Document Imaging Blog

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!