New EMC Captiva Graphical Capture Design Tool Delivers the Power of Enterprise Capture Made Easy

It’s here, a powerful new application designed to make it easy to develop and deploy Captiva capture processes all without compromising the flexibility of Captiva InputAccel. 

EMC has announced the powerful new Captiva InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer application, a graphical drag-and-drop tool for designing capture processes. System Integrators, Value-Added Resellers, IT developers, and power users can use this latest capture process design application to build document capture processes in just a few hours, at a substantially lower cost, without any coding.  It is part of the Captiva InputAccel product, so no additional purchase is required. 

You can read more and view an online demo on EMC.com by clicking here. 

What the new tool delivers 

Delivering a new standard in enterprise capture process development, the InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer application brings together the advanced document capture capabilities of the Captiva InputAccel intelligent capture platform. It provides an environment for building processes that capture and classify documents, extract and validate data, and deliver information to key business systems and processes. 

Here are just a few highlights on what this new application will provide: 

• Graphical drag-and-drop process design application for developing capture processes
• Point-and-click mapping of values between capture steps
• Ability to handle both simple and complex document process requirements like adding conditional branch logic or rerouting steps in a process
• Support for both Captiva InputAccel and Captiva Dispatcher modules and services, including scan, image enhancement, recognition, classification, classification edit, validation, and all exports
• Ability to incorporate custom modules into an InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer capture process
• Ability to insert custom code steps into a capture process to execute custom routing and validations

InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer application

 

What it means to IT organizations, partners, and power users 

What it means to anyone who has or will be developing capture processes in Captiva InputAccel, is your job just got easier. Imagine this…. 

• Develop capture process in a few hours without having to write any code.
• Deploying processes with fewer resources improving your time to value and lower total cost of ownership.
• Eliminating project complexity and inherent risks associated with custom coding.
• Still being able to leverage Captiva’s modular architecture and flexibility to handle the most complex enterprise capture requirements.
• Rapidly deliver custom demonstration and proof of concept examples enabling partners to differentiate from other solutions and win new business.

What next? 

The new Captiva InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer application is available to all customers and partners running that latest InputAccel 6.0 release. All you need to do is download, install, and you are off and running.  In future postings, I’ll share additional technical details on what this new application enables you to do. 

Enjoy!

 

Extending Your SharePoint Environment

Today, EMC announced the latest round of solutions that enable customers to further leverage and extend their Microsoft SharePoint environments. The latest solutions bridge the gap between Documentum and SharePoint for content control and an integrated user experience, EMC SourceOne eDiscovery for direct management of SharePoint repositories to conduct legal discovery searches and execute legal holds within the repository, and finally EMC Captiva for capturing and delivering information into SharePoint. With this latest round up of solutions, EMC provides customers several ways to extend their SharePoint environments to meet their content management requirements. For the latest release, you can go here:

www.emc.com/about/news/press/2009/20091019-01.htm.

Intelligent Capture, More Than Just Scanning

Document capture is not a new concept, but using capture with SharePoint might not be something all organizations have considered. SharePoint has typically been more around collaboration and not seen so much as a document management system. The key to know is scanning software and intelligent capture, are not one of the same. Yes, it is all about turning paper into digital information but that is just the basics.

Simple scanning applications are designed to turn a piece of paper into digital content and allow users to manually index a couple fields so that it can be properly indexed in a SharePoint repository. Now that may be good enough for some, but what the EMC Captiva for SharePoint solution can provide is real automation. By that I mean automatically identifying document (no pre-sorting), recognizing the data, validations like database lookups and pre-fill of fields, and finally delivering the captured information into a SharePoint Server. This is important in the case where capture volumes warrant ways to automate manual task like indexing, or the variety of documents being captured need to be intelligently identified and logically grouped before exporting into SharePoint.

Doing more with Information Captured

Information captured from a document is certainly used to index a document in SharePoint, but there is more you can do with EMC Captiva and SharePoint.  For example, Captiva is often used for line of business applications where the data and documents drive a particular process. Accounts payable, claims, and loan processing are just a few examples. In that type of application the data being captured can be exported as XML and integrated with Microsoft InfoPath forms that are part of a review and approval process. Once in SharePoint, users can open an InfoPath form that contains the data captured and exported from Captiva, along with the image. Simple routing and approval of these forms can take place from within SharePoint.

