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BULLETIN
Three months since launching in the UK,
German online technology retailer Reichelt
has added nearly 1,700 products to its
online catalogue, including printers and
printer supplies from Brother, Kyocera, HP,
Samsung, Lexmark, OKI, Canon, Epson and
Ricoh, as well as a range of 3D printers.
Reichelt was established in Germany in 1969
and has become a market leader as a result of
its competitive pricing and high stock availability.
It has more than 220 employees at its German
logistics centre in Sande (Friesland) and currently
generates annual revenues of around 125m Euro.
Reichelt hopes to emulate the UK success of
German grocery retailers, such as Aldi and Lidl,
by offering lower prices than competitors. CEO
Ulf Timmermann says it is offering many of its
products for 20% less than UK rivals such as
Maplin, Mouser, RS and CPC-Farnell.
He said: “We supply business customers in
the electronics and engineering sectors, from
laboratories to workshops, education and IT, but
we also meet the needs of the consumer audience.
There’s a growing ‘makers movement’ in the UK
and we are able to serve their needs, as well as
businesses’, at prices lower than in Maplin, for
instance, but at a higher quality than they might
find when importing from other international
suppliers.”
Timmermann says Reichelt is able to charge
low prices because it does everything itself, from
writing its own ERP software to setting up its
warehouses and managing its call centres.
As an added incentive to business customers,
it offers discounts for bulk buying on certain
products and VAT-free invoicing.
Reichelt's aggressive growth plans include a
€
9 million investment in a third warehouse, which
will enable it to increase the products it holds in
stock to more than 100,000 articles by next year.
Reichelt online
catalogue
growing fast
Improved recognition
in new version of
AccuRead Automate
Lexmark has announced an enhanced
version of AccuRead Automate for
Multifunction Printers, which recognises
and classifies documents as they are
scanned and extracts key information for
use in downstream applications.
In this way, AccuRead Automate enables
the automatic indexing of scanned files and
the routing of captured data to predefined
destinations.
New features in version 2.0 include the
ability automatically to recognise multi-page
documents, such as two-, three- or four-page
invoices, which reduces manual pre-sorting
requirements.
Another new feature is the ability to
recognise a document based on its text, not just
its layout, which enables the software to classify
documents that don’t fully match ‘learned’
categories and significantly reduces error rates.
Danny Molhoek, General Manager, North
West Europe for Lexmark, said: “Businesses in the
UK struggle with capturing printed information
and retrieving it easily when needed. Often
manual steps are required before and after the
scanning process owing to the wide variety
of document types available. Other barriers to
data extraction from printed documents include
insufficient employee training and limited network
bandwidth in remote locations. This update
includes significant improvements in speed and
performance when classifying documents and
extracting the relevant information.”
AccuRead Automate 2.0 for Multifunction
Prtinters is available for the Lexmark CX7 and
CX8 Series of colour printer products.
Lexmark wins award for
process improvements
Lexmark has won an SSON Shared Services
& Outsourcing Excellence Award for
streamlining processes at its Budapest
Shared Services Centre.
The Shared Services & Outsourcing Network
(SSON) is the largest community of shared
services and outsourcing professionals in the
world, with over 100,000 members.
Lexmark won the award for ‘Best Process
Improvement and Innovation’ after automating
the set-up process for its customers in 166
countries. This led to a reduction in customer set-
up lead times from 68 days to just two, a 40-day
cashflow improvement and an 87% reduction in
time spent on reporting.
Lexmark made the changes using its own
capture, workflow and content management
tools alongside an integrated SAP solution for
automated sales order processing.
Power PDF touch-enabled
Nuance Communications has launched a new version of Power PDF software, providing a
touch-enabled, Windows 10-like experience for the creation, conversion, editing and sharing
of PDF files.
Holly Muscolino, research VP, printing, imaging and document solutions for IDC, said: “Nuance Power
PDF 2 addresses the needs of more than 270 million active Windows 10 users by delivering PDF software
tools that conform to their familiar Microsoft Office 2016 experience.”
She added: “It provides an impressive array of features specifically designed to make business staff
and mobile professionals more secure and productive, with pricing and licensing
structures that make it easy and cost-effective to deploy in large and small
organisations.”
Meeting the growing need for business software to support touch-enabled
hybrid devices, Power PDF 2 enables users to navigate, annotate and type using a
tablet or notebook and a pen or finger. A ‘touch mode’ option on the Quick Access
Toolbar optimises toolbars and icons for pressing with a finger.
Other useful features include a ‘find a tool’ search capability that enables users
to find any tool or functionality in the application and a Quick Access Toolbar that
allows users to create shortcuts to frequently used functions.
Full speed ahead
Panasonic has added two A3 models to its
flatbed scanner range. Aimed at finance,
hospitality, healthcare and legal enterprises,
the A3 colour document scanners (KV-S7077
and KV-S7097) deliver high speeds of 75ppm
and 95ppm respectively, even at 300 dpi.
Both have a 200-sheet automatic document
feeder (ADF) and flatbed. Time-saving features
include one-touch pre-programmable settings
for up to nine jobs; double-feed detection;
integration with remote software; auto rescan;
and preview modes.
business.panasonic.co.uk/communication-solutions/
