Strategy

From Document Manager Magazine Vol 19 No 05 - September/October

Scan-to-process is becoming the 'de rigeur' approach within the DM/ECM marketplace, says Pete Dinham, Global Solutions Director, BancTec; but for Transactional Content Management to really take off

The term Scan-to-Process (sometimes abbreviated S2P) has become prevalent in the last year or two and there is a clear market interest in this topic. Before we look at why this is so, and how to deliver Scan-to-Process solutions, it should be noted that S2P is a logical outcome of the evolutionary pressures exerted by technology and business environment changes which have been happening for a long time. Scanning to Archive (S2A), with which S2P is often contrasted, started over 25 years ago as a way to eliminate papermountains with their associated problems of space consumption, static index organisations, mis-filing nightmares and so on. Scanning paper documents with simple index data at the end of their processing lifecycle alleviated many of these problems and provided enough benefit that this became the dominant model of imaging for a long period of time. The rise of more strict compliance regimes following well-known corporate scandals in the early-2000s was one of the major drivers in inverting that processing model. It was now essential to scan paper as early as possible in its lifecycle to enable auditing of what a corporation collectively knew, and when it knew it. This simple sounding change made the imaging function time-critical as it now stood in front of the business processes consuming the documents. Two distinct approaches to address this then evolved: affordable, high-speed centralised scanning or, for highly distributed operations, scanning at the point of receipt not the point of consolidation. Scanners such as BancTec's Intelliscan XDS, amongst others, led the way in enabling the establishment of centralised imaging operations at a price-point which could be afforded by most medium to large enterprises. Other scanner vendors concentrated on specialist branch scanners or MFD (Multi-Function Device) based scanning solutions to deliver the point of receipt model.

However most of these front-end scanning solutions were still scanning to archives. (2010 figures from industry body AIIM indicated only 43% of scanned documents, by volume, end up in anything other than an archive). Either the paper document remained the primary instrument around which the downstream business processes were focussed after scanning or, at best, other IT applications which were image enabled would fetch images from the archive after, and - crucially asynchronous with, the scanning process.

THE MAILROOM - THE FINAL SILO?

The continued deployment of image- enabled applications and the rise of image capable PC software eventually created pressure for change on this model. Many organisations had heeded the messages of process improvement and streamlining departmental interfaces to eliminate bottlenecks and silo mentalities. However, they were often still faced with a predominantly S2A front- end scanning operation which remained a barrier to the complete implementation of straight through processes. The presence of a separately managed scanning process, whilst adopted for completely rational business and technical reasons, was now standing in the way of further business improvement.

The next logical step, clearly, is to couple the scanning solution directly to the back-end business processes that need to consume its output - Scan-to- Process. After all what is so unique about converting a paper document to a digital format? Surely as a step in a business process (usually, but not always, the starting point of one) it should be no different from any other. Logically there is no point in differentiating between this and any other IT service which is incorporated into a business process.

PROBLEM SOLVED?

Technically, however, the answer is not always so easy. Many scanning solutions were not designed for ease of integration nor for synchronous connections and are capable only of delivering disk-file, batch- based output. However, even with these a small amount of technical tinkering can usually render a pseudo-synchronous linkage.

But even with technical plumbing issues papered over, other issues remain, for example:

1. Almost all scanning solutions in the past have had a relatively fixed workflow to which documents, irrespective of their type or content, had to conform. So although you may be slightly better off with direct connectivity to your process infrastructure, you may still be a long way off having a streamlined process for each type of work flowing into your enterprise.

2. Many scanning solutions still insist on maintaining input batch structures and processing work in the context of that batch. This was fine when the output wasn't being consumed in real-time, but many business processes demand dynamic control over individual work- items and the ability to re-route or reprioritise at an early stage in the overall process.

3. It may be that the scanning solution is not your problem, or not your only problem, in fully automating a truly endto- end process. Other things happen prior to, and around, the scanning process that most scanning solutions do not attempt to automate and implementing S2P may simply reveal a bottleneck or process disconnect in these previously untouched parts of the input cycle. Even with all of these problems (some or all of which will not apply to every case), implementing Scan-to-Process can still help to:

.. Expedite back-office functions;

.. Improve transparency and visibility;

.. Eliminate functional duplications.

Typical benefits yielded when effective application is made of process automation principles to any business problem. But there's still more benefit that can be unlocked from S2P - but it requires another evolutionary step forward.

SCAN IN PROCESS - THE NEXT WAVE

The reasons listed above why S2P might not always be as effective as it could are hard to surmount because of the nature of almost all traditional capture solutions which treat it as a special business process which has its own unique and specific characteristics. Why? Capture forms part of many business processes and the act of capturing data should be subservient to the requirements of the business process in which it fits. Over two years ago, Forrester and other analysts started talking about a new category of solutions - Transactional Content Management - which blurred the traditional boundaries between EDM and BPM and recognised that process- oriented capture systems were a vital element of a TCM approach.

On the other hand imaging functions are still not in the ethereal world of pure software. They require dedicated hardware for scanning and OCR/ICR, and the workers associated with the manual tasks are still best organised as a single functional unit.

This desire to make business processes which include scanning and capture as streamlined from front-to-back as possible needs new breed of scanning

solution, one which removes many of the traditional constraints of such solutions. BancTec's CenterVision for example, has been acknowledged as a leader in this approach. CenterVision's starting point is that within corporate mailrooms and scanning centres capture is almost a commodity provision, but management of the processes within is key to efficiency, driving out costs and becoming an integrated part of the overall business.

By placing Process (both technically and conceptually) at the heart of Capture, such solutions can deliver:

.. Synchronous, time-critical, transactional hand-off of scanned items to back-end business processes through well-established BPM interfaces

.. Completely customisable process flows within the overall control of the input solution which are appropriate to the demands of the documents being handled and the downstream business process they feed into

.. Allowing scanning services to be consumed by other business processes (where scanning is not, remember, always the starting point for a process)

.. Embedding process segments into the scanning workflow where it makes more sense, or where that can only be done, at that point in the business process

.. The ability to extend the scanning process flow into the back-office where no existing business process exists, to handle new types of work or one-off exceptions

.. Applying process automation to manual processes happening prior to and after scanning and making them transparent and manageable within the overall process context.

Whilst S2P will remain the driving force in the market for so long as legacy capture systems are still prevalent, for very good reasons, we also see a rising wave of interest in its more evolved form: Scan In Process.

More info: www.banctec.co.uk

Strategy