Document Imaging Blog

MFPs and Network/Data Security

I wanted to pass along a link to a great article on MFPs and security in Computer Technology Review, written by Sharp's Vince Jannelli.  It is a very succint and well-written summary of security concerns around  MFPs and I agree with nearly everything in it.

However, I want to address the following statment that Vince made in relation to platform virus security:

"A proprietary platform is idea, since it won't be susceptible to viruses designed to attack more popular oprating systems available on personal computers."

I don't dispute the statement. But, it is important to weigh the trade offs between a proprietary platform and an open platform. While the risk of viral attack is lower because it is unlikely hackers will develop malicious code aimed at proprietary MFP platforms, the costs of managing those proprietary platforms are significant -- particularly for those companies that have mixed fleets (brands) of MFPs.

This problem is becoming more apparant as MFPs increasingly fall into the realm of IT and become increasingly integrated into business and IT infrastuctures. Some costs of proprietary platforms include:

• IT Training and Staffing costs
• Limited options fo 3rd party integrations (ISVs resist developing on proprietary  platforms unless that platform has a significant majority of marketshare)
• Integration code isn't portable to other platforms (what happens if you switch brands, or acquire a brand through M&A, etc.)

Furthermore, there are open platform solutions on the market today for MFPs that are secure and meet the criteria that Vince laid out for solutions: data security, access control, audit trails, network security, fax security and platform virus security. To read more about how these and other security concerns are addressed in an open platform, check out the white paper, Addressing Document Imaging Security Issues.

 

 

LegalTech Keynote on e-Discovery and Imaging

During yesterday's LegalTech keynote given by Fred Borchardt, a Partner at KPMG for 25 years, Mr. Borchardt talked about how law firms need to shift their e-Discovery strategy "to the left" in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) and take a more proactive approach to information management.  In the same speech he also mentioned how prevalent paper remains within the legal industry. 

 

 

Given the prevalence of paper in law firms, moving leftward in the reference model means law firms should scan paper documents and convert them into searchable text as early as is practicable.  The workhorse of printing and copying in many legal firms, the MFP, when outfitted with intelligently integrated scanning and OCR software will play a vital role in making this shift in electronic legal records management a reality.

Automating Document-Centric Processes with SharePoint

We’re excited to be sponsoring tomorrow’s AIIM Webinar, "Automating Document-Centric Processes with SharePoint” and presenting with Mauro Cardarelli, author of Essential SharePoint 2007: Delivering High Impact Collaboration. I’ve had a sneak peak into the content of the Webinar, and it promises to be full of practical advice for those looking to automate common paper-based processes.

One of the interesting pieces of information that Mauro will share is the difference between “automation” and “invention” in terms of business processes, which is more appropriate for paper-based processes, and what processes are good candidates for SharePoint.  In addition, eCopy’s Greg Gies will be sharing advice on the best practice approaches for integrating paper-based content into SharePoint using document imaging.

We hope you can join us for this Webinar. You can register here.

SharePoint and Document Imaging: Five Considerations

If you have -- or are planning to deploy -- SharePoint in your organization and are looking for a way to add paper-based information to the system (and why wouldn’t you!), here are five considerations to take into account when choosing a document imaging solution.

Consideration #1 – Paper connectivity should not require major IT involvement.
In many organizations, SharePoint projects are departmentalized and are outside of the domain of IT. In fact, according to AIIM’s 2008 State of the ECM Industry, only 42% of SharePoint projects have a formal plan that involved IT. Therefore, your capture integration with SharePoint should be virtually “plug and play” and should not require any modifications to the SharePoint server.

Consideration #2 – Are SharePoint project teams outside your firewall?
Do any of your SharePoint applications include non-employees, suppliers, outside counsel, consultants, customers, etc.? Do these individuals need to be able to access paper-based content within SharePoint?

Consideration #3 – Are hosted SharePoint services in your future?
Will your document imaging solution support a hosted environment?  Also consider image size of scanned documents. What file types are needed and supported? How is image compression handled? And ensure that encrypted transmission is supported.

