Document Imaging Blog

Partner Ecosystems and the Customer

Jeff Shuey, who writes a great blog about the intersection of People and Process, made a very important comment in a recent post about Microsoft partners. Talking about how each partner in an ecosystem benefited (revenue wise) from the ecosystem, he noted one of the primary benefits of ecosystems for customers:

 

"…customers can take comfort in the knowledge that the partner ecosystem will be there to support them. Note that I said the 'ecosystem' – I did not say the specific partners. A vibrant partner ecosystem allows the mix of partners to change over time to meet the ever changing needs of the customer."

 

This is in reference to Microsoft, but it applies to the Document Imaging ecosystem as well. Hardware manufacturers, ISVs, VARs, Office Equipment Dealers and Systems Integrators all sit in the ecosystem, and can all benefit from working together. But rarely do the ecosystem pieces remain static at a customer. MFP vendors change on a regular basis as leases expire. New software applications are consistently being rolled out. And the VARs, dealers and SIs that sell and support these systems change with them.

 

In the Microsoft world, Microsoft sits at the center of the ecosystem as the glue. Choose to work with Microsoft, and you also get the benefit of working with their ecosystem. With Document Imaging, that glue is an open platform that lets any scanning device (MFPs and scanners) connect to any software application. Add some Xerox devices to a Canon environment? – no problem. Decide to roll-out SharePoint to supplement OnBase and Documentum? No need to change how you handle the problem of getting paper into those systems.

 

Ecosystems are an essential ingredient in delivering customer-focused solutions. And they help drive standards. And, they present revenue opportunities for all the partners involved. It’s no wonder that Microsoft spends so much money on building theirs!

Moving Down the Paperless Trail

"It's cheaper, it's easier, it gives you and your employees more flexibility, your savvier competitors are doing it, and since it requires flexibility it gives small businesses an advantage over large ones."

Wow...that's a pretty compelling argument. What's it about? It's Slate.com's BizBox's description of "going electronic" in an article summarizing an interview that fellow blogger and eCopy employee, Bill Brikiatis, did with Forbes.

The full article provides lots of good information for companies to consider when working to reduce the amount of paper in their work environment, but here's a few high-level takeaways that BizBox called out to backup their statement above:

1. Electronic is faster
2. The transition away from paper requires institutional flexibility, and that gives small businesses a leg up over big ones
3. At this point, being primarily paper-based is inefficient, because everyone's already partly electronic-based
4. Don't forget security

All good arguments for why to move towards a paperless environment. Are you working on a paperless initiative? Tell us how you are going about it and how you are justifying your initiatives!

Kick the Tires on Document Imaging Solutions

eCopy is hosting a free, one-day conference where business and IT professionals can learn more about document imaging solutions. eCopy Discovery Day takes place on October 9 in Boston. 

The conference will provide an excellent venue for organizations with existing or planned document imaging projects. Not only does the day include educational sessions but it also has an exhibit pavilion where all participating vendors are available for individual consultations.

Here’s an opportunity to discuss your organization’s specific document imaging requirements with companies such as eCopy, EMC, Canon, HP, Microsoft, Ricoh and others. The exhibit pavilion will have more than 50 software products integrated with the top MFP and scanner brands, allowing you to see these solutions in action.

The conference takes place at the Westin Copley Place Hotel in Boston. Attendance is free with advance registration and walk-ins will be charged $50.

Ricoh, IKON and Document Imaging

Ricoh’s announcement this week that they will be acquiring IKON is big news in the office equipment industry and certainly is spurning lots of questions about the impact on MFP manufacturers, their sales channels, and customers. Let’s take a look at what this means for users of document imaging software:

1) This is the third acquisition of a large office equipment dealer. First, Xerox purchased Global Imaging Systems. Then, in April, Konica Minolta purchased Danka. And now, Ricoh purchased IKON. And many smaller office equipment dealers have been purchased by a variety of MFP manufacturers. We are certainly seeing a trend here.

2) There is likely to be more consolidation in the MFP industry because margins are shrinking and there are simply too many players.

3) If you are a customer of document imaging software that is used in conjunction with office equipment, it is more important than ever to invest in software that supports multiple platforms (vendors) so that you are protected from these events.

We have often talked on this blog of the importance of using document imaging software that works across multiple brands and types of scanning devices. This trend of acquisitions is another proof point for that message. As we noted in our blog post following the Danka acquisition, platform agnostic software is required if you want to make sure that you are not locked into a particular brand of MFP.

If you have any questions or comments about this acquisition, or its impact on you, please post a comment.

Protecting Security at Your Document Hub

Document imaging makes it possible to integrate paper documents with existing workflow processes and business applications, e.g. e-mail, fax, and electronic document management systems. But before introducing paper into electronic-based processes, you want to be sure that document imaging is safe and document integration secure.

Whenever shared office scanners and MFPs connect to a computer network, security is a primary concern. To help companies understand some of the security concerns, Ed Schmid, eCopy’s CEO, put together the following tips on security at MFPs for Business Week’s Tip of the Day.

a. User Authentication. MFPs can be set to require network passwords, a basic level of access control that prevents non-employees from using the MFP and ensures asset control.

b. Permissions Authentication. Require users to enter passwords to gain access to specific business applications from the MFP, just as if they were entering from a PC.

c. Document Encryption. Applying document encryption at the MFP helps safeguard confidential information before it is transmitted across the network.

d. Delete Temporary Files. Most MFPs automatically keep a record of files that have recently been scanned. If these temporary files are left on the MFP, sensitive information can be accessed by unauthorized users. Set up your device to delete these files automatically.

e. Activity Tracking. MFPs can be set up to create audit trails that can identify who sent what document, where, and at what time.

