Kofax Capture Network Server - The Point of Entry for Business Processes

Kofax Capture Network Server The Point of Entry for Business Processes “Lower costs and faster White Paper business May 2008 processes that provide better access to information and more complete records – you can’t beat that” – Simon Wood, Senior Analyst Programmer Robert Wiseman Dairies Today’s organizations are much more widely dispersed than they were a generation ago. With worldwide locations, multiple field offices, and remote work forces, businesses are apt to have a physical presence at almost any point on the globe. Retail chains, for example, may have dozens, hundreds, or, in many cases, thousands of distant outlets. Meanwhile, the Internet has connected businesses with millions of customers, many of whom never step foot in an actual store. Add to this the inter-connected state of vendors and the customers themselves and the modern organization has, in many ways, been distributed to millions of remote locations. Keeping the information flowing between these remote points has dramatically changed as well. Because of the distributed nature of organizations, their data and documents – the lifeblood of information – often must be acted upon in various points throughout the system before being consolidated and processed at a central location. The following document types are frequently created at remote locations before being forwarded through a distributed organization for further processing: • new account applications • customer orders • inventory sheets • payment documents • accounting receivables (invoices billed to customers) • accounts payable (invoices from vendors) • customer records • credit applications • loan documentation • claims forms White Paper – Kofax Capture Network Server Page 2 Remote Capture Legacy Processes Unfortunately, many organizations still rely on antiquated methods of bringing their data into a business process. In some cases, work flow decisions and actions must be made at each remote location or department before the process can continue, yet there are often delays between each step as various parties wait for documents to be forwarded. Each of the following document and data distribution alternatives poses a number of disadvantages: • Mail via USPS Standard Delivery: Many organizations continue to rely on the US Postal Service “snail mail” to route documents or data. In addition to being slow and sometimes unreliable, information leaves a secure chain of custody with this method and therefore lacks security. • Overnight Delivery via Courier: Sometimes referred to as “traceable mail,” overnight delivery of work flow documents or inter-departmental data can be extremely expensive over the long term. While more secure than regular mail, this method still causes organizational data to leave the custody of the sender. While next-day delivery was considered remarkable 20 years ago, it is considered slow by current standards. • Daily or Weekly Fax: While the use of fax machines is declining (being replaced by multi-function peripherals) there is still a large volume of ad-hoc documents being transferred by fax. This antiquated method is subject to image quality issues, lack of traceability, lack of security, and can be manually tedious. • Scan to CD/DVD/Tape Media & Ship Diskettes: In addition to suffering the transport issues of mail or courier (i.e. slow, subject to loss or theft, and poor security) this information work flow choice requires specialized equipment, which must be maintained as well as being time consuming to produce. • Transfer via FTP (File Transfer Protocol): While faster than many other methods of data transfer, there are security issues regarding FTP, which may allow sensitive data, such as passwords or file contents, to be compromised. Notably, FTP is not a two-way communication; without a confirmation of delivery, the sender can’t know if the data, or image, has been received. Further, FTP lacks error detection; if a transfer is interrupted, the receiver has no way to know if the received file is complete. White Paper – Kofax Capture Network Server Page 3 Interrupting the Work Flow: The greatest drawback of these methods of data collection is the disconnect between the source of the data and the business process, i.e. the person at its source, who is apt to have the most knowledge about a document, is – at least temporarily – removed from the work flow. This often causes a larger number of exception items, which are expensive to manually correct, and must be returned to the remote site for clarification. Fortunately, modern imaging technology and secure high-speed data transmission offer the opportunity to capture documents remotely at their source and to bring that data immediately in to the business process. Capturing documents at the point of creation ensures there is no interruption in the natural flow of information. Those with the most knowledge of the data, and often with the greatest interest in its accuracy, can actively participate in both its capture and subsequent processing. In the 2006 Forms’ Processing and Data Capture Study, published by The Association for Work Process Improvement (TAWPI), analyst Harvey Spencer writes: “Many organizations have moved to what can be described as decentralized scanning. However, this is currently a batch-based remote truncation system designed to avoid physically moving the paper. True distributed scanning with distributed processing and localized collaboration does not yet seem to have been widely implemented. We anticipate that over the next few years we will see an increasing demand to move to a more pure form of distributed scanning that will enable processing decisions to be made on the documents at the time of scanning.” One impediment to the “pure form of distributed capture” envisioned by researchers has been its cost. For many applications, such as loan documentation or new account processing, the expense of a production scanner and capture software could not be justified. However, over the past few years, the cost of capture hardware has fallen dramatically, with many scanner and multi-function peripheral (MFP) manufacturers including much more robust features. Further, capture software such as Kofax Capture can be affordably licensed for multiple remote locations. White Paper – Kofax Capture Network Server Page 4 Benefits of Remote Capture By embracing distributed capture, organizations can react more quickly to incoming information, reduce costs, enhance security, and improve productivity compared to mailing paper or using CD-based processes. Capitalizing on a remote-capture system offers the following additional benefits: • Increased productivity: Work flow is not interrupted when capture becomes a part of the existing business processes, stimulating the flow of information rather than impeding it. • Faster access to data: Scanned images can be transmitted to where needed in real time and delivered into business systems for immediate access. • Lower ongoing costs: No shipping or courier expenses; standard Internet connections and inexpensive remote licenses for capture software. • Increased security: Paper documents never leave the originating office and can never be lost in transit. • Easy installation: Remote stations can use standard software licenses and their configuration can be administered centrally – not at the remote site. • Modular processing: Processing functions such as recognition, validation, or Q/A can be performed at any location, either remotely or centrally. • Improved customer service: Reduced time lag between customer transactions and input into mainframe systems. • Financial returns: Earlier fraud detection and faster access to funds. Kofax Understands Capture Founded in 1985, Kofax has been an innovator in the conversion of unstructured documents and data into reusable electronic information. Kofax pioneered the concept of PC-based document image processing, focusing on PC-based hardware that accelerated the scanning, viewing, and printing of high-resolution document images. Kofax is the global leader of Intelligent Capture & Exchange solutions1. Its leading-edge capture and exchange technologies and solutions enable Business Process Automation by managing the transformation and exchange of business-critical information between people, applications, and devices. Their products are distributed through a global network of more than 1,200 authorized resellers throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. 1 Harvey Spencer Associates market study White Paper – Kofax Capture Network Server Page 5 Kofax is known for its Kofax Capture platform and the VRS (VirtualReScan) image enhancement tool, which now has well over 100,000 VRS licenses in use and is the de-facto standard for scanning productivity. The post-scan processing application has dramatically improved image readability in scanned documents. Introduced in 1995 as Ascent Capture and renamed in 2008, Kofax Capture was the first shrink-wrapped information-capture application for document and content management systems. Today, Kofax Capture is a robust, expandable, enterprise-class platform and the most widely used capture solution in the world. Kofax Capture Network Server Now in version 8.