By Lisa Reider, Senior Product Editor, Scanners and Environmental
In a lively meeting, representatives from leading scanning vendors—Canon, HP, Kodak, Panasonic and Visioneer—volleyed topics from market trends to improving the value of BLI scanner testing. The forum marked BLI’s first Scanner Testing Advisory Committee (TAC).
Established in 2006 for BLI’s MFP testing, TAC meetings let vendors comment on BLI’s test methods, identify the peers they compete against and talk about how different market segments use products in unique ways. TAC meetings, both here and in Europe, touch every aspect of BLI’s work, while giving vendors a chance to interact. BLI’s inaugural scanner TAC was no exception.
An Energetic Beginning
From the start, participants eagerly shared ideas on revamping BLI’s scanner coverage. While many of BLI’s current test methods remain unchanged, the majority of test talk focused on simply adding more—more productivity tests with “typical” features enabled, testing additional types of media, more real-world OCR and file size testing, and new evaluations capturing the total user experience. “Helping BLI refine evaluation procedures benefits not only HP and the rest of the industry, but more importantly, the end customer,” said Craig Korfanta, HP’s competitive intelligence and technology analyst. “The surprisingly diverse perspectives of the various manufacturers really broadened my understanding of the overall scanner market.”
“Thanks to our knowledgeable participants, we were able to come away with a whole new understanding of the scanner market and what scanner consumers look for,” said BLI Managing Editor Daria Hoffman. “And we’re confident the result of this TAC will be reports that customers and resellers can’t live without.”
Segments, Quality and TCO
Other topics of discussion included measuring the total cost of ownership, evaluating image quality, and determining fair product segmentation to help bliQ users better identify competitors. While participants agreed that current segmentation does not always help customers precisely match up competitors, they were reluctant to dispense with these familiar terms. The consensus among attendees, however, was that segmentation based on feature set—paper size, duty cycle, speeds—supplies a more accurate competitive group than current segmentation. So even if manufacturers continue to use industry-standard segmentation terminology, the feedback will enable improvements that’ll result in more on-target competitors with bliQ’s “Compare” with competitors feature, and with lab test report ratings.
Participants agreed that BLI’s test reports should give greater focus on digital image quality, such as evaluating digital images and adding more OCR tests. One participant noted that the time of day, compression level and workload may affect the scan quality, suggesting that BLI may need to test digital quality at multiple times throughout the day. Vendors also expressed interest in BLI expanding its value analysis beyond pricing and feature set to total cost of ownership (including warranty and consumables costs).
“I want to thank Buyers Lab for providing an opportunity for Kodak and other manufacturers to discuss the challenges of obtaining fair and objective data about our products. It was exciting to hear that many of us described facing the same challenges in mitigating and/or eliminating customer pain points that still exist within the imaging industry,” said Robert Westcott, manager of mechanical and systems engineering with Kodak Document Imaging and Graphic Communications Group, Product Development. “As a product and solutions provider, these challenges represent new opportunities for Kodak and all of us in the industry to provide better products and solutions in the future.”
Points of Discord
Along with the cooperative exchanges among attendees, there were some clear areas of contention. For example, participants had varying ways of measuring a unit’s speed, which may explain why BLI lab-tested speeds don’t always coincide with the manufacturer’s rated speed. While some manufacturers stop timing the machine as soon as the page enters the output tray, others wait until the image appears on the PC.
Some participants were also skeptical about performing environmental testing on scanners. Currently, any MFP brought into the lab also runs through BLI’s proprietary environmental tests, which include measuring energy consumption, consumable yields, and runnability with recycled paper. BLI’s environmental reports also evaluate a product’s chemical use and recyclability. Participants understood the importance of the environmental evaluations, but some felt scanners didn’t make enough of an environmental impact. And most devices comply with the same set of standards (e.g., ENERGY STAR, EU Restriction of Hazardous Substances).
BLI Listens
As a result of the range of suggestions and discussions brought by the TAC participants, scanner reports will soon have a whole new look and feel, including in-depth image quality evaluations, TCO calculations based on specific timeframes per device type, more software and overall workflow evaluations to capture the user experience, and additional productivity and batch testing. “The participants of our first scanner TAC really helped shape the future of BLI’s scanner testing, said BLI Test Technician Joe Ellerman. “The TAC committee not only helped bring the ideas we brought to the table to life, but they had a number of thoughtful suggestions that we’ve begun to implement.”
“The leading scanner vendors came together in July at the BLI Scanner TAC to give input to BLI on better testing practices and, as a side benefit, we developed a collective sharing of ideas, practices and concepts among the industry’s most influential scanner vendors,” said John Capurso, vice president of marketing at Visioneer, Inc., a Xerox trademark licensee. “The vendors had the rare opportunity to share ideas and understanding. We validated ideas, confirmed features that we hold to be important to customers, and developed some common understanding on what is important to the industry versus what’s important to the customer. My thanks to BLI for sponsoring this event, and congratulations on making it such a positive and collaborative meeting.”
This article was originally posted on Buyer’s Laboratory.
