Interview

From Document Manager Magazine Vol 18 No 03 - June 2010

Simon Hill, Sales Director at Nuance's Document Imaging Group speaks to DM Editor David Tyler about developments since the acquisition of eCopy

David Tyler: There is an argument that scanning is becoming almost a commoditised technology - how do you differentiate the eCopy proposition in that environment?

Simon Hill: We go through a 'discovery' phase with our customers where we establish their detailed requirements, and without doubt they are expecting more and more from scanning: the days of 'just' scanning to email or to folder are gone for good. Customers are demanding more connectivity into multiple applications, and also to be able to automate the scanning process itself even more, in order to reduce the amount of time that users are standing at a device. This is especially true of knowledge workers, who are of course a main focus area for us here at Nuance. That means we're seeing a 'greying' of the distinction between simply working with the devices themselves and working with partners in the production capture and business process automation marketplace.
It's similar to what happened in the copier space: previously they had large production type devices in print rooms and copy rooms, alongside smaller print/copy devices out 'on the floor'. As these multifunction devices got faster, handled colour, stapling, finishing and other capabilities, so more documents got produced out on the floor. I believe the scanning marketplace is following a similar path.

Typically if you wanted to do forms processing, zonal OCR, barcode reading etc., that would have been done in a production environment using perhaps Captiva, Kofax or ReadSoft. Our customers are now asking to do that on the floor. As knowledge workers they want to be able to feed a document into their process and route it to where it needs to go. As a result we're seeing an increasing migration onto eCopy devices with their easy-to-use interface.

DT: Are you able to give any 'real world' examples of how the coming together of eCopy and Nuance technologies is giving your customers a more complete business solution?

SH: It affects the capabilities that we have recently released, of course. We're now able to help customers in areas such as document classification: is it an invoice; is it a change of address letter? We can offer data extraction using zonal OCR, handling handwriting and unstructured data. We also have customers using our systems for validation of documents: one building society had been posting all their application forms to the Head Office where they'd be scanned. Now they're using devices at branch locations to scan, OCR, check and validate specific fields like application numbers and signatures, and pass the indexed data into the relevant process. We're effectively bringing all the compliance onto the device, rather than having it done at the back-end of the process. In doing so, we're streamlining that whole workflow - a document won't go through without the appropriate signature in the right place, for instance.
People have typically seen eCopy as a way to scan documents, index them and send them to a back office application such as Interwoven or EMC. But we can now run some key processes on the document before it goes into those applications, and extract data at the front end. All of this doesn't mean that we no longer need a production scanning setup, of course - it all comes down to volumes, speed, and of course audit trail requirements.
Many organisations are only now developing a coherent strategy around how they manage their documents: where do they want them to go, how do they want them to look, and what processes do they need to go through? Then they need to assess the most appropriate route for different documents: via a production scanning function, or at the workstation of the knowledge worker on the floor or in a remote branch.

DT: If businesses are becoming more aware of the strategic importance of document management, does that make the sales process more straightforward for your channel partners? Presumably they still need to be aware of the specific drivers within their customer verticals, for instance?
SH: There is of course a major drive towards increased efficiency and staff productivity, as in the building society example mentioned above. We're taking a lot of error out of the process, and at the same time reducing the time taken by the process itself from weeks to days.
Throughout our channel we're becoming increasingly aware of the users' drivers, partners are learning to ask the customer exactly what they want to do and why, as opposed to simply trying to sell someone the product we have. And wrapped around that improved understanding of the customers' requirements and their processes is our ROI proposition; the business case. 

Our partners see us as an enabler to selling the technology - ultimately of course our solutions need to 'sit on' a scanner or MFP. It comes back to the earlier point about commoditisation: our partners' ability to ask the right questions in order to develop the right propositions is what helps them avoid that 'commodity product' argument, and add real value.

DT: What are you able to tell us about the future of the combined Nuance/eCopy business, and its product plans?
SH: We've recently announced new Document Conversion Extenders specifically to allow direct scanning into MS Word and Excel formats rather than just PDF. Our recent focus has also been on the kind of ideas mentioned already around enhancements in document services and forms processing capabilities, whether that's by adding zonal OCR, or passing into services such as EMC Dispatcher.

As far as the broader roadmap, obviously the Nuance desktop imaging products all come under our portfolio now. In addition there is the 'extended' Nuance product portfolio: one of our partners is working currently with the Dragon Naturally Speaking product, developing a tie-in to PaperWorks. It opens up all the functionality of PaperWorks to users who, for whatever reason, aren't in a position to type or use mouse controls. They can simply drive PaperWorks using their voice.  We might even see a time when voice commands are available via the MFP, for all eCopy users - exciting times!
What it boils down to is this: we have an awful lot of knowledge now within the Nuance business: we're very well positioned to be market leaders not only in terms of market share, but also in terms of the functionality of our solutions.

More info: www.nuance.com

Interview