EMC World 2009 Recap

I was at EMC World all last week, and I had the opportunity to present in several sessions. If you attended one of my sessions or simply missed out, here’s a quick recap and where to find more information on the topics I covered.

“Accelerating Business Processes through Distributed Capture – Bringing Capture to the People”

In this particular session I covered the various options for distributed capture. Those being utilizing desktop capture from a Web client or Multi-Function Peripheral (MFP) devices for quick scan and release.  To get more information on how MFPs can be utilized in a distributed capture environment, click to here to access a resource kit.

“Advancing Enterprise Document Capture with EMC Captiva 6”

As announced back in November 2008, EMC launched a new release of Captiva InputAccel 6.0. I covered this topic in a previous posting, but if you are looking for more information, here’s a good place to start – http://www.emc.com/products/launch/captiva/index.htm.

“Document Capture Customer Implementation Panel”

I’m sure many found this session interesting given the customers did most the talking and I simply moderated the session. The idea for the session was to share real-world customer examples around why customers implemented document capture, the different approaches on how they are using capture, and the benefits they achieving. I can’t say who the customers were given confidentiality, but I will say the results they are achieving validate the importance of document capture.   Document capture remains a relatively risk-free investment compared to many other types of IT spend, and it produces improved productivity and reduction in costs in a relatively short period of time.

Here’s some annecdotal data on benefits shared during this customer panel session:

• Cut costs 30 percent by employing onsite distributed scanning via MFP devices
• AP process that took six to seven people at least a week can now be done in a day
•  12 month ROI
• Automated document classification has eliminated hard paper costs around separator sheets
• FTE headcount reduction as a result  of automated document classification and data extraction (OCR)

The results from this customer panel session indicate that substantial process benefits will flow from an investment in scanning and capture, and that a pay-back in 12-18 months is very achievable.  I’m working on other ROI related projects, so I’ll share that information once it is available.

PayItGreen Alliance

I’ve been doing some research lately around creating a “greener” business model and came across this site –  PayItGreen. The PayItGreen Alliance  is a coalition of financial services companies, led by NACHA, that is committed to educating consumers and businesses about the positive environmental impact of choosing electronic payments, bills, and statements instead of paper.

The PayItGreen Alliance encourages consumers to turn off the paper in their financial lives – specifically, to use Direct Deposit, receive bills and financial statements electronically, and make payments electronically.

There is some interesting facts around how consumers can have a positive impact on the environment by switching to electronic payments, bills, and statements.  For example, if 20 percent of households (22,876,800 households) were to switch to electronic bills, statements, and payments, every year the collective impact would save 150,939,615 pounds of paper and 1,811,275 trees. There’s a simple financial paper footprint calculator on the Web site that calculates how much you can reduce your environmental impact by switching to electronic billing, statements and payments.