Document Imaging talk

Two Recent Distributed Capture Wins

2008-08-05T16:50:00.000-04:00

Here's one from Kodak with its ScanStation at Kaiser Permamente. What's cool about this is that not only is it a distributed capture win, but it's an installation of multiple networked scanners. Kaiser and the Kodak reseller went with the version of the ScanStation that includes NSi AutoStore, which is a very useful distributed capture software application.

Of course, Oracle, which acquired Web-based capture pioneer Captovation this spring, also recently landed this huge deal with JP Morgan Chase. We're talking potentially 3,000 users by the end of next year. That's clearly starting to get to some of the potential of this stuff.

Ralph

Distributed Capture Best Practices

2008-07-23T08:12:00.001-04:00

The distributed document capture market, despite having been discussed for a very long time, is still very immature. This is my conclusion after doing quite a bit of research on this market over the past couple months. Is there a best practices for distributed capture? I haven't found anything definitive published on the topic.

So, first off, what is distributed capture? Well, it's basically truncating-or electronifying paper documents as far up the workflow chain as possible. This means that if loan applications, for example, are filled out at a branch office of a bank, they are going to be scanned there and sent digitally to loan processing center for approval and archiving. The advantages are that
1. distributed capture can reduce the time it takes to get the paper forms to the loan processing center,
2. it can save money on courier charges if the paper forms were being overnighted,
3. it can reduce the number of documents lost in transit as well as increase security around the transfer of the documents,
4. and it can put data entry related to the loans into the hands of the customer service rep at the branch, who is going to be more invested in the loan than a data entry operator at loan processing center.

Yes, all of these can be advantages, but there are some disadvantages too. For example, do you want your mid-level salaried knowledge workers, like loan officers, doing scanning and data entry when they could be producing more loans?

I guess the reason I haven't really seen a definitive best practices on distributed document capture is because there are so many diverse approaches to it, and to me, this is the sign of an immature market. I think I talked with four vendors in the past two weeks, all of which are promoting and selling distributed capture, but all who are doing it very different ways. Daybreak ICS, for example, uses a client server approach with a universal client for document scanners and customized release scripts from its server into ECM applications. eCopy also has customized release scripts, or "Connectors," as well as a universal interface, but its interface is primarily used on MFPs. Oracle, which acquired Web capture pioneer Captovation in the the spring, has a Web-based client with dedicated release scripts. ImageTag picks up images from a watched folder and files them based on data assigned to a bar-coded tag applied to the document before it's scanned.

All these different approaches lead to different workflows associated with distributed capture. All these vendors have had success, of course, but perhaps one reason the market has not caught fire the way many people are projecting, is because there is no standardized best practices. In other words, there's too much solutions providing/customization going on in the distributed capture space and not enough product sales.

I think some sort of flow-chart/questionnaire for end users with multiple sites is in order.
Any thoughts on this?

Documentum 6.5

2008-07-22T08:42:00.004-04:00

EMC has hit a couple of ECM market hot spots with the latest release of its Documentum ECM platform. Documentum 6.5, which was announced this morning, features improved user interfaces, as well as upgraded transcational content management capabilities.

The two major improvements directly related to document imaging applciations are an improved user interface for the TaskSpace transctional content management (TCM) client and a new Documentum High-Volume Server module.

The High-Volume Server is designed specifically for imaging-intensive applications like transactional content processing and archiving. Basically, it's designed to streamline meta data management to reduce database footprints related to objects like images and e-mails and as a result, improve performance.

"Let's say you're archiving e-mails," explained Andrea Leggett, a senior product marketing manager for EMC. "You don't necessarily need version control and a lot of meta data fields for those files. With Documentum 6.5, we've created a lightweight object model to more efficiently store those files within the High-Volume Server. This can dramatically reduce a user's database footprint and impact their software licensing in a positive way. It helps streamline and optimize file storage and lowers the amount of resources needed to support objects.

"It's also important to note that even though a user might not be utilizing all its object meta data in the High-Volume Server environment, that meta data is not erased. If the users needs to go back and get it for another process downstream, it is still available."

Leggett sees three use cases for the High-Volume Server. "The first is transactional content management, the second is archiving, and the third is being able to efficiently migrate content from other repositories into Documentum," she said.

