Simplifying the Order Entry Process using the Email Gateway for CAPSYS CAPTURE

The Problem
Many businesses today frequently utilize email as an acceptable tool for facilitating routine business transactions.  Email poses a number of organizational and process challenges when it comes to automating an order entry process.   While email serves as a convenient "catch all" for receiving voluminous amounts of incoming transactions, such as purchase order requests, it can create on the receiving side of the order entry process - chaos.

First, we can all agree on the surface the process appears to be very simple:  1) Set up an alias email address on your email server called, "orders@xyz.com.  2) Designate a CSR or somebody on your staff to monitor the incoming email address for orders.  3) Send an order acknowledge back to the customer indicating you have received their order.  4) Process the order like you would any other purchase order you have received via FAX, US Mail, Online, etc.

Unintended Consequences
You may have now come to find out while it all seemed rather easy, you have introduced an entirely new set of problems to deal with: 1) Some customers send a PO request as an attachment to their email which means you have to print out the email msg AND the email attachment so you have the complete record of the PO request.  2) Customers supply their email with an attachment such as a PDF while others choose to send you the raw file that they produced the PO request in (WORD, Excel, TIF, JPEG, etc.)  3) You now have all kinds of different flavors of attachments coming to your CSR who may not be familiar with how to open all the different formats, or he/she might not have the proper rendering software application on their desktop to open up the attachment.  4) You either now have come to realize you must develop some sort of electronic filing system for your incoming email messages and attachments so you maintain a historical bread crumb trail of the transactions or; elect to print out all your messages and attachments and revert back to a paper filing system (only later to prep, scan and index?).

What you have accomplished may all look good from the outside to your customers, but in reality your employees are frustrated with the way all this has panned out internally.  Emails are piling up, if you are a seasonal business, this can become really problematic.   There is no consistency in which customers create their email messages and attachments.  Paper still exists in the process.  Somebody internally on your staff needs to sort through the messages by sender to figure out which orders belong to which CSR and forward them on yet again, creating another manual step in the order entry process.

Automated Email Capture with CAPSYS CAPTURE
Automated email input for CAPSYS has never been easier with CAPSYS CAPTURE Email Gateway.  CAPSYS CAPTURE Email Gateway QSX supports traditional email systems such as SMTP, MAPI and IMAP which support most of the major mail server configurations.  All of the email message content and its associated attachments are automatically captured so we may utilize as much of the message content to facilitate and automated the document indexing process.  Further, email messages and their associated attachments are routed to the correct CSR for order processing and are consistently managed and processed day after day.  These features dramatically cut down on labor and costs typically associated with error prone, manual data entry processes.

Configuration is a snap!  CAPSYS CAPTURE Email Gateway has a simple to use, user interface which is designed for the business analyst to setup and configure.  No programming or scripting is required.   

Our built in message interrogation capability allows the Gateway to either accept or reject the message based on pre-defined business rules. Each message by replied back with an acknowledgment using an automated message reply.  Rules can be based on sender address, whether or not an attachment exists, or if the attachment does not meet the preset requirements. 

Find out more about CAPSYS CAPTURE's Email Gateway by contacting CAPSYS.

SMB's finally moving to Cloud? Microsoft sees it that way!

It was only a matter of time.  The Global 2000 organizations got the message loud and clear years ago about the Economic Benefits of Cloud Computing.  Will the SMB market finally wake up from its nap?  Check out this article posted by CMSWIRE on April 1, 2011. (Thanks for the tip from our friends at Element R Partners http://www.rurelevant.com)

Some gems in the article that caught my attention:

• The value of the cloud market in the SMB space is close to US$ 21 billion.
• Nearly one in three SMBs use cloud services, with cloud usage among SMBs expected to rise to 42%.
• One in three SMBs plan to change the way data is stored, moving more data to the cloud, with many planning to reduce their use of local system hard drives and direct-attached storage.
• Microsoft’s SMB Cloud Adoption Study 2011 seems to suggest a gradual, rather than abrupt, change over a period of three years.
• "Cloud adoption will be gradual, and SMBs will continue to operate in a hybrid model with an increasing blend between off-premises and traditional on-premises infrastructure, for the foreseeable future,” said Marco Limena, vice president, Business Channels, Worldwide Communications Sector at Microsoft.

Full article available at: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/microsoft-sees-smbs-moving-to-the-cloud-010730.php

Irresponsible IT Spending by the Government - You Decide

I can already envision the hate mail that will be forthcoming after this blog post sinks in.  But what the heck, government spending is on the top of the list of reasonable thinking citizens these days, so the topic is fair game in my book.

We, like many of you in the IT sector receive RFP's from our various government institutions. Having personally seen some of these RFPs, I am simply amazed at the continued out of control spending on IT initiatives when government spending should be dramatically cut.  But, the RFP's and no bid contracts for IT projects continue to freely flow in States that are for all intensive purposes, broke.

