Annabel Czajka, PA to Brunel University Vice Chancellor, Steven Schwartz,
saves 60 minutes admin time every day using Fujitsu Europe’s fi-5110EOX2 scanner

About the Vice Chancellor’s Office
Steven Schwartz is Vice Chancellor of Brunel University in West London. Brunel's rise since 1966 has been impressive and it’s reputation grows year on year. Now a university of nearly 13,000 students - 3,000 engaged in postgraduate and research study - Brunel offers opportunities across a range of disciplines that embraces both the traditional and the new - specialising in Engineering and Design, Computing and Health Services and Social Care, amongst others.

Getting to the source of the problem
The role of Vice Chancellor generates a huge amount of admin. Steven Schwartz is supported by two PA’s: Annabel Czajka and Anne Caper; who manage mountains of internal paperwork and articles and a jam-packed timetable of speaking engagements, lectures and events.

Being able to manage and organise documents and business contacts is essential to the efficient and effective running of the Office. This is an area where having a scanning system in place can make huge timesavings. Time spent hunting for misplaced pieces of paper can be totally eradicated if all-important documents are scanned and stored electronically.

Annabel explains: “The paperwork the VC has to deal with is enormous! It’s easy to become overwhelmed and get drowned in paper! We wanted a scanner that could automate some of our most time-consuming processes, including disseminating information to a wide variety of internal and external audiences and managing an ever-growing list of contacts.”

Sharing information
ScanSnap is the ideal tool for quickly and easily sharing information with colleagues and business contacts. You just gather your documents together, put them into ScanSnap’s document feeder and press go. In seconds, the documents are converted into electronic format – ScanSnap even automatically recognises single or double-sided documents, turns documents the correct way up and deletes blank pages.

Once documents have been scanned into an electronic format, distributing them to colleagues – whether working in the office or from home – becomes as easy as emailing an attachment. Key documents can be made available to everyone on a central computer system, rather than having to be photocopied and distributed as hard copies, which are easy to misplace.

Dissemination of articles to Brunel University’s senior management team is a key part of Annabel’s role. Previously this involved photocopying pages and physically distributing them to offices and pigeonholes. Now, it’s just a case of scanning and sending! Annabel explains: “ScanSnap saves considerable time when I need to disseminate urgent information quickly. The ease at which it scans and immediately opens an accessible document, which can then be used as an attachment, is a great time-saver.”

“It also eliminates faxing, which is always a frustrating and time-consuming task, especially when the document contains a large number of pages. Inserting the pages in the right order, the right way up, waiting while the pages are processed, and then until the recipients fax is ready to accept the call; is always stressful, especially at times when getting the document to someone is urgent. ScanSnap eliminates that!”

Managing business cards
ScanSnap is versatile enough to scan a range of documents, from A3-sized (using a special attachment) to business cards. ScanSnap includes unique software that automatically extracts information from a business card and exports the details automatically into a record in a database system, where they can be searched and managed electronically.

Steven Schwartz represents the University at a phenomenal number of events, conferences and speaking engagements. Annabel explains how this makes managing his contacts a gigantic task:

“Every week we have a new stack of business cards, which need to be added into the Vice Chancellor’s Outlook contact lists. Before ScanSnap this was very time-consuming and involved reading the cards and typing their details in by hand.”

“ScanSnap entirely automates the process, saving us a considerable amount of time – we just put a pile of cards into the scanner and watch as it puts them into the database!”

Scan and type…
In addition to CardMinder, ScanSnap also includes cutting edge character recognition technology, meaning you can scan documents straight into editable Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2003 documents.

“The scan to Word function has been absolutely brilliant.” Annabel explains, “We just put letters into ScanSnap and press go, in seconds it comes up as a word document that we can edit.

“The fact that you do not have to re-type lengthy documents or copy type the contents of an incoming letter into an email for is a great time-saver.”

Pass it on!
Annabel estimates that ScanSnap’s speed means it saves them from 5 to 15 minutes for each job that it is used for – adding up to a saving of 60 minutes on an average day. “I have demonstrated it to a number of colleagues who were all impressed, as none of have used such a quick and easy scanner before. It literally scans in seconds!”

“We have found ScanSnap’s one button scanning system incredibly easy-to-use and the scanner is easy to integrate into the office – it’s so small it fits on even the most crowded desk. Everyone should have one!”