TaskSpace TCM Client Improvements
Documentum first introduced its TaskSpace TCM client last year with Documentum 6.0. The new version incorporates some of the ease-of-use concepts that are prevelent throughout the release of Documentum 6.5. EMC is actually touting Documentum 6.5 as featuring "Web 2.0" capabilties. "We've embraced some of the consumer technologies that are out in the market and worked on ways to bring them into the enterprise," said Leggett.

One of the Web 2.0 examples that Leggett shared with us was the incorporation of technology similar to an iPod's Cover Flow interface for reviewing documents. "Because users are already comfortable with that interface through their consumer applications, it makes for a smoother adpotion in the enterprise," she said. "For knowledge workers, we've estianmated our improved UI can create a 25-37% improvement in the efficiency in which users can click through content."

Specific to TaskSapce, EMC has introduced integrated high-fidelity forms and monitoring capabilties into the client. "Through the same dashboard used to access transactional content, a user can now also design high-fidelity forms and set up customized monitoring processes," said Chris Preston, senior director, content management and archiving, for EMC.

The high-fidelity forms capability is brand new and enables Documentum 6.5 users to better design electronic forms that have the same look and feel as their paper forms. EMC has also incorporated 2-D bar code capabilities for forms that need to be printed signed and captured. Task-based monitoring has always been available with TaskSpace, but with the new version the design environment is accessible through the standard UI.

"TaskSpace was created as a great out-of-the-box tool for working with transactional documents," said Preston. "We've now added some more rapid application development tools to TaskSpace that will enable our customers to more quickly customize their interfaces."

EMC making the right moves to maintain position as market leader
Overall, we'd say that EMC continues to make great progress in its efforts to maintain its leadership position in the ECM market. Documentum began life years ago as a specialist in electronic document management, but has come a long way in the past five years in the imaging/TCM space, which, thanks to compliance concerns and the realization that paper problems need to be addressed because they aren't going away, has emerged as an important piece of the ECM equation.

EMC's acquisition of Documentum a few years back has really helped accelerate the evolution of the Documentum product line, by providing the company with resources to make strategic acquisitions like the Captiva purchase, as well invest more heavily in internal development. We are very impressed with EMC's stratetic view of the market and the dynamic stategy it has taken to address the evolving and emerging needs of customers, especially at the enterprise level.

Dennis Retires From Visioneer

2008-05-07T09:20:00.000-04:00

We must admit that this announcement caught us a bit by surprise. I mean, by all accounts, Murray Dennis helped turn around Visioneer, from a company caught in a market with rapidly declining sales and margins, to a leader in the emerging market for document scanners. Before going any further, let me first state that I have no insights at the moment was to why Dennis has left Visioneer.

I do know that he has been there a long time. I have him quoted in DIR as far back as 1998, when Visioneer was going through some intense battles over false advertising and intellectual property with its competitors in the consumer scanning market. I remember discussing with Murray Visioneer's planned transition from consumer to document scanners and his guiding it through the ramp-up phase. By all accounts, he was instrumental in Visioneer's brand-licensing deal with Xerox, which the company has always touted as a successful arrangement. Dennis also helped orchestrate the acquisition of JFL Perihperhal Technologies, the TWAIN development specialist that now spearheads Visioneer's OneTouch driver development. And OneTouch has emerged as the future of the company.

Not that there haven't been missteps. The biggest was probably the whole Don McMahan era at Visioneer. While McMahan, who was brought in by Dennis after he abruptly left competitor FCPA, did a lot to increase Visioneer's presence in the market, he left Visioneer after only a year-and-a-half in a less-than-ideal breakup. Visioneer hoped to continue to ride some of the momentum McMahan had created without having him on the payroll, but we're not so sure how well that has worked out. Meanwhile, McMahan has moved to Kodak and is targeting the same sales channels he helped build at Visioneer.

The bottom line is that Dennis in many respects helped make Visioneer what it is today - one of the leading players in the distributed document scanner market, and a company with some intriguing and potentially valuable intellectual property. J. Larry Smart, the long-time Chairman of Visioneer, as well as the owner, is now taking over the reigns as CEO. Smart has been way more than a figurehead over the years, so he knows the market, as well as his company, and we don't expect Visioneer to miss a beat. That said, depending on the reasons for Dennis' departure, we could also see some serious changes as Visioneer, as Smart has a history of success in the technology industry that he fully expects to continue at Visioneer.

