On Wednesday, I’ll be presenting on a BPM.com Webcast along with our partner Beach Street, where we will be discussing this new and emerging category of smart process applications, along with detailing a couple of best-of-class examples where case management has measurably improved the performance of work and the quality of decisions. Our EMC partner, Beach Street, will also be providing a live demonstration of their new contracts lifecycle management solution. To register for the event click here.

One of the topics I’ll be covering is where case management fits into automating organizational processes. You can look at case management as a place in between Process and Project oriented activities.

On the left side are transactional processes that focus on highly structured processes where the goal to automate the process and minimize human involvement. With these processes, the volumes are high, system to system interactions are common, transactions tend to be data centric. On the other side is project oriented processes that involve groups of people who are working on project oriented activities like mergers and acquisitions. These types of processes involve lots of human interaction in order for decisions to be made.

In the middle is where case management lies. It has aspects of automated processing, project orientation, and human involvement. With case management, there is a process or set of processes where the end goal is to make a decision. For example, loan processing has a series of collaborative steps that involve different individuals who must gather and review the loan information, and ultimately make a decision on whether or not to fund. Many of the processes that businesses struggle with today, require people to participate in part of a process or activity.

If you’d like to learn more on this topic and see a live demo of the Beach Street Contracts Lifecycle Management Solution, I encourage you to attend the Webcast.

The Beach Street solution leverages the latest releases of EMC Documentum, EMC Documentum xCP, and EMC Captiva, helping customers make effective decisions, drive better business outcomes, by managing the contracts process and drawing on information from multiple systems and sources.

For years, Beach Street has been helping customers automate back office operations around Contracts, Financial Operations and HR Operations, with particular expertise in the Financial Services, Public Sector and Healthcare fields.  During Momentum at EMC World, EMC Information Intelligence Group (IIG) recognized Beach Street as 2012 North American Partner of the Year, for their work on helping clients automate their information intensive processes on EMC Documentum and EMC Captiva.

In a recent EMC Pulse blog, Rohit Gai, SVP & GM, Products and Solutions, Information Intelligence Group at EMC discusses a new report: “The Forrester WaveTM: Smart Process Applications, Q2 2013”. According to the report, “smart process applications are a new and emerging category of applications designed to help CIOs and their firms improve the effectiveness of their human-centric business activities.”

Processes like contracts management are very collaborative in nature and require human involvement with the authoring, review, and approval of contracts. The goal of using smart process applications like the Beach Contracts Lifecycle Management Solution is to increase the productivity of people actively engaged in a highly collaborative business process or set of activities.

As part of a new initiative from EMC, a select set of partner-built EMC Certified Solutions are being made available to the global market directly from EMC. The EMC Certified Beach Street solution is directly available from EMC, and more information can be found in the EMC Solution Catalog.

Here are just a few good reasons you should attend.

#1 – IIG educational sessions across many tracks

As in past years, you will have an opportunity to attend both business and technical sessions around the products and solutions. You’ll hear from technical experts, business partners, and customers on the new products, customer use cases, future products, and more.

There is a lot to talk about this year given the massive product launch we did back in November 2012. If you are not up to speed on what we announced here are couple postings to read.

EMC Launches Massive Wave of Content Management Products and Solutions

EMC Captiva 7.0 Now Available!

EMC Documentum xCP 2.0 is Now Available!

#2 – Complimentary consulting sessions in the Genius Lab

What’s better than talking to really smart people who are more than capable of answering your questions and providing great advice and direction on current and future projects.

#3 – Networking events to meet EMC execs, product experts and each other

All customers have feedback (good and bad). This is your chance to get in front of executives, product managers, and others. They are always looking for your honest feedback.

#4 – Solutions showcase in the Momentum Zone featuring IIG and partner solutions

EMC has launched a few new solutions recently –  EMC Documentum Engineering Plant and Facilities Management (EPFM) and EMC Documentum Solution Suite for Life Sciences.  Partners also have solutions that have been EMC Certified that they will be showcasing at Momentum.

#5 -  Great entertainment, socializing, and more.

In addition to the great content that customers and partners are exposed too, EMC World offers a great time for socializing and enjoying the entertainment provided. The headlining entertainment seems to get better each year.

If you’ve attended EMC World in the past and would like to let others know why you plan to attend, please feel free to comment on this blog posting.

We hope to see you there!

Over the next couple weeks, there are a couple of great opportunities to learn more about this release.

