Has your business upgraded electronic invoices yet?  Send your invoices by email instead of mailing them and get faster delivery, shorter collection times and reduced printing and postage costs.  Best yet, technology exists where you won’t have to change your existing accounting software to send your invoices by email.

Automatically Generate Your Invoices

As the system prints invoices it will automatically look for customers who have provided an email address in their customer record.  The subject and body of the email are preconfigured to let the customer know about the invoice. 

Scan to email is one of the most convenient forms of scanning today and can provide the greatest efficiency improvement in any organization.  Your customers are progressively expecting to receive documentation via email. You can effectively meet this critical business requirement through the use of devices like multifunction systems (MFPs).

MFPs feature high speed scanning that allows documents to be converted to common digital formats like PDF, .jpeg or .tiff formats.  These files can be sent to email addresses  or directed to a network folder.

There has been a movement to incorporate new document capture technologies into businesses worldwide.  Why would you spend hours patiently keying in information from delivery tickets, sales orders and remittance stubs when you could automatically extract information from scanned documents?

How Data Capture Works 
Documents are scanned using a scanner or multifunction system and then utilizes the following technologies to read data from the document:

Zone OCR: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) converts scanned text into text that can be edited in common word applications and imported into a database.  Zone OCR reads text from a specific area of a document. 

Barcode Recognition:  Information can be read from barcodes on documents.  For example, the invoice number on your proof of delivery slips can be embedded in a barcode. When these slips are scanned, the capture software reads the barcode.

MAHWAH, N.J., July 23, 2009 – Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America (SIICA), a division of Sharp Electronics Corporation, today introduced the FO-2080, a digital document communication system that packs Sharp’s multi-functional capabilities into a compact footprint for the SMB market. The versatile FO-2080 combines high speed Super G3 fax functionality with high-quality digital copying, network printing, and direct-to-PC color scanning in an easy-to-use machine that is easily accessible to anyone in the workgroup.

Providing an enhanced level of user-friendliness, the FO-2080 provides auto switching between dual paper trays as a standard feature, eliminating the need to manually switch between legal and letter sized paper for incoming faxes. With an overall maximum capacity of 550 sheets, the two standard 250-sheet paper trays simultaneously accommodate different paper sizes such as letter or legal, along with a 50-sheet bypass tray that can handle heavy paper, labels, transparencies, and envelopes, to keep workflow moving seamlessly. The FO-2080 also delivers features such as 2-sided printing, copying and scanning, as well as E-Sort and Offset Stacking, making tasks such as collating, separating, and sorting absolutely effortless.

“The FO-2080 is a highly functional office document solution that puts the capabilities of multiple machines in the footprint of an average fax machine,” said Andre Pimentel, Associate Product Manager, A4 Multifunction Printers, Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America. “This is a product that can help enable office administrators to greatly resolve and streamline workflow issues and reduce cost of operation in a number of ways.”

When one thinks about threats to organizational security, the words hackers and computer viruses come to mind. In this world of network attacks, printers, copiers and fax machines are easy to overlook. These systems can store trade secrets, financial and medical information, and valuable information like customer lists or pricing schedules. Loss of this information could be devastating.

The good news is that there are practical steps you can take to improve the security of your printers and copiers.

1. Track Printing Access

Output tracking technologies can keep a record of which documents are printed. You can access the printing logs to see what documents an employee has printed. Your staff will know that the company is monitoring information security thus creating an environment where employees are hesitant to steal information through the printer.

2. Encrypt Hard Drives on Multifunction Systems

When you scan a document on a multifunction system the scanned image is stored on the device’s hard drive before it is sent off to an email address or network folder location. New security technologies can encrypt documents on the multifunction system’s hard drive and make sure files are erased after they have been transmitted.

Are you looking for ways to improve and streamline your business processes? A great place to start is to evaluate your current business practices.

A business process is a structured series of steps that produces a repeated outcome. Accounts receivable—what happens from the time you generate an invoice until you get paid—is the most common business process. These paper and digital documents are the vehicles by which information flows through your business regardless of what industry you are in.

Technology will improve your business and streamline the flow of information to:

• Increase Profits
• Enhance Competitive Advantage
• Improve Customer Service
• Ensure Regulatory Compliance

HP today announced the immediate integration of the highly anticipated Six-Core AMD Opteron™ 2400 Series processor into the award-winning family of HP Workstations.