Best regards,

Ralph

Kofax Wins IBM ISV Award

2008-03-31T09:48:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Kofax for recently being named IBM's Enterprise Content Management “Independent Software Vendor of the Year” for 2007. Kofax and IBM have been long-time partners, a relationship that was strengthened when IBM acquired FileNet, which has an OEM deal with Kofax. In our upcoming issue of DIR, Kofax CEO Reynolds Bish discusses his plans to increase Kofax's business development efforts, which are designed to improve Kofax's relationships with large ISVs and systems integrators. With Captiva having been acquired by IBM storage rival EMC a few years back, it seems the Kofax-IBM relationship should only get stronger... As for the prospect of IBM acquiring Kofax, let's wait a few years. Kofax has plenty of dance partners, and even though this could potentially create a bidding war, because of the company's relatively low market cap, the current starting price would likely be too low for Kofax's shareholders liking.

OB10, ReadSoft Partner

2008-03-11T12:18:00.000-04:00

Interesting announcement yesterday about a partnership between e-invoicing specialist OB10 and forms processing leader ReadSoft. On the surface, you would think that OB10 would be the competition, as their charter is to reduce the number of paper invoices a vendor is dealing with. By all accounts, they handle this transition pretty well through the creation of what they call "vendor networks." Basically, they attempt to convert the print stream of any invoice output system into an e-invoice that can be integrated with the accounting systems of their vendor customers. Once you become part of their network, and they get used to working with your data streams, the challenge becomes easier.

According to Bob Fresneda, the president of ReadSoft North America, with whom OB10 has formed the partnership, there are still exception processing workflows that need to be executed for e-invoices, and this is where the ReadSoft partnership comes in. Over the past few years, ReadSoft has emerged as a leading vendor of not only automated data capture for invoices, but through a couple of acquisitions, workflow for invoices inside ERP systems from SAP and Oracle. With the OB10 relationship, ReadSoft is evolving further from its origins as a data capture vendor and moving more deeply into the BPM space. This gives brings the company into an additional, but related market, which is typically the most economical way to expand. Look for more BPM-related expansion from ReadSoft in the future.

Ralph

AIIM 2008

2008-03-07T14:52:00.000-05:00

Just returned from our industry's annual technology fest. Unfortunately, it seems the show has turned into more a conference that a true, old-time exhibition. By that I mean, that nobody, but nobody, expects to get a good stack of leads out the event anymore. However, the reviews for the event are by no means all bad. There are still a few good leads that do come out of the event. This makes sense, as we've mentioned with the conference growing consistently, there are more educated, advanced users attending the show, rather than just tire kickers.

However, it did appear that overall attendance numbers were down. The first day, floor traffic seemed healthy, but for whatever reason, momentum didn't carry over into Day 2 (Wednesday). Thursday, of course, you had the usual tumbleweed rolling through the aisles, with the vendors treating the day as a mixer. It's always been my view that they should roll out the cocktails early on Day 3 and really let things fly. It would be interesting to see what kind of partnerships came out of that!

Anyhow. we'll have plenty more on the show in our next couple issues of our newsletter.

Cheers.

Ralph

Captaris-ODT

2007-12-21T15:29:00.000-05:00

Captaris has agreed to acquire Oce Document Technologies (ODT) for some $15 million net, when considering ODT's $29 million in the bank. ODT brings fax-server market leader Captaris some serious document capture technology as it attempts to transition into the world of document capture. We first learned of Captaris' close ties with ODT when discussing a new capture-for-SharePoint module that is being introduced for their RightFax product. [See article in our latest issue.]

The deal also includes Captaris accepting responsibility for some $17 million in retirement and bonus obligations, so it will end up costing Captaris somewhere around $30 million. For this, Captaris' receives a 180-employee company, headquartered in Constance, Germany, with a run-rate of approximately $33 million. This is down from the 300-employee, $40 million company that we reported Oce acquired when it bought CGK in 2000 [see DIR 5/5/00]. Oce, does, however, through ODT's CGK roots, continue to develop some of the premier OCR/ICR technology for data capture on the market. Almost all the market leaders in the IDR and forms processing space utilize ODT's technology. It will be interesting to see how Captaris manages these relationships, while at the same time pursues its own distributed capture initiatives.

