Document Imaging Blog

Welcome to eCopy's Document Imaging Blog

Businesses are adopting technology to address electronic workflows and processes --- but these processes are slowed by paper. Document imaging can help solve the paper problem by converting paper into electronic images and distributing those images into digital workflows.

This blog provides eCopy's perspectives on document imaging based on 15 years experience working with end users, MFP and scanner manufacturers, software vendors, and reseller channels. It is our goal of this blog to foster better understanding of document imaging technology through examples of companies who have benefited from implementing the technology and by sharing the experiences/problems/challenges.  We look forward to hearing from you!

How do ISVs select technology partners?

This past week, we hosted a group of developers from ISVs that integrate with our document imaging platform for a two day summit. As part of the event, we had the opportunity to discuss their evaluation process for technologies that they choose to integrate with.

Two overarching trends became evident during our focus group. The first is that the biggest challenge that developers are faced with is the delivery of required solution capabilities. One of the biggest ways that they are addressing this challenge is by selecting partners that use industry standard tools and platforms. It’s the “write once, use many” approach.

From a document capture perspective, this means that the document imaging platform that an ISV chooses should be able to:

• Work across any type of scanning device
• Work across any brand of scanning device
• Integrate easily with any application or underlying IT infrastructure

By ensuring that this is the case -- regardless of what a customer’s environment is -- the document imaging system will support it. And, the ISV does not have to worry about testing their solution across each of these scenarios -- greatly reducing the resources needed to meet the required solution capabilities.

The second trend, not surprisingly, is that nothing matters more in partner selection than the potential revenue that the solution can drive!

Extending SharePoint to Support Document Workflows

Next Tuesday, June 24th, Microsoft and eCopy executives will present a Webinar on how to generate more value from Microsoft SharePoint environments by adding third-party document workflow applications that support an organization’s existing business processes.

The featured speaker at the Webinar is John Graham, Microsoft senior product manager, who will discuss the role of SharePoint in enabling electronic document workflows that connect people, information and processes. He will also discuss the types of applications that organizations should consider integrating with Microsoft SharePoint, with a focus on document imaging software.

Among other topics, the webinar will provide information to help organizations:
- Extend SharePoint investments by supporting specific business workflows with third-party applications.
- Choose third-party applications that integrate with Microsoft applications.
- Seamlessly integrate paper-based information into SharePoint with a document imaging solution to move towards a paperless office environment.
- Increase the ROI of line of business applications by utilizing document scanning software that easily converts paper documents into searchable, electronic files.   

The Webinar takes place on June 24, 2008 starting at 2:00 p.m. EDT, and interested parties can sign-up in advance by accessing the event registration site. It features a live Q&A session for the participants to present questions to the expert speakers.

New Document Imaging Group on LinkedIn

Many of you are probably familiar with the business-oriented social networking site LinkedIn, which streamlines the networking process by allowing you to build a list of contacts and connections within an online profile. LinkedIn has a fairly new feature that allows you to create and join industry and professional groups for networking purposes.

We just created the Document Imaging Group on LinkedIn to provide an online gathering place for people involved in document imaging. Here’s the link to check it out and join.

The Document Imaging Group allows you to find and contact other members on LinkedIn, both inside and outside of your network, who are interested in document imaging. Once you’re in the group, you can easily reach other members of the document imaging industry and create career and business opportunities through referrals.

The group also helps you to know more than a name – once you are a member you can view professional profiles from fellow Document Imaging Group members. You can also learn valuable information about your peers’ backgrounds and expertise that is relevant to your professional needs.

We see the group providing all members some great networking opportunities. Hope to see you in the group!

Information Zen and other good info sources

AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, just launched a new online community, Information Zen. Big kudos to AIIM for starting this up and I'm pledging to be active in the new community, as well as to get my colleagues involved. Take a moment to poke around the site...it has great information on all things ECM and information management and will hopefully turn into an active community!

A big reason that I am excited about this new community is that it is another resource for both end users and vendors to discuss challenges, successes and best practices around ECM. As we all know, ECM is a big umbrella and includes document imaging as a subset. At eCopy, we've started this blog and the Document Imaging Wiki to provide a similar, central resource for document imaging. I'm hoping that we can create lots of back and forth between our Web 2.0 initiatives and AIIM's...providing awareness of document imaging within the ECM conversations and offering a place to come and learn more about specific document imaging-related information in our blog and wiki.