Ask the Expert (December 3rd – 7th)

This is an opportunity to discuss and learn about the new features of Captiva 7.0. We will be covering your questions on the new Captiva 7.0 features, including the Captiva Designer, Captiva Desktop and the innovative auto-learning text classification. The Event takes place between the 3rd – 7th December 2012. Get ready by bookmarking this page or signing up for email notifications.

EMC Live Webcast: Transform Intelligent Capture with EMC Captiva 7.0

In this live event, we’ll cover all the major enhancements in Captiva 7.0 and we’ll also be providing a live demonstration as well. You  can register for the event by clicking here.

EMC Delivers Massive Set of Products and Solutions to Transform IT and Business Operations

EMC Transforms Enterprise Capture with Captiva 7.0

The Captiva 7.0 release provides powerful new capabilities designed for:

• Rapid configuration, customization and integration – all capture flow development and configuration is centralized within the new Captiva Designer; project developers can easily customize processes with point-and-click setup and deploy into production in seconds, rather than the hours or days required by competitive products.
• Superior accuracy – Production Auto Learning upgrades include using both image and new innovative text-based classification, that delivers 20 percent higher accuracy than rules and templates created manually by an expert.
• Enhanced operator productivity – Captiva Desktop provides the operator with one client that can be adapted to the use and operator task, rather than operators having to utilize multiple clients to complete the work.

As you will see from the many enhancements we have made, the release simplifies the development and deployment of enterprise capture projects, and delivers superior accuracy and operator performance.

Agility: Fastest Time to Value in the Industry

Captiva Designer is a new unified tool for IT developers and project administrators to simplify the configuration, deployment, and ongoing maintenance of capture projects. The designer enables teams to easily configure data entry forms and validation rules, with point-and-click layout of fields and controls to promote context-aware indexing and validation.

Captiva Designer saves time by quickly defining configuration profiles – document types, image processing, recognition, and exports – for reuse across multiple processes. Project configuration information can be easily moved or published to different capture servers with a single click, enabling Captiva to deploy enterprise configurations – including both server and client settings – in seconds or minutes, compared to the hours or days required by competitive products.

Productivity: Configurable Unified Interface Optimized for Operator Productivity

Captiva Desktop is a new client for capture operators that can be easily customized for all types of capture tasks, including image quality review, document assembly, high-speed data entry and indexing, high speed data correction and data validation. Unlike competitive offerings, this all in one client approach makes it easier for operation managers to route work to operators and to also train their operators.

To maximize operator productivity, Captiva Desktop can be completely configured to match individual use cases and operator tasks, showing or hiding the document or page view, configuring data entry forms to match the physical document and to speed data entry validation. Operators are able to maximize their efficiency through context-aware editing, quickly flag and re-route problem documents, apply rubber-band optical character recognition (OCR), and customize hot keys for greater operator efficiency.

Intelligence: Accurate Auto-Learning that Rivals Human Experts

EMC has introduced a new innovative text-based classification method that significantly increases the classification accuracy rates for incoming documents. This innovative approach does not simply look for keywords; rather it focuses on finding common sets of words, orientation, and their values, while taking into account small variations in text and position. This approach is ideal for semi-structured documents like invoices, as well as documents that have varying image quality issues due to the capture device.

Unlike competitive products that apply unsophisticated automated techniques that arbitrarily create document type rules due to minor variations in a document, or in other cases rely heavily on project administrators to manually determine classification rules, Captiva applies an innovative textual classification method to automatically learning documents while in production. By combining this unique text-based classification method along with image based classification, Captiva is able to deliver up to 20 percent higher accuracy than rules and templates created manually by experts.

Additional Resources

I encourage you to learn more about Captiva 7.0 by visiting the Momentum ECM Community. There is new and updated content to support this announcement—including data sheets, demos, and more—that is available in the Captiva technology area of the Momentum ECM Community and online at the EMC Web site.

If you are in attendance at the Momentum Vienna 2012 conference we also have a great lineup of sessions and a hands-on lab dedicated to Captiva 7.0. There are several product experts on hand to show you demos of the product, answer your questions, and get your feedback on this release.

Finally, look out for future postings around Captiva 7.0. There is a lot to cover, and I’ll be spending more time exploring various aspects of the product release.

You may think capture and document imaging is old technology, and in many ways it is. The process of scanning and turning a piece of paper into a digital format so that it can be indexed and stored in a repository is not a new concept. However, there is still a lot of paper coming into businesses and the basic requirement for digitizing and storing paper electronically is still one of the key drivers for investing in capture. 