Consideration #4 – Is real-time integration with SharePoint supported?
Does the capture solution recognize changes on the SharePoint site, such as updated or deleted folders and libraries? Does the document imaging solution provide an immediate confirmation of a successful scanning job? Does it support authenticated access to prevent information from being stored to unauthorized locations?

Consideration #5 – Is the document imaging application flexible and does it support multiple workflows?
Especially when scanning unstructured content (which makes up a large portion of content stored in SharePoint), the imaging application should allow the office worker scanning a document to browse destinations for the document within SharePoint, just like they were using their Web browser at their desk.  The application should also allow for pre-configured “QuickScan” jobs too, for easy execution of repetitive workflows. In addition, all SharePoint content types should also be supported so that paper content can be properly turned into electronic files.

What other considerations have you come up with when considering document imaging solutions for SharePoint?

If you would like more information on how to use SharePoint to help manage document-centric processes and how to include paper-based information into SharePoint, join us next Wednesday for the AIIM Webinar on the topic. Register for this free event here.

Deliver Fast ROI via Document Imaging

With the end of the year approaching and a weakening economic forecast, there is a lot of talk right now about the IT forecasts for the coming year. A recent AIIM survey of end users found that 42% or organizations see hard dollar ROI as "more" or "much more" important than 12 months ago. On a positive note, the same survey showed that only 27% of organizations expect IT spending to decrease.

I’m certainly biased, but this news is encouraging for the document imaging space. Why? It is a technology that delivers fast, demonstratable ROI in a number of ways. Just a few examples:

1. Cuts operating costs – hard dollars are recovered by lowering the costs of resources, materials, courier and fax charges, and storage related to paper processes
2. Increases worker efficiencies – replacing manual, labor-intensive and error-prone paper-based processes with electronic workflows allows you to get more value from your existing employees, reducing the need for expanding your workforce
3. Leverage your IT systems – businesses aren’t fully benefiting from software investments because information/data that exists in paper form isn’t being processed as quickly or securely as the information that resides in those systems.

As these examples show, document imaging ROI is typically process-oriented. But BPM and other process automation methods and technologies are at risk of being put on hold due to tightened budgets and a track record of taking a long time to implement and even longer time to demonstrate ROI. Maybe this year is not the time to undertake a corporate-wide BPM project. But it is definitely the year to look at eliminating paper from typical business processes such as invoice processing, expense reporting, purchase orders, employee on-boarding, recruitment, contract management, loan processing and so on. More examples are available here.

If you can demonstrate immediate ROI by using document imaging to improve business processes by integrating paper into electronic workflows this year, it will go a long way towards a successful business process management initiative in the future.

Food for thought...

A colleague sent me this photo and note this week, which I thought would be fun to post to the blog to hopefully spur some conversation:

"Am I the only one who thinks there's something wrong with this picture?  Isn't it ironic that as readily as we accept that knowledge workers still use manila envelopes to send a piece of paper to a co-worker downstairs, we accept the fact that technology has evolved to a point where 500,000 times more computing power than what was needed to put Apollo astronauts into outerspace orbit can now be housed in a device that is less than 1 inch thick and 3 pounds in weight? It seems to me that the efficiencies, cost savings and the reduction of risk through eliminating the movement of billions of pages of paper between departments is lower hanging fruit than the mobility gained by eliminating less than one half of one inch from a laptop computer?"

In that light, here are some questions for CEOs, CFOs and CIOs to ponder...

• How much did your company spend on upgrading laptop computers last year?
• How many reams of paper and how much did you spend on ink for your copiers last year?
• How many interoffice envelopes did you buy last year?
• On average how many hops do important business documents make and how much time do they spend in an interoffice envelope before they're archived?
• Once its archived, are you confident you'll be able to locate it again, and if so, in a timely manner?
• If the information in the document is important enough to be hand delivered, don't you think that your business might benefit by securing and accelerating this process?"

Now remind yourself...How much did your company spend on upgrading laptop computers last year...and what was the benefit to your company?

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.