These Web-based resources are a tremendous asset to our industry and a big thank you goes out to AIIM for continuing to increase awareness and spur conversation.

Scanning as a Compliance Driver

In an unpublished InfoTrends’ research project conducted slightly more than one year ago, we surveyed the US financial services industry to learn about the adoption rates and technology usage behaviors of office/workgroup document solutions. Compliance matters loomed large in this study.

We surveyed more than 350 businesses in the segments of: banking, insurance, investment, and credit and lending. Approximately 50% of the respondents came from large businesses with 1,000 employees, followed by an even split between medium (100-999) and small (1-99) at 25% each.

We asked many questions about technology and compliance. One question in particular caught my attention and was able to summon up the slide from my archives. The question posed had 344 respondents and it was phrased this way, “please identify whether you believe the following technologies would help with the following compliance regulations. Please check all that apply.” (refer to graph immediately below)

View this photo

Scanning hardcopy documents as an action to help organizations meet the requirements of compliance ranked highest in value across all ten compliance measures tested, whereas, scanning hardcopy documents directly to a central repository scored second highest in value against these same measures.

It became clear to us that scanning as a baseline business activity is highly valued by the respondents of our survey as playing a critically important function in helping their organization to satisfy a plethora of compliance regulations. Capturing paper-based documents digitally via scan followed by indexing, routing, storing and securing same is vital to an organization’s ability to be compliant, regardless of the regulation in play.

So is scanning a compliance driver? From our perspective, yes indeed.

For more information, I would focus on the following regulations/standards, which hit all of the major elements of compliance and are the most far-reaching and well-known:

Amended FRCP (Federal Rules of Civil Procedure)

Records management, archiving, and discovery perspective

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Rules_of_Civil_Procedure <-- high-level overview
• www.uscourts.gov/rules/EDiscovery_w_Notes.pdf <-- the amendments with notes
• https://extranet1.klgates.com/ediscovery/ ß a searchable database of e-discovery cases… good stuff

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Assurance Act)

Security and privacy

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPAA
• http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/ - Health & human Services Web site for HIPAA information
• http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/m2e411a1.htm - HIPAA Privacy Rule and Public Health Guidance from CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services*

SOX (Sarbanes Oxley)

Internal controls

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOX_404_top-down_risk_assessment <-- section 404 of SOX is the infamous “internal controls” part… this risk assessment is a key aspect of compliance

This is also interesting -- http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda/fy2008/m08-15.pdf

A white house memo saying that “When planning for and acquiring information systems and services, agencies must incorporate records management and archival functions, including the cost of implementing and maintaining those functions, into the design, development, and implementation of information systems.”

MFPs in Distributive Scanning

Because of the proliferation of MFP devices in the office, the accessibility to scanning has increased.  Awareness and use of the MFP scanner have risen because of the ease of integrated solutions and openness to share the device.  At InfoTrends, we believe that the acceptance of scanning due to this proliferation of MFP devices has exponentially increased scanning activity (the overall pie has grown). More workers in the office are becoming accustomed to scanning Ad Hoc documents; therefore, this is no longer a specialized application in the office environment.  As workflow solutions begin to play a greater role in the office environment, scanning and scanner technology are becoming vital elements for knowledge workers.  The following interesting statistics are from a recently published study (conducted at the end of 2007 and published in early 2008) from our Image Scanning Trends practice area entitled US Document Image Scanning Report 2007:

·         70% of companies using document scanners report that MFPs are used for scanning in their organization.

·         Respondents using MFP scanners estimate their weekly average scan volume is greater than the weekly average scan volume reported for Workgroup scanners - The mean volume per scanner per week is estimated at 2,672 pages for MFP scanners and 1,892 pages for Workgroup scanners.

·         Many respondents (56%) estimate that their MFP scanning volume will increase - 31% estimate that their MFP scanning volume will stay the same, while only 13% estimate that volume will decrease.

·         The highest percentage of documents scanned on MFPs is for ad-hoc purposes (40% of documents). However, increasing numbers of users are scanning for more advanced applications such as records management (62% of users) and for business process applications (54% of users) - The percentages of documents scanned for records management and business process applications are not as high as for ad-hoc scanning, but the percentage of respondents who are broadening their usage of MFP scanning is significant.

·         Many respondents expect they will be scanning more documents to use as part of business processes - 40% of those that use MFPs for business-process applications report that their use of scanning to enable business processes will increase. 24% believe that they will increase the number of documents scanned so that data may be extracted from the documents and used as part of a business process. 33% believe that the volume of documents scanned for archiving, document management, and records management will increase.