Ideal for high-end workstation applications in fields such as engineering, 3-D digital content creation, oil and gas, and science, the HP xw9400 Workstation taps the power of the new AMD Opteron processors to deliver higher productivity, especially for multi-threaded applications, multi-tasking and mega-tasking environments.

With the built-in engineering advantages of HP’s highly tuned workstations, the HP xw9400 Workstation can accommodate up to two Six-Core AMD Opteron processors – for a total of 12 cores – each of which offers up to 34 percent more performance per watt⁽¹⁾ over the previous-generation quad-core processors.

“HP understands the immense pressure its customers are under to deliver more return on investment in a shorter period of time,” said Jeff Wood, director, Worldwide Marketing, Workstations, HP. “By providing the most extreme combination of technologies – up to 12 cores in one workstation – HP continues its commitment to bringing customers leading-edge technologies.”

AMD HyperTransport™ 3.0 technology (HT3) increases interconnect rates from 2 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) up to a maximum 4.8 GT/s, allowing the entire system to provide superior performance. Additionally, the HP xw9400 can be configured with the ATI FirePro V7750 3-D workstation graphics accelerator.

MAHWAH, NJ, June 30, 2009 -- Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America (SIICA), a division of Sharp Electronics Corporation, today announced that it received six "Pick" Awards from Buyers Laboratory Inc. (BLI). The awards acknowledge "outstanding performance" and excellence "in areas of importance to IT professionals" for a wide range of Sharp products, including Sharp Printer Administration Utility version 5 (PAU5); Sharp’s newest A3 MFPs (MX-2600N; MX-3100; MX-4101 and MX-5001); and the MX-C311/DX-C311, Sharp’s first color A4 MFP and part of its Frontier Series.

"This year's BLI Pick Awards truly underscore Sharp's dedication to developing a complete line of solutions-based products," said Mike Marusic, vice president, marketing, Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America. "Our line of MFPs, coupled with our software offerings such as PAU5 can help businesses operate more efficiently and keep service costs to a minimum."

The Sharp MX-C311 and Sharp A3 segment MFPs feature a number of award-winning features that consistently draw rave reviews from customers. These features include an 8.5-inch high-resolution touch-screen color display; Sharp OSA^® development platform; and a stylish, textural exterior that compliments any office design. Furthermore, the MX-2600N, MX-3100, MX-4101 and MX-5001 include a standard, retractable keyboard that makes data entry at the MFP quick and easy.

"We put these models through their paces and they passed with flying colors," said Lynn Nannariello, BLI's assistant managing editor. "Sporting a distinctive design that includes a textured exterior and rounded corners, these highly reliable devices offer an array of features that make them very easy to use."

HP today launched a contest that challenges small businesses to exchange their current printer for an HP Officejet Pro and save up to 50 percent on color printing costs and energy use.⁽¹⁾

The HP Officejet Pro Challenge will allow five randomly selected small businesses to test drive the new HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One for four weeks. During this period, the businesses will share their printing experiences through blog posts on the HP Small and Medium Business Community.

The grand prize winner, chosen through readers’ votes, will receive a one-year supply of HP Officejet inkjet cartridges and HP Bright White Paper.⁽¹⁾ With the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One, small businesses can save up to $500 in one year compared to competitive laser printers.⁽¹⁾ In addition, the winner will receive a Logoworks by HP “Gold Package” for professional graphic design services. All participants will be able to keep their Officejet Pro system.

For over thirty years we’ve been moving towards the lofty goal of the paperless office. But as the volume of computer data grows, so too does our paper usage.

Fortunately there seems to be a valid movement toward cutting back on our paper usage with Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS). This system allows you to scan all your paper documents to create a searchable and secure filing system.

There are several trends are driving the rapid adoption of this technology:

· Low Costs of Electronic Storage. It is now possible to store 10 filing cabinets full of paper in one gigabyte of electronic storage.

· Familiarity with Computer Applications. Today, everyone is trained to be familiar with common computer applications. This means adoption time and training for new applications is minimal.

· High Speed Scanners and Multifunction Copiers. Documents can be scanned quickly and conveniently with sheet-fed scanners, available on most new digital office copiers.