In North America, ODT focuses primarily on OEM sales, while in Germany, it has a full-service capture solutions business.

J&B Acquisition

2007-11-26T12:15:00.000-05:00

Payment/remittance processing specialist J&B Software, out of Bala Cynwood, PA was recently acquired by India-based software and services provider 3i Infotech. According to a J&B press release, 3i has $300 million in annual revenue. According to 3i's latest financial report, 31% of the compay's business last quarter was in India, 25% in the U.S., with Western Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific combining fo the remaining 44%.

J&B was founded by Indian-native Bala Balasubramanian, who resigned from the company following the completion of the acquistion.

One thing we will keep an eye on is the relationship between 3i and document and data capture specialist Top Image Systems (TIS). From all accounts, TIS and J&B had been executing fairly successfully on a recently formed partnerhip, which we expect to continue through the acquisition. Looking forther down the road, both TIS and 3i have global ambitions and global infrastructures. We suspect these shared visions could lead to an even tighter relationship.

Cheers.

Ralph

Lawsuits Down

2007-11-21T16:19:00.000-05:00

Using a slower day to go through some back e-mails, I came across this fairly comprehensive summary detailing the results of a survey on corporate legal affairs. Surprisingly, it indicates that lawsuits in 2006-2007 were down from the previous year. The survey was conducted by a law firm, which corresponded with some 250 coroporations.

The summary doesn't speculate that improved RM is one of the reasons for the reduced rate of corporate lawsuits, but findings like, "...81% of U.S. companies said they had reviewed their retention policies over the previous 12 months," indicate to me that better RM might have something to do with it. Another interesitng tidbit I is the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are not having much effect on litigation practices to date. This is something we predicted a couple years ago, as the rules as we read them, didn't seem to have too much teeth.

As I said, the survey summary is fairly lengthy, but it's at least worth giving a cursory read-through. It touches on relevent topics like e-discovery, RM, records retention, and all that good stuff.

Cheers.

Ralph

Visioneer-BBH Scanners Announce Partnership

2007-11-15T16:14:00.000-05:00

Visioneer and Bowe Bell + Howell Scanners have announced a development agreement, which will lead to products early next year. The companies aren't commenting specifically on products yet, but with BBH specializing in the higher end of the market and Visioneer in the distributed side, it definitely makes for some intirguing possibilities. BBH also seems very interested in leveraging Visioneer's OneTouch scanning interface and toolkit for application integration, as well as its Xerox OEM channel. If you take these two companies product lines and channels and combine them together, you have something that can go toe-to-toe against heavyweights FCPA and Kodak. They are also both very close partners with Kofax.

Bish named Dicom CEO

2007-11-05T13:00:00.000-05:00

In a somewhat stunning development, the Dicom Group named Reynolds Bish as CEO this morning. DIR had first suggested this move when Dicom announced it was looking for a CEO late July. Dicom after all has been struggling to get its market capitalization above its annual revenue of $400 million - this despite being fairly conistently profitable and having over $100 million in the bank. Bish built his reputation on raising Captiva's market cap from less than $20 million in 2002 to more than $200 million by the time the company was sold to EMC for $275 million in late 2005.

Part of the problem with Dicom's current valuation on the London Stock Exchange where it primarily trades, may be that the company is still perceived as a distributor of hardware products, a business model that clearly isn't valued very highly by U.K. investors. U.K.-based distribution competitor Headway was recently sold for something like half its annual revenue. As Bish has a background in software, unlike his predecessor as Dicom CEO, Rob Klatell, whose background was closer to distribution, he is a much better choice to distance Dicom from its roots as a hardware distributor.

Dicom broke into the software business in 1999 when it acquired Kofax for $70 million. At the time, Dicom was a $123 million company and Kofax was generating $33 million in annual revenue. Now, software generates approximately 60% of Dicom's revenue, with Kofax's document capture business leading the way. Bish's hiring, and the fact that he will be based in Irvine, the site of Kofax's headquarters, firmly cements Kofax's position, as the crown jewel in the Dicom business portfolio. This is a position its held financially for years. It's good to see Kofax being handed over the adminstrative reins as well.

Check out our exclusive interview with Bish in next week's issue of DIR.

