Canon Selected as Document Imaging Solutions Line of the Year Winner
January 29, 2013 – Hackensack, NJ – Buyers Laboratory LLC (BLI), the world’s leading independent evaluator of document imaging hardware and software, today announced that Canon is the recipient of BLI’s “2013 Document Imaging Solutions Line of the Year” award thanks to its exceptional portfolio of document imaging software. The honor extends to the company’s North American, European, and Asia-Pacific local operating companies in the markets BLI serves. Given once a year, this award recognizes the document imaging vendor that offers the strongest solutions portfolio across the range of software categories BLI covers on its Solutions Center subscription service.
“Customers are increasingly coming to rely on document imaging software solutions to streamline mission-critical business processes, increase the productivity of knowledge workers, and leverage their existing investment in imaging hardware,” said Jamie Bsales, senior product editor for solutions at BLI. “Canon offers an unrivaled catalog of software products in the key areas that can make a real difference to a customer’s document-centric processes.”
To determine the Solutions Line of the Year winner, BLI’s highly experienced staff of technicians and editors considered the imaging software each leading printer and MFP OEM officially sells and supports via its direct and independent sales channels. The OEM’s own products, as well as products from partner ISVs (independent software vendors), were taken into account in categories that include Document Management/ECM, Document Capture & Workflow, Accounting/Cost Control & Recovery, Print Management, Device Management, Mobile Printing and others.
OEMs that fared best in BLI’s rankings offer customers a wide range of solutions in each category to address varied customer requirements and to better meet the needs of any size organization. More important than just the breadth of those offerings, however, is the quality and robustness of the solutions offered. Those solutions that have been submitted to BLI’s lab for evaluation—and rated in key areas such as feature set, value, ease of use and ease of setup/administration—carry the most weight in the OEMs’ overall ranking.
BLI’s analysis revealed that Canon has the most impressive solutions lineup of any OEM in several areas BLI tracks. For example, when it comes to Accounting/Cost Control & Recovery and Print Management, Canon offers customers NT-ware uniFLOW, which has earned a 5-star rating in BLI’s hands-on Solutions Reports. The company has also, through its MEAP Developer Program, facilitated integration with products from Nuance (Equitrac and Copitrak) and Sepialine. In the realm of Document Capture & Workflow, Canon supplies NT-ware uniFLOW and Nuance eCopy ShareScan (again, each a 5-star solution in BLI’s testing) as well as the market-leading Kofax Capture platform and various other Canon and third-party solutions. For document management, Canon offers its home-grown imageWARE Document Server. That platform serves as the repository and collaboration engine for imageRUNNER ADVANCE Desktop, which earned high marks in BLI’s hands-on testing. Canon has also partnered with Therefore Corp. to furnish that popular information management software to customers. The company also led the pack in offerings when it came to Device Management, Mobile Printing, and Security solutions. Moreover, this year Canon updated its new devices to include MEAP Web, so in addition to being able to integrate with back-end applications via MEAP, the devices’ embedded platform now also includes web services. This will enable integration with a wider range of back-end applications, including cloud services.
“We take great pride in receiving BLI's ‘Document Imaging Solutions Line of the Year’ award as it validates our efforts to develop and bring to market a complete portfolio of solutions that help our customers more easily accomplish their daily tasks so they can focus on creating innovation within their own businesses,” said Sam Yoshida, vice president and general manager, Marketing, Business Imaging Solutions Group, Canon U.S.A. “Whether it’s simple print, scan, authentication and security offerings or more sophisticated monitoring, control or document and content management applications, Canon has the right solution to help improve general office workflow and meet the requirements of specific vertical markets such as financial services, legal, government, education, and healthcare.”
“As a leading imaging solution provider, Canon offers a broad range of powerful solutions to our customers and partners that integrate tightly with our hardware portfolio to address the key challenges that customers face around document capture, processing and output,” added Paul Rowntree, European Product Marketing Director at Canon Europe. “We are pleased to receive BLI’s Document Imaging Solutions Line of the Year award and it is a testament to our commitment to help our customers and partners streamline workflows and maximize their business.”
“By converging Canon’s expertise in technology and understanding of varying office environments, we have developed an unparalleled suite of customizable and affordable solutions to provide companies with improved document management, security, user flexibility and workflow,” said Mr. Nagata, Canon Singapore’s senior director and general manager of the Regional Business Imaging Solutions Division. “This is testament to Canon’s commitment to help companies, big or small, evolve into an integrated, efficient and productive enterprise to ensure their success in today’s challenging business environment.”
About Buyers Laboratory LLC
Buyers Laboratory LLC (BLI) is the world's leading independent provider of analytical information and services to the digital imaging and document management industry. For over 50 years, buyers have relied on BLI to help them differentiate products’ strengths and weaknesses and make the best purchasing decisions, while industry sales, marketing and product professionals have turned to BLI for insightful competitive intelligence and valued guidance on product development, competitive positioning and sales channel and marketing support. Using BLI’s web-based bliQ and Solutions Center services, 40,000 professionals worldwide create extensive side-by-side comparisons of hardware and software solutions for over 15,000 products globally, including comprehensive specifications and the performance results and ratings from BLI’s unparalleled Lab, Solutions and Environmental Test Reports, the result of months of hands-on evaluation in its US and UK labs. The services, also available via mobile devices, include a comprehensive library of BLI’s test reports, an image gallery, hard to find manufacturers’ literature and valuable tools for configuring products, calculating total cost of ownership (TCO) and annual power usage. BLI also offers consulting and private, for-hire testing services that help manufacturers develop and market better products and consumables.
For more information on Buyers Laboratory LLC, please call (201) 488-0404, visit www.buyerslab.com, or email info@buyerslab.com.