The power of simple, swift and secure document delivery

Scan workflows are an important way to ensure secure, efficient delivery of scanned documents to a range of locations, set and controlled by organisations.

The delivery stage of scanning can be the most involved and mistakes are easily made. For example, an employee scans a document to their email, then saves it to the desktop, shared folder or uploads to another system. They then email someone else to let them know where it is or send them the document. All of these delivery steps take time and errors in any step, or forgetting a step, can be costly for the company.

Automating document delivery through scan workflows removes the risk of human error and increases productivity and security for the business.

Scan workflows define the document’s destination within the scan workflow template. The user simply selects a workflow from the list of their authorised workflows on the multifunction device (MFD) and scans the document; everything else is automatically managed for them in the backend, delivering the scan securely to its authorised destination and notifying recipients that the document is available.

Secure, shared locations such as on-premise file servers, electronic content management systems (ECMs), line of business applications, and third-party cloud applications, are fast becoming best practice as repositories for digital documents. By defining an authorised destination and automatically routing the scan to that location from the MFD, the possibility of digital files getting into the wrong hands is eliminated.

Some scan workflows offer connectors to third-party applications to ensure secure, cost effective storage.

With connectors to these third-party applications, users don’t have to login to the third-party applications to have the scans delivered. They can be configured to use single sign-on using the same credentials for authenticating at the MFD and for logging in to the cloud or on-premise applications that the business uses.”

Security is a growing concern and, with recent cyber attacks on some of the world’s largest organisations, it is imperative that businesses protect their own data and that of their customers and partners.

The most effective way to protect the business when scanning is through secure, automated delivery. With scan workflows, encryption is managed in the back end. It does not rely on any manual intervention or technical expertise. This means organisations have complete peace of mind that documents are delivered securely and can only be viewed by authorised users.

Another consideration for scan document delivery is auditing.

Scan workflows provide reporting on organisations’ scan activity providing complete insight into document capture activity. Reporting includes information on who is scanning, what devices are being used, when scans took place, and where scans were delivered. The reports can be filtered in a variety of ways to show most active users, devices, and by date ranges. If even greater granularity is required, detailed audit logs are also available.

Adam O’Neill, Managing Director – Australia, Y Soft