For the full Business Week article, click here.  Or, for more in depth information, download the white paper “Addressing Document Security Issues”.

MFP SDKs –Survival of the Fittest for ISVs

Brian Bissett, in his most recent MFP Report newsletter, covered recent developments in MFP SDKs from HP, Canon and Sharp, as well as the eCopy SDK. In the article, he noted that there is a lot of advancement in MFP SDKs happening, but that there are some significant challenges ahead for ISVs in terms of writing to MFP platforms:

“Expensive MFP software development endeavors with multiple MFP partners and the need to navigate increasingly complex partner programs are together setting the stage for a financial survival-of-the-fittest battle among ISVs in the MFP world. The likely survivors will be among those early developers who’ve already achieved a critical mass of MFP software revenues across multiple vendors.”

This is troubling…especially as more and more ISVs and corporate developers seek to connect their applications with MFPs and other scanning devices in order to get the information that is trapped on paper into digital form and into their electronic workflows. One solution for them is to write to a document imaging platform such as eCopy ShareScan, allowing them to use a single platform to connect to any piece of hardware – regardless of device brand or type. This hardware agnostic approach is also far more aligned with end users organizations, which typically are not tied to a specific brand of MFP or scanning device.

As Brian also pointed out in his article, this approach has gained a lot of traction to date.

“Although eCopy is not an MFP vendor, its ShareScan software integrates with more third-party applications and has a greater user footprint than any specific MFP vendor has with its own software. In fact, it is quite possible that ShareScan has more connectors and market presence than all of the MFP vendors’ software platforms combined.”

Beyond the need to write to a single platform, I also covered some of the other factors that ISVs use in choosing a development partner in an earlier post. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on other factors as well.

Content Management, Document Imaging and ROI

Thank you Peter Hagopian, for expanding the reach of the eDOC Magazine article “Making a Case for Content Management” in InformationWeek’s Content Management Blog. Numbers always make for a compelling story, and the City of Torrance is a terrific example of how removing inefficiencies from document workflows can have a major impact. A $500,000 annual return on a $100,000 investment is tremendous – and is especially nice to see when taxpayer money is impacted!

A big reason that the City of Torrance was able to get this level of ROI from their solution (eCopy, Rainmaker & Interwoven) was due to the fact that they identified document imaging as a core part of their content management solution. Falling into the trap of implementing a document or content management system to handle electronic documents but ignoring the amount of paper that exists in an organization is a sure way to see diminishing returns on that system.

The paperless office is still only a vision, and paper continues to be an important business tool. The challenge, perhaps, is not to create a paperless office, but to create an office where paper and digital documents are woven together in an efficient, cost-effective and easy-to-use workflow that revolutionizes the way people work. This is what the City of Torrance has done to great success by including document imaging as part of their content management solution.  To read more about their success, download the case study.

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.

Distributed Capture Platforms

Frost & Sullivan has released a new white paper: “Distributed Capture Platforms: Reducing Costs, Removing Bottlenecks and Mitigating Risk”. It provides a great overview of distributed capture, the opportunities that it presents across multiple industries and challenges that may face. In full disclosure, eCopy co-sponsored this report with EMC. Download the report here.

A particular phrase within the report struck a chord with me.

“Regardless of why a distributed workforce exists, the use of distributed capture technology can help ensure employees in decentralized settings are successful.”

A distributed workforce no longer just the realm of the sales team and a few specified industries like retail and banking. The fact is -- when considering how to capture paper – if that paper has to be moved from its point of origin than a distributed workforce exists and there is an opportunity for distributed capture.

If you are heading to EMC World in a couple of weeks, be sure to stop by the eCopy booth (#323), the EMC booth (#425) or the Burntsand booth (#413) to chat about distributed capture and how the three companies can combine to deliver a powerful distributed capture solution.

AIIM Webinar Q&A – Part 4

Time to answer the last question posed during the April 9th AIIM webinar, Document Imaging for Microsoft-Driven Organizations. If you missed the webinar, a recording is available on our Website.  And please post a comment to this blog post if you have further questions that you would like me to answer. I’m happy to keep this Q&A going as long as the questions come in!

Our final question is around document services and came in from an IT executive at a professional services company. He asks:

Does eCopy have the ability, when dealing with a common document format to, while scanning the doc, pull data in certain areas for OCR, then using that data for naming, routing, or storing metadata in a database?

Yes and no. eCopy ShareScan comes bundled with an OCR engine for full text indexing and search purposes. For example, a document can be OCRd during the scanning process to create a searchable PDF for improved search and retrieval from databases or back end application. Our product does not automatically extract portions of data (i.e. zonal OCR) for purposes of indexing and routing. However, eCopy ShareScan is an open development environment with a published API and document services interface. Through this services interface, capabilities such as metadata extraction, barcode recognition, and image compression and cleanup can be easily added. For example, one of eCopy’s partners, I.R.I.S., has used the SDK to offer a set of document services for ShareScan.

Thanks again for all the great questions around document imaging & Microsoft. And please, if you have any other questions, please post them as a comment to the blog.

Bill DeStefanis
Director of Product Management