. Soon they were saving time and money and operating more efficiently. Word spread about document capture’s advantages and the productivity and reliability of scanners from Kodak Alaris.

Before long, staff members from other counties came to see the document scanning operation and learn what the buzz was all about. Even one of the state’s technology gurus was impressed. He, too, became a convert and advocate for digital conversion and scanners from Kodak Alaris.

Year after year, more and more counties throughout the state created digital solutions for their courts. Every kind of court: criminal, family, appellate, county, civil and others. They purchased a lot of scanners from Kodak Alaris, and now from Kodak Alaris business. “Because this is a government initiative, they always want the best product for the price,” says the president of one reseller organization who deals with many state and county government entities. “They won’t install anything unless they’ve tested it at the capital and are satisfied with performance and value.” Their satisfaction shows:  statewide scanner purchases now number in the thousands. “If I was to talk about the bottom-line reasons why they go with Kodak Alaris, I’d say these scanners keep working, don’t break down, and they are plug’n’play with the systems and software already in place,” the reseller notes.

There are many other reasons that scanners from Alaris are favored by administrators and operators, including –

• Onboard controls and image processing built into the scanner, so there’s no drag on the host PCs
• Smart Touch functionality that delivers one-touch simplicity and eliminates complicated multi-step scanning 
• Exceptional image quality achieved automatically, thanks to Perfect Page technology 
• Deskewing and despeckling on the fly
• Smooth paper transports with fewer jams
• Ability to feed batches of mixed sizes and weights continuously without interruptions

A Warranty That Ensures Ongoing Productivity

Peace of mind and uninterrupted performance is important to any organization, but critical in court systems where the wheels of justice must keep turning. The AUR (Advanced Unit Replacement) warranty from Alaris delivers this assurance. AUR gives each county access to the highest levels of expert support, including remote connectivity, to quickly resolve many scanner issues. If a problem can’t be resolved promptly, a replacement scanner is shipped to the court with arrival scheduled for the next business day. “In my experience with multiple counties, these customers have only used AUR a couple times,” the reseller says. “It’s a testament to the reliability of these scanners, a big reason why Kodak Alaris is regarded so highly, and why there is now an Kodak S2070 Scanner in the vast majority of courthouses in the state.”

Goodbye Paper, Hello Peace of Mind

Along with added peace-of-mind, security, and cost savings, digital access makes all images available without the need to send, store, and retrieve paper documents from offsite storage. And it’s proving to be a huge benefit. In one instance, a paper repository facility caught fire and many boxes of documents were lost forever. Now, through secure backup and redundancy, this type of liability and associated costs are eliminated. To reap the full benefits of digital conversion, many counties are also scanning their legacy documents as time permits.

The state established a centralized archive solution for use by all courts and developed a custom scanning interface using a TWAIN driver to capture all documentation related to court cases. Some documents are also scanned to email and shared drives.

Over the past several years large-volume purchases of scanners from Kodak Alaris by court systems in the state have included:

• Ongoing upgrades via purchase of new models to add more capabilities and speed – such as replacement of i1400 Series Scanners with i2000 Series Scanners, followed by replacement of those with Kodak S2070 Scanners.
• Kodak i4250 Scanners
• Hundreds of Kodak i2820 Scanners

Making the Case For Kodak Alaris

The verdict is in: scanners and service from Kodak Alaris are a key part of a digital document management system for this state’s court system. Each year state administrators evaluate needs and test new scanner models. And each year more scanners from Kodak Alaris wind up being part of a very productive solution, saving time and money while providing ongoing, stellar performance.

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