Enterprise Search, “Findability” and Document Imaging

Enterprise search has been getting a lot of play lately, and for good reason. AIIM is about to publish its Market Intelligence Report on Findability and, among the findings, reported that 49% of survey respondents “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that it is a difficult and time consuming process to find the information they need to do their job. And, 69% of respondents believe that only 50% or less of their organization’s information is searchable online.

Considering that the Internet and Google have spoiled us to the point that we expect to be able to find information on anything within seconds, enterprise search is clearly a technology issue that is rising on the priority list of IT departments. But, you may ask, enterprise search technology pertains to electronic information…so how does this relate to document imaging?

Well, we believe that the rising focus on enterprise search will result in a growing demand for front-office document capture and imaging. In today’s world, the vast majority of paper documents are still scanned using centralized and/or production procedures – a back-office function. The scanning is done at the end of the business process and is driven primarily by archiving, records management, legal, or storage space saving initiatives.

Enterprise search -- and the above mentioned pain of employees need to find the information needed to do their job – is driving the need to capture these paper documents earlier on in business processes and document workflows. Paper is not going away and the information that resides on paper is just as important to employees as electronic information. The solution to this is giving front-office workers the capability to scan paper documents – and make them searchable – as soon as they enter into an organization.

As we have discussed numerous times, scanning hardware is already available to front-office workers through MFPs, networked scanners and desktop scanners. But simply scanning a document and saving it as a PDF to a network drive only moves the “findability” problem from a stack of paper to the “digital landfill”. Empower your users to make scanned documents searchable, however, and you will be contributing to an enterprise search solution.

Among many considerations, there are two core features that you should be looking for in document imaging software to help get paper-based information into searchable form:

• OCR – Optical character recognition technology – available either at the scanning device or at the desktop following scanning – will identify characters on the scanned document and convert them to a computer language that can be accessed by search technology.
• Indexing/Metadata Entry – The document imaging software should either give users the ability to add metadata and taxonomy to documents (such as document types, subjects, client codes, keywords, etc.), and/or add that metadata automatically to scanned documents (such as date, the person who scanned the document, etc.). With this metadata stored as an XML file in conjunction with the scanned image, the document is easily located by search technology.

If you can reach a point where information from both electronic and paper-based sources is searchable online, the “findability” problem will start to lessen.

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!

AIIM Webinar Q&A -- Part 2

I’m back again with more Q&A from last week’s AIIM Webinar, Document Imaging for Microsoft-Driven Environments”. In part one of this series; I covered questions primarily dealing with the process for ensuring proper indexing of documents in a distributed environment. Today, I’m going to address a couple of questions around the topic of MFPs, or multifunction peripherals.

The first question is around the operating environments of MFPs:

How soon do you foresee having a large number of Web services enabled MFPs in the market?

Well, today approximately 9 million (laser) MFPs are put into the market each year and a growing number of those will have a Web services operating environment. A few vendors, such as Xerox, Sharp and Toshiba, are shipping devices with these environments today. But even with that being the case, the main challenges for the ISV community remains that while each of these are Web services based, they still remain different -- and proprietary -- development environments.  The ideal for the ISV community would be a single, “standard” Web services based development environment. Unfortunately, that is not the development landscape available from the MFP vendors today.  What is available are document imaging platforms like eCopy’s, which works on all of the major MFP and scanner brands and provides a single development environment (SDK) from which ISVs and end users can connect to a variety of MFPs.

Today’s second question is about whether MFPs are appropriate for processing back files, and asks, “this can’t really be done on an MFP?”

Agreed, that is not what MFPs are designed to do.  MFPs are great capture environments for low-volume document scanning by office workers.  Back file scanning is task that is best suited for high-speed, high volume scan operations with a dedicated scanning professional. One thing to think about however, is if “one-off” documents enter the organization that would need to be added to an archive. In those cases, the ability to have an office worker scan that document to the archive at a later date using an MFP can be beneficial. So, it is not so much that it can not be done on an MFP, but there are certainly processes that are better suited for other scanning processes.

I’ll be back later this week with some questions around scanning documents into SharePoint.

Bill DeStefanis
Director of Product Management