Beyond this basic concept and more importantly, capture technology is evolving to be used in real-time by extending the point of capture and the types of devices to the front office, to mobile devices, and even outside organizational boundaries. Furthermore, intelligence is another key to success when implementing a capture solution. Intelligent capture allows for automated classification of a document as well as extraction and validation of the data. Without intelligence, the work is left up to users who are required to pre-sort, classify, and manually index a document. Today’s capture technology has moved beyond this old technological approach giving businesses further opportunities to reduce costs and accelerate their processes.

EMC Captiva is named a leader

In the latest Forrester Wave, Forrester identified EMC as a leader for leveraging capture to streamline business processes and offering an extensible capture solution. We certainly are pleased by Forrester’s validation of our leadership in the multichannel capture market,  and our strong position in Intelligent Data Capture, which is key to our enterprise customers.

Furthermore, we see intelligent capture as a very important part to our overall solution with full Enterprise Content Management, case management and governance capabilities. This suite of products and solutions enables EMC to distinguish Captiva from other offerings.

We also see the findings in the report as further proof that capture will present new opportunities for businesses to further streamline and improve their business processes. Paper volumes may be declining in some cases for businesses, but distributed capture, the use of mobile devices and real-time intelligence at the point of capture are key areas where we see opportunities for businesses to capitalize and differentiate themselves from competitors in their market. Some industries like retail banking are already beginning to deploy consumer based phone apps for mobile check deposits, and other industries like insurance are just now exploring other ways to capture paper closer to the source for supporting processes like filing a claim.

Next steps

While the report should be helpful to many, I would advise those evaluating various capture offerings to use this as a starting point. Forrester evaluated each vendor against 18 criteria points. Some criteria may be important to you while other criteria may be less important. In some cases, the criteria may not provide a clear enough view of which product is easier to implement, which provides better accuracy or which is best suited in your enterprise environment.

To hear more about this report, I encourage you to attend to the upcoming AIIM Webcast on August 29th, where Forrester principal analyst Alan Weintraub will discuss the Forrester Wave on Multichannel Capture.

How sophisticated the scanning application is will depend. Sometimes it is simply a desktop application that does not communicate with a centralized server, but with more sophisticated capture solutions the architecture includes either the thick or Web-based scanning client communicating to a centralized server. The server has several purposes including controlling the instructional information for processing a scanned batch and connecting that information with backend content repositories and business systems.

Regardless of the technical approach (thick or thin client), the scanning application serves a common function for creating a batch or performing ad hoc scanning (scanning a few pages). This type of scanning applications still serve a need in capturing documents given the nature in which documents commonly enter an organization and are processed.

Some documents are mailed into a centralized facility and others are put into a batch and captured remotely by a skilled worker/business analyst. In a centralized environment, a thick client scanning app is fine, but in a distributed environment organizations often opt for Web-based client. In both cases, the common goal is to digitize the paper, associated index data with the documents, and release the batch for final processing so that the information can be stored in a content repository and in some cases initiate a back office workflow process.

Scanning within next generation cloud-based business applications

So now lets imagine I’m an employee working out of a regional/branch office. During a typical day I frequently work inside one of our companies  cloud-based business applications. Now lets mix in a little paper into this scenario that has been provided to me via an interaction with a customer or partner, mail that was delivered to my office, or another employee who has hand delivered a document to my desk.

Upon receipt of a paper document, I need to get it scanned and associated with a case or record that lives inside this business application.  Rather than launching a separate scan application, what I want to do is perform the scan action within this web-based cloud application service and associate the document with a case or customer record that I’m currently working on.

The reality is this completely possible today, but you need to be using the right set of tools that provide a flexible development environment supporting the latest Web technolology (e.g. HTML 5), work with all standard browsers, and require no plug-ins (e.g. ActiveX)

Approaches like the EMC Captiva Cloud Toolkit offer software developers a quick and easy way to incorporate scanning into their cloud-based application services.

Examples of web-based scanning offerings

At EMC World, I demonstrated a couple Web-based capture solutions that have been built using the new Captiva Cloud Toolkit (see my post on May 23rd – Front Office Capture Highlights at Momentum Conference). These solutions were built by Business Imaging Systems and ImageAccess, and provide scanning, indexing, lookups, and field-level validation all within a standard browser.