Controlling and Accessing Content

 For those companies who would like to use Documentum and SharePoint together getting the benefits of both worlds, EMC Documentum Repository Services for SharePoint can automatically redirect content normally destined for SharePoint Server’s Microsoft SQL Server repository and send it to a Documentum repository for content aggregation and compliance with zero impact on end-users. What this means is that it addresses operational issues by reducing the amount of content destined for SQL Server, addresses compliance issues by storing SharePoint content in a single repository of record allowing for common policy enforcement across systems, and lastly supports the re-purposing and re-use of content stored in the Documentum repository.

Now you’re likely wondering, do my users have different user experiences now that I’m using Documentum and SharePoint together? The answer is the user experience is absolutely seamless.  EMC My Documentum for Microsoft SharePoint provides direct access to the Documentum Content Server natively through the SharePoint user interface. That means content that is stored in Documentum can be accessed via a SharePoint Web Part and can include Documentum functionality like document lifecycles and renditions, as well as Documentum advanced search capabilities. Companies who want to use SharePoint and need it to integrate with their corporate Documentum ECM backbone will find this latest set of solutions the right fit.

A Need to Discover

One final solution EMC announced is EMC SourceOne eDiscovery for SharePoint. This solution comes from EMC’s acquisition of Kazeon, and provides direct management of SharePoint repositories to conduct legal discovery searches, execute legal holds within the repository and deliver robust repository analysis and review capabilities.

With SharePoint server deployments being used across an enterprise, you probably see where utilizing this type of index and collection of content could be a powerful tool when there is a need to analyze and review specific content pertinent to a specific case or investigation.

What Next?

If you plan to attend the Microsoft SharePoint conference this week, I encourage you to stop by the EMC booth and take a look at the latest set of solutions. See for yourself the commitment EMC and Microsoft are making to deepen product interoperability in the area of enterprise content management (ECM).

 

 

 

Recorded Webcast: Assess the Real Value of Document Capture

I wrapped up Webcast a few days ago that is now available online for playback. Here’s a link to the recorded event.

Assess the Real Value of Document Capture

I talked about how organizations can assess the real value in document capture, highlighting several key areas where advanced document capture capabilities can help organizations drive down costs and improve process efficiencies.  I was joined by one of our customers, Baker Hughes, who talked about their global capture environment in which they use EMC Captiva across 20 countries capturing invoices that feed into their accounts payable process which utilizes Documentum and SAP.  The capture environment is maintained centrally with remote employees scanning invoices and submitting back to the central server for processing.

-Bill-

 

Latest Results from the Kofax Partner Satisfaction Poll

I recently checked back on the Kofax Partner Satisfaction poll that has been running on LinkedIn for the past few weeks. The latest results show 37%  “somewhat dissatisfied with Kofax” and 39% “extremely dissatisfied with Kofax”.   I went ahead and took a screenshot of the latest poll which is shown below. If you are interested in reading the comments posted, go to http://polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/52913/kpfrc.

 

Upcoming EMC Live Webcast: Assess the Real Value of Document Capture

In keeping with the “value of capture” theme that some of my recent postings have talked about, I’ll be presenting on an upcoming Webcast on September 30th, in which I will talk about the ROI of document capture, where the cost savings and efficiency gains can be achieved, and how organizations can build the business case.  To register for the event click here.

During the Webcast, I’ll also share the recent results of a document capture survey conducted by AIIM.  The survey polled 677 information and records management professionals, IT staff and line of business executives, and the research study found that document scanning and capture is a very risk-free investment compared to other types of IT projects and payback time.

I’ll also be joined by a customer who will be talking about the benefits they have achieved in using the EMC Captiva and Documentum products for automating their global accounts payable process.

Look forward to everyone joining.

 

Upcoming AIIM Webcast on Capture – 3 Big Things You Should Be Doing

Here’s a link to an upcoming AIIM webcast this month that I thought might interest some. Organizations for years have used all kinds of scanning applications to digitize content, but many are running on legacy applications that fail to give companies the capabilities needed to really achieve all the benefits possible with document capture.

Capture: 3 Big Things You Should Be Doing (And Probably Aren’t) for Maximum ROI

So what are those three big things? Come listen to Harvey Spencer, from Harvey Spencer and Associates, to hear what you should be doing with document capture for maximum ROI.

