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Think big, start small

Editorial Type: Strategy     Date: 09-2014    Views: 4599   







Bill Jones of ibml discusses the best approach to standardising on a single scan/capture platform.

Operating on a fragmented scanning and document capture infrastructure is a stark reality for many enterprises today. Often companies have legacy scanning and document capture solutions due to the purchase of point solutions by departments or business units, a failure to consolidate systems after mergers and acquisitions, or the deployment of systems to address a single document input channel. But, as document and data volumes explode and document input channels multiply, businesses need a standardised scanning and document capture infrastructure that is cost-effective and flexible.

Failing to optimise scanning and document capture infrastructure hampers business operations by creating manual processes, obstructing information tracking and reporting, complicating security and auditing, requiring the purchase of new software and hardware as business requirements change, and potentially jeopardising the business case for scanning and document capture technology.

However, running a mix of solutions acquired on a piecemeal basis is expensive and complex to manage. It may lack basic essential capabilities such as centralised administration. It can increase maintenance costs and require operators to have a strong knowledge of many systems.

Organisations shouldn't attempt a wholesale replacement of their legacy scanning and document capture systems, much less the deployment of an enterprise-wide platform all at once. Overly ambitious enterprise deployments are likely to get bogged down, delaying a return on investment and potentially resulting in second-guessing among senior managers whose support is required for a project to move forward. Deploying an enterprise platform all at once also may result in excess scanning capacity before organisations have completed their migration to the system.

A better approach to deploying an enterprise-wide platform is to think big, but start small.

1. Select a scanning and document capture platform that meets current and long-term needs.
2. Scale and deploy the solution to meet the requirements of a department or application.
3. Once the platform has demonstrated payback in its initial deployment, extend the platform to meet the requirements of another department or application. The key to success is ensuring that the organisation chooses a platform that meets both its current and long-term needs, while being able to cost-effectively scale to meet these requirements.

INHERENT COMPLEXITY
Running a mix of point solutions acquired on a piecemeal basis presents a number of downsides:

• Poorly scaled hardware: A multiple system environment where software runs on dedicated hardware leads to excess capacity and wasted capital investments. Organisations must ""rip and replace"" hardware when their volumes or processing requirements change.

• Poor user experience: In a mixed systems environment, staff must be trained on multiple point solutions, rather than a single platform. Staff must also sign into multiple systems to perform daily functions, such as retrieving images and data. Similarly, a multi-system environment makes it virtually impossible to centrally administer and manage operations. It is also difficult, and sometimes impossible, to share images and data across disparate platforms. Even in cases where content can be shared, the cost of integration is very high. Upgrades to any one system may have the domino effect of requiring costly and time-consuming changes to the integration layer.

• No support for multiple input channels: Most point solutions are designed for a single document input channel, requiring organisations to deploy multiple systems.

• Lack of visibility: It is difficult to get timely insights when information resides in multiple systems. Similarly, operations managers cannot get a holistic view of how their various systems are operating across the enterprise. Fragmented scanning and document capture systems also limit an organisation's ability to comply with internal, governmental and/or industry mandates for security, privacy, auditability tracking, and reporting. In industries, such as health-care and financial services, strict data privacy and confidentiality regulations (such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards) are difficult to comply with using fragmented systems.

• High maintenance costs: The cost and risk of supporting disparate systems and solutions are notoriously high, due to multiple support contracts, multiple points of contacts when problems occur, and costly fees to maintain (customised) connections between systems.

BENEFITS OF STANDARDISING
Significant business benefits come with replacing disparate scanning and document capture systems with a single platform that can handle all types of document input and adapts to changing needs.

ibml offers a suite of software and scanners that provide a scalable and adaptable platform for enterprise scanning and document capture. ibml supports the following environments: remote scanning, centralised scanning, shared services, and centralised scanning with remote scanning requirements.



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