Another partner which I have not written about is Accusoft. Accusoft Cloud Scan is a demonstration of the ImageGear for .NET v20 cloud capture capabilities, built on EMC Captiva Cloud  Toolkit. With this demo application the user can scan a document directly to their Google Docs or Dropbox account.  There are a few other cloud-based applications like SalesForce, that they plan to connect the scanning application too as well.

Accusoft Cloud Scan is available as a demonstration online, so if you have a scanner connected to your laptop or desktop give the application a try. All you need to install is the Captiva Cloud Toolkit runtime components. Starting this year, several scanner manufacturers will begin shipping the runtime components with the ISIS device driver that come with many scanners.

The future of scanning in any cloud-based application is not far off. Someday scanning could be as common and simple as printing.

Why automating the capture of paper closer makes sense

There are four main reasons I see for why capturing documents closer to the source makes sense.

1. Delays will inevitably occur when you are sending paper documents from location to the next.

2. Operational costs – think about the cost associated with mailing of documents or even the labor required to manually send documents to another location, and the time spent tracking them.

3. Lack of access to information – Documents that are mailed from one location to another are not accessible until they are digitized and stored in a central repository. This will impact the service you may be able to provide given the content is not accessible to those who need access to the information.

4. Lack of control over he information – If you could capture and digitize paper closer to the source, the benefit would be better control over the information.

Shift in scanning technology will lead to greater adoption

One of the new products I talked about in my session was the EMC Captiva Cloud Toolkit, which is a software developer kit (SDK) comprised of modules that help web application developers to quickly add scanning and imaging functionality directly to their web-based business applications. It is ideal for document capture vendors, software developers, and enterprise organizations that want to create custom web-based applications that are fully scan-enabled complimenting their business solution offerings.

What is unique to this new development kit is that it requires no plug-in of any kind in order to perform scanning within a browser. That allows Web-based scanning applications to work across all browsers, and overcomes one of the common IT barriers which is resistance to deploying Web apps, that require a plug-in.

The runtime components that are required for applications built around this toolkit, can either be packaged up and installed one time on the desktop or in the case of new businesses scanners that ship with the Captiva ISIS device driver, the runtime components are being included with scanners this year.

Partners building solutions that leverage the new development kit

During my Momentum session, I highlighted two partners who have already built a Web-based scanning and indexing application that leverages the new Captiva Cloud Toolkit. The first application I showed was from our partner Business Imaging Systems (BIS). Their new application called MAX Capture provides scanning, indexing, lookups, and field-level validations all within a browser. The current release supports connecting into Captiva InputAccel, ApplicationXtender, and future connectors will be available for other repositories like SharePoint. If you are at EMC World, I’d encourage you to stop by their booth (1125) in the Solutions Pavilion and get a live demonstration.

The second application I showed was from our partner ImageAccess. Over the past few years they have built a very rich scanning and indexing Web application and have recently leveraged the Cloud Toolkit to take advantage of scanning capabilities of the new toolkit. This application is currently in use at a couple large financial institutions, and I discussed one of these use cases during my session.

In talking with the customer, he described how their account management team meets with financial advisors who are moving clients over to their organization. To bring these new customers (investors) on-board involves quite a bit of paperwork (account set-up forms, asset transfers, supporting documentation, etc). In order to help facilitate and speed up the process, the account management person meets with the advisor and performs all the scanning on-site. By enabling the account management team to scan and index documents on-site, this has cut down on delays in on-boarding new customers and ensures all the appropriate documents are captured and stored electronically.

Moving capture to the forefront not slowing down

There are some who think paper is a thing of the past, but many of us believe capture has become an even more important technology in how businesses can become more efficient in their day-to-day operations. There are many ways in which distributed scanning can function - it could be its own application that connects with backend systems, or you could have scanning built directly into a line of business application. Scanning in a line of business app is an intriguing concept and could be useful in some cases. Take for example a SaaS based offering like SalesForce. What if I have a customer contract, and I want to scan and store it in SalesForce? With the new Captiva Cloud Toolkit, I could build a simple scan application that embeds a scan button into SalesForce. This same concept could be applied to other applications as well.

Furthermore, we are seeing imaging apps being developed for mobile devices like the iPhone and Android. Most of the apps so far support very ad hoc use cases, others mobile imaging apps like mobile check deposit have been developed specifically for the consumer. The consumer apps are all about convenience and retaining customers, and we expect that mobile check deposit is just the start for how mobile imaging could be used for other consumer related services. 

