|
In June, Quality Associates Inc. held its 2nd annual User Conference in the heart of Washington, D.C. at the Academy for Educational Development conference center near Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. The event brought together public and private sector professionals, who came to learn firsthand about many of the newest, most advanced solutions that the content management industry has to offer. Speakers included principals and representatives from leading solutions vendors Fujitsu, Visioneer, Daybreak, Kodak, Kofax, Adobe, Hummingbird, and Captaris, as well as Quality Associates professionals.
After the welcome and opening remarks from QAI’s Scott Swidersky, Director, Information Systems Division, Scott welcomed Pam Doyle of Fujitsu, who gave a presentation covering trends and drivers in enterprise content management.
Doyle explained the need for ECM solutions: “Companies have been given several directives—to do more with less, to increase efficiency, and decrease storage requirements. To gain competitive advantage, businesses must manage customer information more efficiently and increase customer service.”
According to Doyle, today’s businesses require version control of documentation, must establish and maintain an audit trail, and enable controlled access to content. Attendees were shown how the deployment of distributed content reduces courier fees, and how forward-thinking organizations will begin to use the new “PDF/A” format for archival materials, which will ensure that current files can be accessed by future users.
Nick Caruso of Kofax demonstrated auto-clustering, which is the ability of a program to recognize and sort forms—with near-perfect accuracy—based on their structure and format. As part of the demonstration, Caruso selected a member of the audience to sort, by type, more than 100 documents. The Kofax solution finished within seconds, while the participant—despite being given a head start—could only complete a small portion of the assignment.
Outside the main presentation hall, attendees had the opportunity to see personalized, hands-on solutions demonstrations at several table top displays. “Unlike traditional demonstrations that are often only available at large trade shows and conferences, our event is designed to give attendees the chance to experience a variety of solutions in a relaxing, unhurried and individualized way,” said Amy Knight, QAI’s marketing manager.
Rusty James of Visioneer and Kara Cleaver of Daybreak gave a joint presentation on the eCapture for eRoom Software Scanning Solution. e4e features a one-touch interface that enables documents to be scanned directly into a virtual eRoom, where the documents can then be organized, archived, and easily searched and accessed by authorized users in remote locations.
Cleaver explained how this technology is helping many businesses to manage the volume and variety of incoming paper documents. By adopting advanced document management solutions, business leaders can streamline their business processes and reduce the expense of maintaining paper documents.
Despite the advances in electronic document management, our society continues to be largely dependent on paper archives. In fact, there are 4.5 billion boxes of paper files stored in North America alone, according to Joe Kelley of Munter’s Moisture Control Services. Kelley’s informative presentation of paper drying techniques, such as desiccant air drying and vacuum freeze drying, showed how businesses can salvage documents damaged during floods. To minimize future damage, Kelley explained that any company that archives paper files must have a disaster mediation plan in place before a disaster strikes.
QAI’s Greg Chalmers provided an overview of the latest check imaging solutions, which are moving to the forefront with the passage of the Check 21 Act—federal legislation authorizing financial institutions to exchange images of checks instead of paper checks.
Chalmers explained how businesses benefit by using Kodak’s solutions to automate check capturing and processing, which enables same-day deposits and payments for a process that can normally take up to five days. Today, businesses, banks and other organizations are adopting automated check imaging processes to both accelerate their cash flow and reduce operational cost and error.
“The greatest benefit offered by check imaging solutions is faster access to funds,” said Chalmers. “By completing same-day transactions, companies are enabling increased cash flow, spotting fraudulent checks faster, and collecting on returned checks more quickly. They also are eliminating the labor and maintenance costs associated with bundling and transporting paper checks, and improving overall customer service.”
Lee Sutton of Adobe showed how the software leader is bridging the gap between paper and digital processes with recent advances in barcode technology. While the data contained within forms once had to be manually entered into a computer, the latest PDF forms now include dynamic barcodes, which change as information is altered. The barcodes enable data to be extracted and routed electronically, which saves time and costs while improving accuracy.
Captaris’ Kevin Hanley examined how new technologies are helping companies maintain thorough, well-preserved and easily-accessible electronic archives of emails and other business information. In addition to ensuring that an organization remains compliant with the growing requirements for data retention, archiving data improves a company’s server performance and increases user productivity because information can be backed-up, searched and retrieved more quickly. A well-maintained electronic archive will also help any company that must restore a server after a disaster. Hanley also showed how Captaris’ Workflow 6.0 solution is helping organizations, including the U.S. military, to successfully automate business processes.
Michael Glass of eVisory gave a presentation entitled “Trends in the Document Management Marketplace.” Michael discussed how companies are continuing to invest more money and resources into imaging, document management and content management services and solutions, which are all now offered more often as enterprise services rather than standalone products.
In fact, Glass said, the marketplace is moving towards a business process outsourcing model and moving away from elaborate infrastructures. Instead of purchasing new hardware and software, organizations are now more likely to enter into Service Level Agreements with a partner organization for such services as scanning, indexing, and disaster recovery.
To close the day, representatives from Fujitsu, Kofax and Hummingbird demonstrated how they are collaborating to offer businesses complete ECM (Enterprise Content Management) solutions. Using a combination of Fujitsu’s line of scanners, Kofax’s Ascent for Payables software, and Hummingbird’s Enterprise Suite, businesses can easily streamline and automate their business processes, resulting in reduced overall paper handling and labor costs and increased productivity.
Hummingbird’s David Weinberger said that in today’s world, business is a conversation. This means that fewer people are working alone, and the trend is for employees to work at the same time, across remote locations. “Organizations need to manage intellectual capital like financial capital,” said Weinberger.
QAI also provided many opportunities for attendees to refuel, network among peers, and relax. A hot breakfast buffet, lunch, and snacks were provided, and the day ended with a farewell cocktail hour. Breaks took place throughout the day to give conference goers time to stretch their legs and visit the vendor tabletop displays.
“When it comes to content management, the ability to match up the client’s exact needs with the right solutions is essential,” said Scott Swidersky of QAI. “And we feel that by increasing our clients’ level of awareness about the newest available solutions, they will be in a better position to understand where they want to be from a content management standpoint in one, two, or even five years down the road.”
|