RG

Fujitsu-S300

2007-10-30T16:04:00.000-04:00

Here's a preliminary review of the new Fujitsu S300 mobile scanner. It was announced today and lists for $295, which is slightly less than the Visioneer Strobe XP 300 lists for. Plus the Fujitsu scanner has an ADF. It's got the operating system as ScanSnap, execpt that it doesn't include Adobe Acrobat in the software bundle.

Headway Sold

2007-10-03T10:42:00.000-04:00

European imaging distributer Headway has been sold to U.S.-based Avnet. Looks like they paid less than half of one-time revenue for the division that includes Headway.

Vignette hits bump

2007-10-03T09:27:00.000-04:00

It looks like high-end document imaging/WCM specialist Vignette hit a small bump this quarter. At least they are still making money. I must admit that I was crediting a lot of their recent success to their acquisition of Autstrian imaging power Tower (was it Software or Technology?) and was a bit worried when they started talking about their hopes for next-generation WCM systems to boost revenue in the second half of 2007.

I love the reference to "cloud computing" (which I think is the SaaS model) in this article about Adobe's recent word processing acquisition.

Nuance and Iron Mountain both made recent acqusitions that move them further into the health care vertical. Nuance, which has a very successful speech-to-text business with its Dragon Naturally Speaking product line for medical transcriptions, acquired a medical imagnig (not document imaging) company. Iron Mountain bought on off-site medical records sepcialist. On a somewhat related note, our pediatrician's office is currently moving to an EMR system and actually told my wife they were trying to do more diagnoses on the phone to avoid havnig patients come in during the transition. Of course, our son had a double ear-infection that they couldn't properly diagnose over the phone, so we had to go in a couple days later anyhow. And then they supposedly electronically faxed the perscription to the pharmacy, which never got it, and the pharmacist made some comment along the lines of "that stuff never works when they try it." Oh well, score one (or two I guess) for the luddites.

Ralph

Ralph

Adobe Word Processing

2007-10-01T09:35:00.000-04:00

Adobe is doing some pretty cool stuff to attack Microsoft Office:

From an e-mail I received from their PR agency:
"Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Virtual Ubiquity and its ground-breaking online word processor, Buzzword. The acquisition furthers Adobe's commitment to foster a vibrant ecosystem for rich Internet application (RIA) development that delivers breakthrough experiences built on Adobe AIR. Separately, Adobe added a new file sharing service to its current online document services. Codenamed "Share," the beta service will make it easier than ever for people to share, publish and organize documents online....

"Buzzword, an elegant online word processor, enables individuals to work together to create high quality, page perfect documents. Because it was built with Adobe Flex software and runs in the Adobe Flash Player, Buzzword enables greater document quality, outstanding typography, page layout controls, and robust support for integrated graphics, regardless of the browser or device. The application also will run on Adobe AIR, offering users a hybrid online/offline experience and the ability to work with both hosted and local documents. The powerful collaboration capabilities in Buzzword enable multiple authors to edit and comment on documents from anywhere, at anytime, while document creators can set permissions that virtually eliminate version control chaos. For more information on the acquisition and access to Buzzword beta software, please visit http://www.adobe.com/go/buzzwordfaq....

"Adobe also made available today a free online document sharing service, codenamed "Share." Users simply select the documents they want to share, send a message to recipients, and set whether the files will be publicly accessible or restricted. Built with Adobe Flex technology, the rich interface provides a smooth experience, integrating simple workflows to upload and share documents with high quality online previews to speed up finding the right document. Additionally, the beta will include a set of REST APIs to let developers create mash-ups with their applications, including storing and accessing files, as well as creating thumbnails and Flash-based previews of documents. People can learn more about the service and sign-up for access at http://www.adobe.com/go/labs_share."

ACS SharePoint

2007-09-26T10:26:00.000-04:00

ACS is entering the SharePoint customization business. SharePoint is an interesting ECM framework, but definitely creates some opportunities for development work on top of it. It kind of opens things up a bit in this market, making pricing/solutions delivery a bit more flexible. Would a user rather pay for services associated with Sharepoint or more developed ECM software from more traditonal vendors?

Procure-to-pay, order-to cash

2007-09-25T11:58:00.000-04:00

For the past couple weeks, I've been trying to get my arms around the whole concept of procure-to-pay and order-to-cash and understand how capture, document imaging, and workflow can be used to increase efficiencies across the board and tie all these things together.

