By Editor
The company that revolutionized the mobile scanning industry is ready for its own encore after recent acquisition by giant Canon. Nicolas Moies-Delval, Corporate Marketing Director at IRIS discusses how this future continues to evolve
IRIS was acquired last year by Canon. Discuss the integration and effect on IRIS’s business model
IRIS is now part of the Canon Group after being bought out one and a half years ago. We are fully integrated with Canon even though we continue to keep the name and the brand IRIS which is important to us in the market. Our product line, mobile scanners is complementary with their solutions-they have bigger and wider scanners while we are more into the mobile segment. We’ve been known for our quality products, only enhanced now that we are part of Canon. As might be expected, the quality process is very strict. We go through a very strict quality control process today for both software and hardware.
Discuss briefly some of the key products and solutions on showcase here at GITEX
Our main announcements are on three products: the IRIScan Pro3 Wi-Fi is a very unique product in the market because it is the only multiple sheet scanner that’s truly mobile in the market today. There are multiple sheet-fed scanners out there, but the IRIScan Pro 3Wi-Fi is the only one that is truly portable. It is battery powered via a lithium battery so you can charge it via USB or into the wall plug. You can scan your products, up to eight pages, and once that is done you can send that via Wi-Fi to any device. We are pushing mobility one step further as we position ourselves as the mobile scanning company that can connect to any single device available in the market. This can be an iPhone, iPad, or Android devices. Further, we have developed a dedicated iOS app with OCR integrated.
From a software perspective, discuss briefly what features customers are getting out of the box
IRIS was created 27 years ago as a software company specialized in OCR; that really is the DNA of our company. With each scanner we provide a powerful software suite that allows users to capture all the information from documents and turn them into editable text allowing him to sort them and share them with colleagues. Our goal is to turn that precious piece of paper into digitized information.
We also have other software bundled including ReadIRIS which is the corporate and higher version of our OCR software so you can capture all the information from the document and then turn that information into a Word document if you want to edit it or PDF is you want to share. The PDF is indexed meaning that all the text contents from the PDF has been recognized and separated from the images. So when you want to a desktop search and you remember a keyword and type it, the document gets retrieved. We also have a unique solution called the IRIS Compressor which is our key compression technology. If you scan a 10MB document with multiple pages, with this technology you will be able to generate a hyper compressed PDF that is up to 20 times smaller than the original documents. Storage is precious so this allows you to save on costs and easier sharing of documents with heavy visuals.
The other software is Card IRIS, a business card recognition software. There’s a dedicated slot within the scanner that allows you to scan business cards and once you get back to the office, the business card will automatically be imported to the software. This software recognizes all the fields captured and put into their respective fields such as names, email, phone no. etc. Once this is done, you can export the contacts to Outlook or CRM software. The third software is IRIS File which acts as a document management system that allows you to deal with those captured documents by saving them in a safe electronic environment where they can be retrieved and sorted.
What’s different then with IRIS Scanners with so many other competing brands in the market?
The scanner is completely portable with a lithium rechargeable battery. You just need to charge for not more than two hours after which you can spend the whole day scanning without recharging it. There’s a dedicated slot for scanning business cards as well as credit cards and identity cards. You can insert up to eight pages at the same time at the feeder and scan them in one batch. That is something that is very unique for a mobile scanner. The scanning speed is eight pages per minute with a scanning resolution of either 300 or 600 dpi. You can scan JPEG or PDF directly, colour or black and white. The unique feature is that your can connect your scanner via Wi-Fi to external devices such as a laptop and also to an Android or iOS smartphones and tablets. We have developed two iOS and Android apps that allows you to connect your device to your scanner and do OCR directly on your mobile device and that’s really key.
Is there a flagship product performing particularly well in the Middle East market
The Middle East market is very important for IRIS and that is why we have been coming to GITEX for the last 11 years now for our consumer products as well as our Pro solutions. The business card reader is popular in the Middle East and is still selling as well as our new products such as the IRIS Scan Pro Wi-Fi. We are answering real customer demand for such products especially for Small to medium sized businesses. They were looking for an out of the box scanner with powerful software that you can just get on the shelf. The problem with previous scanners and the software that comes with it is that you need expertise to install it and configure it. With this, it’s just out of the box and basically plug & play.
The major improvement from previous editions is that you had to have 3G/4G connections to do OCR. When travelling the carrier charges can be a hindrance. In addition, you do not need to be connected to the internet to do the OCR part. This is one of the gaps we are trying to fill now with an integrated and intuitive app that link with our scanners but also can be used as a standalone. So if you have an iPhone and you do not want to buy the scanner, you can still use it by taking a picture of a document. Having said that, it’s better when you are using a mobile scanner with more functionality. The investment is not much at around 229USD for both the hardware and the software