Mobile imaging is still very much in its infancy and we are only scratching the surface on what can be possible. What we will likely see is purpose-built mobile apps that require imaging within the app to help facilitate completing a task or set of tasks. For example, an insurance company might want a mobile imaging app that supports an agent kicking off a claim process. Part of that claim process, could involve taking photos of documents or uploading pictures and/or videos, and inputting some basic data. The app might leverage backend capture services, but also help facilitate with connecting the end-user with the content, and back office processes.

All of this is very exciting and really shows just how important imaging technology is today. If you are EMC World this week, stop by the Momentum Zone in the Solutions Pavilion and check out the latest solutions we have and learn more about what is possible when it comes to using intelligent capture.

As in past years, there is no shortage of sessions to attend – over 500 for the entire EMC World and 100+ that are specifically around EMC Documentum, xCP, Captiva and Document Sciences. Probably the best thing about EMC World is the informal meetings and conversations that we all have. People we’ve talked with in the past but maybe never had an opportunity to meet in person.

Global Partner Summit

This year, we’re holding a Global Partner Summit and we expect to host over 3,000 participants from our many partner communities. The event kicks off on Sunday with several of our executives speaking, followed  by a partner welcome reception. Monday will be the day for breakouts and this where Information Intelligence Group (IIG) partners will hear more on the IIG vision and strategy, partner awards, and much more.

Going Social

As we all know by now, leveraging the power of social media to communicate and share information is becoming a part of our DNA. A great post has been written in the EMC Documentum Community that talks about Get Social With Us During Momentum at EMC World 2012.

To give you an idea on what we are doing around social here is a brief overview:

There will be a Momentum Mobile App for all smartphones, ipads, and web users. Simply download it from at http://bitly.com/mmtm12.  The app will help you:

• Manage Your Schedule
• Rate the Sessions You Attend and Momentum Conference
• Navigate the Show Floor
• Follow and Join In on the Twitter Conversation #MMTM12
• Download Exhibitor Information
• Access the Momentum Social Experience Game

Another new element this year to Momentum at EMC World is

Let I.T. Ride Social Experience Game can be accessed via http://emcletitride.com (more info to the site coming soon) or through the Momentum Mobile app.Once you connect the portal with your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare accounts, you will begin earning chips for engaging with the Momentum related communities.  Examples of activities that earn chips are:

• Use #MMTM12 on Twitter
• Write on the wall, post photos, comment and/or like any of the IIG related Facebook pages and status updates
• Opt-in to receive the IIG customer satisfaction survey once per year

The Social Media Center will be located in the Momentum Lounge. There will be people there to help registration with the portal and offer further incentives. I’m told there will be a spin the wheel and iPad prize involved.

For those of you who have not checked out the EMC Community Network then you will want to do so during the event. All of our keynotes and buzz chats will be streamed live online in the EMC Community Network along with live Q&A simultaneously occurring during the keynotes. After the conference, the recordings will be made available in the Momentum Community.

Here’s the schedule  for those live streams:

• Keynote: Rick Devenuti (Monday 4:00-5:00pm PST)
• Buzz Chat: Keynote Recap w/ Live Q&A (Monday 5:00-5:30pm PST)
• Keynote: Jeetu Patel and Rohit Ghai (Tuesday 10:00-11:00am PST)
• Buzz chat: Meet the Geek with Jeroen VanRotterdam (Tuesday 3:00-3:30pm PST)

Entertainment for the Week

There’s no shortage of fun things to do while you are in Las Vegas and to help everyone get together and have some fun, EMC has planned several social gatherings that include a Grand Opening Reception in the Solution Pavilion  and the Momentum Party at LAVO Nightclub in the Palazzo Hotel on Tuesday night.

The big entertainment for the week is the Maroon 5 concert on Wednesday. If you are not familiar with their music, download a few of their songs from iTunes, and I’m sure you’ll quickly realize you’ve heard them before on the radio.

Final Words of Advice

My final words of advice is to pace yourself and make sure you have a game plan for the week. EMC has provided a number of ways in which you can stay connected with everything that is going at EMC World, as well as planning you schedule for the event.

If you can’t join us this year, but would like to follow along remotely there are plenty of ways. There will be content streaming live and you can also follow us on twitter - @EMC_Documentum, @EMC_Captiva, and @EMC_DocSciences. You can also follow us using the hashtags – #emcworld and #MMTM12.

I will be posting periodically during the week and you can follow me on twitter – @bgalusha. Hope to see you there!