Had a great conversation recently with Mark Fairchild, a senior VP at BancTec, who explained how these elements can be employed in a shared services-type environment to maximize a user's investments in document imaging technology.

Indicative of the potential of this type of deployment for capture vendors are three recent deals announced by Top Image Systems (TIS) through its partnership with J&B Software. TIS is an Israel-based forms processing specialist and J&B is a Philly-area remittance/payments specialist. The impressive thing about these deals from the TIS perspective is their size, which averages $300,000 per installation. These are not just payment processing customers adding a little bit of forms technology to round out their solutions. These guys are obviously doing some pretty heavy duty capture.

We will continue to provide you with coverage on this emerging market for document imaging technology.

Ralph

SharePoint 2008 Show

2007-09-24T14:19:00.000-04:00

Somebody recently pointed to us that Microsoft has a big SharePoint event scheduled the same time as AIIM 2008. Bill Gates is supposed to speak at this thing. Based on all attention that Microsoft and SharePoint received at AIIM 2007, this seems like an unfortunately coincidence. It is a conincidence, isn't it?

Ralph

Xerox Color; Open Text invoices

2007-09-24T13:30:00.000-04:00

Xerox announced its latest color printing products today, which are being advertised as having the same cost over of ownership as comparable black-and-white models. The printers rely on the solid-ink sticks that Xerox has been developing for some five years. As with any first-generation product, we'll keep our fingers crossed as to how well these work out and how fast they are adopted, but we've always said that more affordable color printing will lead to more color scanning and the chance to apply more advanced compression technology to document images. Sounds like fun.

Open Text has introduced an updated version of its Vendor Invoice Management software for managing the workflow of invoices in an SAP environment. We've been doing a lot of coverage on invoice processing lately, and ReadSoft, the leading vendor in the invoice capture space, noted that it find itself most often competing with Open Text, as the companies go toe-to-toe for SAP-related business. ReadSoft bought a team of SAP workflow specialists last year and offers a product that competes directly with Open Text's VIM system. ReadSoft is enjoying great success in the this market, and it sounds like Open Text is doing okay as well. As we noted in our past issue, invoice processing has always been a good market for doucment imaging/workflow systems, and now advanced capture methods appear to be taking it to the next level.

Cheers.

Ralph

Invoice processing

2007-09-20T20:14:00.000-04:00

We did a great couple issues recently on the state of the invoice processing market. We learned all sorts of neat things, from vendors who were very forthcoming with information. If you're interested in taking a look at our study, please get in touch with me.

Here's little bit of what we wrote that we've posted on our VAR Page.

Thanks.

Ralph

Automated book scanning made easy

2007-09-14T14:33:00.000-04:00

For those of you who thought this was so hard...

Xerox Buys eMortgage specialist

2007-09-12T12:02:00.000-04:00

This is kind of cool. It seems Xerox is buying a business that specializes in electronic mortgage processes. I guess it goes along with their DocuShare technology, in that it's designed to replace paper-driven processes, wiht electronic ones.