·         Higher percentages of users who use single-function document scanners in addition to their MFPs scan for business-process applications than those who use only MFPs - Users with only MFPs tend to do a higher percentage of ad-hoc scanning (52% of documents) than those who also have distributed single-function scanners (34% of documents). More respondents who have both MFPs and single-function document scanners use the MFPs for records management (70% of users) than those who use only MFPs (44% of users). We therefore speculate that users who employ distributed single-function scanners may be more inclined to extend the applications they perform on distributed single-function scanners to their distributed MFP scanners as well.

For the near term, InfoTrends believes that MFP scanning will largely continue to be used for low-volume applications rather than high-volume applications, primarily because sharing a device with those who are copying and printing is not practical in a high-volume situation. It is likely that numerous small companies that wish to scan and have very little equipment will turn to MFPs in these situations, rather than buying a low-volume, single-function scanner. At the same time, many companies will still appreciate the capabilities that a single-function scanners bring to the office in terms of image quality, usability, and paper handling, and will opt for these devices. Single-function scanners are also beginning to be equipped with some of the same features as MFP scanning devices, such as large screen displays, networked (shared) capabilities, and application integration support.  At any rate, we believe that scanning, whether it is from an MFP or scanning device, has acquired a significant role in the office environment.

Greening the Office/Workgroup Environment

The “green” wave is finally working its way into the daily conversation and consciousness of American business. Although this topic is complex, multi-faceted, and far too sophisticated to be covered adequately in a one time blog entry, I thought I might take this opportunity to focus on one tiny element of business sustainability: document capture and scanning.

Reducing the negative impact of a business on the environment has become an imperative strategic initiative for an ever increasing number of SMB and enterprise class organizations. The methods being used to achieve this goal range from reducing resource usage and implementing carbon offsets to recycling and engaging in many other green activities: this list goes on and on.

Many organizations are finding that document management solutions and imaging products are integral to their environmental agenda, assuming they have one. Among other benefits, businesses that implement document management strategies often experience a dramatic reduction in their company-wide paper consumption and CO2 emissions through the reduced printing, postage, and storage of everyday business documents.  An obvious way to reduce paper usage in the office is to use scanners to convert paper-based documents to digital format.  Although there is still a paper component in the scanning process, the purpose of the process of the workflow (i.e.: scan to repository) is to reduce paper and increase efficiency.  This results in other positive residual effects on the environment such as reducing the storage or physical mailing/transporting of paper-based documents, which can impact fuel costs related to the transportation of those documents.

In the case of the office/workgroup, reducing the consumption of environmental resources, , can be accomplished by addressing the endless sea of paper that is used by implementing an electronic document management system. The digital age has already transformed the office environment as it relates to paper.  Just 20 years ago, the office did not have tools like the Internet or e-mail. The Internet has changed the dynamics of communications and had some positive effect on our environment, as it has led to less copying of documents and a lower volume of memos being sent around the office or to other locations.  One would think that the shift to electronic storage and transport of documents electronically would benefit the planet and reduce the consumption of paper-based documents, but the question remains whether our generation is still printing pages at its destination and/or reprinting electronically stored documents.

As with any tool or technology, it is how these mechanisms are deployed, managed, and policed that can really make the difference when attempting to bring about change.  Taking the initiative to set these policies, put these practices (to store more and print less) into place, and make a conscious effort to help future generations is really the only way we will be able to make a difference.

Document Capture in a Down Economy

Because of the mixed effect of general economic conditions here in the USA many economists and industry analysts have opined that IT spending will continue at a flat rate through 2008, although the majority of IT spending that does occur will be heavily focused on ROI in addition to technologies that address and promote knowledge-worker efficiency.  We see this as a grand opportunity for the document capture, workflow and the document management markets.  As companies continue to focus on reducing costs and invoking parallel cost avoidance measures, so are vendors looking to provide solutions to help companies achieve these goals.  InfoTrends has observed an important trend unfolding in our market and it has to do with the growing interest and activity around the optimization of MFP fleets and the initiation of workflow improvements to increase work efficiency and reduce costs.