 

EMC Acquires Kazeon

Well, EMC has been busy this week buying up two companies with Kazeon Systems being the latest. You can read about the latest news in the press release.  Kazeon’s end-to-end discovery should fit nicely EMC SourceOne family of eDiscover, archiving and compliance products, where there is a growing use case for eDiscovery in the enterprise.

For several years, EMC has been building out a stack of products that come together to support managing information. Everything from capture, managing and processing content, output, and archive.

The Kazeon purchase is a logical progression for EMC, another chapter in helping enterprises manage the abundance of electronically stored information.

 

Interesting Kofax Partner Satisfaction Poll

Check out the Kofax partner satisfaction poll that is currently running on LinkedIn. 

http://polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/52913/kpfrc

 So far sixty-six have responded to the poll with 41% responding as being “somewhat dissatisfied with Kofax” and 37% responding as being “extremely dissatisfied with Kofax”.   

Obviously this is a small subset of Kofax partners, but it highlights not all is well within the Kofax partner community.   Good thing there are other vendor options for Kofax partners. EMC being one of them.

 -Bill-

 

Automating the Capture Medical Claims Process – Not a New Concept, but Delivers Benefits

So what do you get when you take intelligent capture and medical claims mix them together? Simple…tangible benefits in the form of cost reduction and process efficiency.

For those who are not familiar with what a medical claim is and how it gets processed, think of  the last time you visited your physician or hospital. Following that visit a paper document (claim) gets generated which contains the medical billing information (e.g. procedure performed and amount being billed). The claim then gets submitted to an insurance company so that the physician or hospital can get paid.

CMS 1500 Medical Claim Form

Why Not transmit electronically?

In many cases, the information does get transmitted electronically but not all medical billing is done that way today and it will be some time before 100% of all medical billing is electronic.  So that still leaves insurance carries like a BCBS or third party payors with the problem on how to best capture and process the thousands of claims they receive each day.

Intelligent Capture is King with Medical Claims

There are many line of business processes you can automate with a document capture solution, but medical claims is one where the benefits standout.  The amount of data that needs to be extracted encompasses over a hundred fields (name, address, SSN, doctor ID, line item procedure and diagnosis codes, and so on).  By using OCR (optical character recognition) and applying business rules, a key part of the claims process can be automated, thereby eliminating most of the data entry that would occur otherwise.

Partners are Key

I like to think of this solution as a speciality that requires a software vendor and partner that know the medical claims process.  This is not your simple run-of-the-mill capture deployment, rather it takes a solution that has been proven over the years and a partner who has the skill set to deliver.

EMC partners like PaperFree, Paragon Solutions, and other EMC partners demonstrate that skill set. You can read about a recent win PaperFree just announced:

New West Health Services Chooses PaperFree Corporation to Implement Claims Processing Solution

Intelligent Data Capture Delivers

Intelligent capture for medical claims is key to solving what is often the bottleneck in the process where lots of data needs to be transformed into electronic informaiton.

The benefits can be significant, in fact cost and efficiency savings like 60% increase in overall productivity, 75% reduction in error rates, and 30% reduction in average claims processing cost are benefits that can be achieved.

So give it some thought.  Starting with the obvious challenges around automating the capture of medical claims data may be the way to go.

-Bill-

 

EMC Sponsored Research – New AIIM Study Reveals Investments in Document Capture Produces Rapid and Considerable Cost Savings in Less Than 12 Months

AIIM just released a new study on document capture, that was sponsored by EMC. The research study shows that document scanning and capture is a very risk-free investment compared to other types of IT projects and payback time of the initial investment frequently occurs in less than one year.

 

 

Key findings from the study include:

• 42 percent of organizations have increased productivity by 50 percent from their scanning and capture investment.
• 43 percent have achieved payback within 12 months and two-thirds within 18 months.
• Nearly half have achieved savings of 40 percent or more in paper storage costs.

A free copy of the study, “Extending Capture Capabilities – Measuring the ROI” is available at www.emc.com/captureroi

What do you think?

• Are you achieving the benefits from document capture that you expected?
• Do you see opportunities to further expand the use of capture?
• Is there  a need to replace a legacy scanning/imaging application in order to achieve greater benefits?

Feel free to comment back.

- Bill -