ROCHESTER, N.Y., and ATLANTA, Sept., 12, 2007 – Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) plans to buy Advectis®, Inc. for $32 million. Advectis is the provider of one of the mortgage industry’s most widely-used solutions for electronic document collaboration.
Xerox’s expertise in document outsourcing and services led the company to Advectis, a privately-owned business based in Atlanta. In a predominately paper-based industry, Advectis’ Web-based BlitzDocs Collaboration Suite helps lenders, brokers and investors manage the process needed to underwrite, audit, collaborate, deliver and archive loan documents electronically. Taking paper out of the process, the BlitzDocs® patented technology helps users reduce costs associated with the lending process, deliver better service, decrease credit risk by improving documentation processes and build a competitive advantage in capturing new loan applications.
“Anyone who has ever bought a home knows that the mortgage business is dependent on paper. Filling out an extensive number of forms is time and labor-intensive work,” said John Kelly, president, Xerox Global Services North America. “We’re looking to help clients reduce costs and transform their business by offering a better experience for both end-users and operations. Xerox’s expertise in automating document processes is an ideal fit with Advectis’ BlitzDocs paperless solution for mortgages. In an industry that is ripe for change, Advectis offers technology that improves productivity for its users while giving lenders better control of their processes.”
According to Craig Focardi, research area director for the retail banking practice of research firm TowerGroup, “Enterprise content management systems are reducing the great paper chase in loan origination, where a lender controls the paper loan file and manually redistributes documents multiple times to multiple parties. Lenders are increasingly adopting document imaging and electronic content management as a major area of cost savings, faster loan processing and improved customer service.”
The amount of paper associated with this industry leads to inefficient processes which, best case, are productivity drains and, worst case, can lead to a loss of control in the quality of the loans. TowerGroup estimates document management costs in loan origination totaled $3.2 billion last year.
A BlitzDocs electronic loan folder mirrors the paper loan folder used today but improves efficiencies in the loan cycle, allowing mortgage participants to view and process online documents anytime, anywhere. Clients benefit from a network with more than 35,000 broker shops, the top seven mortgage insurance companies and four of the top due diligence providers.
“With this acquisition, Advectis is positioned to create even stronger offerings, services and technologies for our clients,” said Greg Smith, co-founder and chief executive officer of Advectis. “Partnering with Xerox makes perfect sense for the future of our business. Our combined expertise and resources means increased collaboration and decreased loan processing costs for BlitzDocs users.”
Advectis was founded in 2000 and currently employs about 41 people, most of whom are based at the company’s headquarters in Atlanta. Upon completion of the acquisition, all employees are expected to join Xerox. Smith will remain head of the organization, reporting to Kelly.
Xerox’s all-cash purchase of Advectis also includes an additional performance-based supplement to the sale price. The acquisition is expected to close in the next 30 days, subject to customary closing conditions.
Xerox’s industry-leading document technology and services portfolio includes consulting and outsourcing services, records management, digital imaging, e-discovery for litigation support and managed services in more than 160 countries.
Through its acquisition strategy, Xerox is identifying successful companies whose offerings align with Xerox’s commitment to innovation and reducing the complexity of document management. Last year, Xerox acquired Amici LLC, a leading provider of electronic-discovery services, primarily supporting litigation and regulatory compliance, and XMPie, which provides variable information software for the graphic arts and marketing industries.

Kofax

2007-09-10T15:21:00.000-04:00

Yes, we've been giving Kofax a hard time lately because of its constant reorganizations and lackluster financial results. However, a couple press releases from last week indicate some of the potential that the capture marketshare leader has for turning things around. The first involved an invoice processing win and the second a significant distributed capture win. These are the two hottest segments within the document capture space, and Kofax conceivably could be a powerhouse in both areas - not something too many vendors can claim.

Cheers.

Ralph

HSA 2007

2007-09-07T06:03:00.000-04:00

Just wrapping up Harvey Spencer's annual capture conference up here in Long Island. Another solid event. Speakers included Harvey, the head of technology from the State of West Virginia, a woman from Verizon's billing department, Prascilla Emery, and several others. I moderated a panel on the "next generaiton of distributed scanning," which I feel includes embedded apps, in MFPs and network scanners, as well as "single-button" functionaliy like Visioneer's OneTouch. These types of apps are tied together by the fact that they are designed to be easier to use than traditional scanning apps, and they also have an element of pull vs. push scanning. In other words, you can use them to launch some sort of enterprise/network driven workflow. I guess the Kofax DSS box also falls into this categorey. Anyhow, we had a bit of a tough time tying together the connection between scanners and digital copiers, but it's my believe that end users want one capture system they can run across both types of devices and that can be administered centrally. Call me crazy, but that's what I'd like to see delivered. I think middleware providers and eCopy and NSi can already deliver such a thing, so I guess there's hope, but the hardware vendors seem clueless as to this desire for a single, mixed environment hardware approach.

Anyhow, here's a list of some of the companies represented at the event:A2iA; Abbyy; Anydoc; Anacomp; Anoto; Autonomy/Cardiff, Banctec; Bell & Howell, Brainware; Captaris; Captovation; DataCap; DataIntro; Dicom/Kofax; eCopy; EMC/Captiva, Epson; Fairfax Imaging; HP; IBM; IBML; Iron Mountain; J&B Software, Kodak; Mitek; NCS/Pearson; Nuance; NSI; ODT; Omtool; Opex; Paradatec; PDI; Top Image Systems, and Visioneer. It's a great place for networking if you're looking to partner with these types of businesses.

Cheers. (Got to go grab my coffee now.)

Ralph