 

In our on-going research in this area, we continue to measure companies’ document related output spend and that in  many cases we have observed SMB and enterprise class businesses spending upwards of 6% of their annual overall revenues on document output related activities! InfoTrends believes the first step toward the realization of cost savings can most easily be achieved through managing output spending more effectively via fleet management – Sharing MFP devices and eliminating from the fleet inefficient devices that are costly.  The next step in reducing unnecessary print output and also improving efficiencies is through capture, workflow and document management initiatives.  Interestingly enough, when C-Level executives first experience the savings from both of these initiatives, they are much more inclined than not to act upon these reasons than any other.  In a recent Multi-client study entitled,” Document Assessments and Cost Optimization” InfoTrends found that, on the average, companies that have performed document assessments have saved 15% to 20% on output related costs. Furthermore, 90% of these very same organizations implement strategies and tactics to continuously improve document workflow across the enterprise in their drive toward operational efficiency. When asked “What types of software solutions has your company incorporated in your organization due to implementing document assessment and workflow services?” – The top 2 solutions mentioned were document management/electronic storage and scanning/capture technologies.

Jon K. Reardon - Group Director, InfoTrends

InfoTrends Overview of Document Capture Market

Hello, my name is Jon Reardon and I am the group director of office document technology services for InfoTrends, Inc. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with InfoTrends, we are an industry analyst firm that conducts market research and consulting services in the document imaging industry.

I will be making a daily blog entry on this site for the balance of this week. I will be exploring several topics related to the document capture (scanning) segment of office document solutions. More specifically I will be writing about the drivers of document capture, one per day: economy, environment, mfp influence on distributive capture, and regulatory compliance.

I think it is always important to establish a conceptual framework up front in terms of how InfoTrends views our market here in the U.S. from the perspective of revenue size. Having said that, we forecast the U.S. document solutions market to enjoy a healthy growth, at an aggregated compound annual growth of 27 percent. In terms of revenue dollars, 2006 was sized at approximately $611,000,000 and in 2011 at slightly more than $2,000,000,000! This is quite significant as we only forecast the copier hardware (color & mono; single function and multi-function) market growing at a CAGR of 4.9 percent in revenue over the same forecast period ($12,464,000,000 in 2006 and forecasted to reach $15,800,000,000 in 2011)

Back to the document capture/routing forecast,  InfoTrends reports that this solutions segment will enjoy consistent, healthy growth (CAGR of 28%) over our last five year forecast period (2006-2011).  We have charted revenues of $253,400,000 in 2006 and forecast the market at $855,000,000 in 2011.

Interestingly enough, eCopy is one of the primary document capture leaders here in terms of revenue and licenses sold.

Moving from document capture market size to market trends, at the macro level of the U.S. market, InfoTrends believes:

• That document capture awareness has grown over the last 10 years, where it has moved from a specialty or vertical application to mainstream.
• The document capture pie has grown in overall size.
• That the proliferation of MFP’s delivering simple scanning capabilities has educated the general office worker on the ease and benefits of document capture.
• Document solutions in general are also playing a role in the capture market peaking workgroup’s interest to digitize information.
• Compliance initiatives in certain verticals are also requiring the capture of traditional hardcopy documents. And,
• Scanning is Alive and Kicking! – But, what technology will capture the captured page?

Thank you!

Jon K. Reardon

Group Director, InfoTrends

Four Tips for Document Imaging and SharePoint

"Companies are turning in droves to Microsoft’s SharePoint platform, quickly recognizing the benefits of a system that enables better collaboration and document workflows, and therefore improving information worker productivity and efficiency. However, many processes and workflows require information that’s only available in paper documents."

This is the start of an article this week in WindowsITPro, and is a statement that more and more end user organizations can relate to as they implement SharePoint and face the problem of integrating their paper-based and electronic workflows. Document imaging software – made available to any office worker – is the best solution, but there are many choices of which software to use.

When considering document imaging software for use with Microsoft SharePoint, four considerations can help you make a good decision:

1) The document imaging software should have a zero footprint on the SharePoint server.

2) Look for software that offers out-of-the-box functionality and navigation into your SharePoint environment. Document imaging software should adapt immediately to the environment that you have setup – even if you have done extensive customization to the environment.

3) The document imaging software should offer support for all SharePoint Content Types, Metadata, Workflows (Workflow Foundation Server), etc.

4) Security – The software should match the user authentication and access rights settings that have been set on the SharePoint server. There should be no need to setup separate authentication processes for document imaging.

There are lots of additional resources to learn about document imaging for SharePoint, including archived Webinars and case studies, at this link.