Here is a fair set of questions we should all be asking: Where is the money coming from to support the continued spending in On Premise IT solutions?  Why are hardware and software maintenance contracts for On-Premise IT solutions continually being renewed for IT On Premise hardware and software products that can very well be replaced with a fully capable, lower cost alternative?  Wouldn't you want your government officials looking at viable choices that can dramatically slash their spending habits for the benefit of the tax payer?

The way I see it, our government officials can either choose to save the tax payer large sums of money year after year by looking at an alternative or continue to needlessly spend the precious, limited dollars at the peril of the tax payer.   So you ask, what is the alternative in which I am speaking of?  Software as a Service or (SaaS).

Now the naysayers are already frantically typing away with all the reasons why SaaS and Cloud are not viable in the government sector: citing data security, physical security, firewall issues, ongoing costs, the current software provider doesn't provide their solution in the cloud - yada yada, yada. The fact of the matter is governmental bodies can save the tax payers real, substantive tax payer dollars on  many different fronts without sacrificing features, functionality, security, accessibility, scalability, etc.  They just need to make extra effort to actually look for alternative solutions in the marketplace.

As a result of moving to SaaS based IT solutions, they more than likely will achieve entirely new levels of cost savings and new application functionality with SaaS alternatives than any on-premise based solution they have today.  Please, don't waste your time or mine trying to refute the facts, many white papers are readily available on the internet by respected industry giants that adequately address those subjects.

Mathematics simply will tell the story better than any crafty word-smithing.  Thank goodness mathematics are one of the subjects in the world that still remains on a solid footing.  Let's look at real life Total Cost of Ownership example -software and hardware deployment for a Document Capture solution to get my point across, though the exercise can easily apply to any application with some foresight.

When you look at TCO in the document capture market, the typical approach to breaking the initial CAPEX and Annual Reoccurring cost structure is a follows:

To help bring some clarity to an industry inundated with acronyms, I will provide you with some definitions:

• # of Conc. Users – Total number of software licenses needed to support user community
• Max IPY Page Vol - Some vendors charge on the basis of Images Per Year & cap their annual/monthly license page counts
• Annual D.C. cost - Datacenter Charge backs from an outside IT infrastructure provider. 
• Projected PSG – IT Professional Services Group charges that are assessed for outside IT consultancy contractor services.     

In this example, the customer is presented with the traditional option to continue to spend your tax payer dollars on annual software assurance and IT support contract for an existing document capture solution with an annual cost of $157,559.  Special Note: this illustration doesn't even address the required tax payers dollars to initially purchase the actual software application.  We are just focusing on the operational costs to support and maintain the application. Ouch.

First, notice the Year 2 TCO: $157k Annual Invoice conducted through an expensive and time consuming RFP process, and board approval process vs. $57k SaaS, Annual operational expense billed on a Monthly basis. As a tax payer, which option is represents the more fiscally sound decision and which would you prefer your governmental body to choose -$57k or $157k?

Second, take notice of the fact that there is the entire elimination of the annual data center cost!  That's right, there is no charge…$0.  Why?  Because the outsourced IT firm that was charging back the government to stand up, install, maintain, patch, hotfix, support, etc. the server infrastructure that was used to provision the on-premise IT system isn't needed anymore.  It is all managed by the SaaS provider who is the subject matter expert on the application.  The SaaS provider provides the infrastructure designed and optimized to support their system, thus, there is absolutely no need to pay a third party outsourcing provider.  So there is even more benefits than just the economic aspects.  Interesting thought isn't it?

Thirdly, let’s take a look at the first years cost: Monthly/Annual Cost + Annual D.C. Cost + Projected PSG Cost which = Year One TCO or $165,559.  Or, alternatively the government officials can choose the lower cost alternative of $44,757 + 0 + 24k = $81k.  Huh, the governmental officials have a choice to either spend $81k vs. $165k in the first year.  As a tax payer, which option would you like your governmental body to choose?  

So, the next time you are at your local county board meeting and / or you see a State or Federal RFP issued for IT products and services, you now know there are viable options to the age old out of control spending that has been occurring for decades - at least in the world of IT.  Write me back and let me know your thoughts!

Best,

Paul 

What does the Microsoft Azure opportuntiy mean for you and your business?

To Embrace the Cloud or Not, that is the question before all of us ;-)

Have you given much thought to the Microsoft Azure Cloud Computing strategy and its inevitable effect on your business?   Or, when somebody mentions Azure, does Prime Rib immediately come to mind?

BTW, Microsoft points out that the best way to remember how to pronounce Azure is to think of it like this: "AS you are walking through the door."

Microsoft Azure and Cloud computing is quite the buzz in the world of IT these days, how much time have you and your executive team dedicated towards a single discussion around the subject?  Are you aware of the massive Cloud initiatives currently underway by Amazon, Apple, Salesforce.com (force.com) and others?   Microsoft sees those vendors as a serious competitive threat to the traditional Microsoft based datacenter/on-premise based solutions - if they see competitive Cloud offerings as a threat, how does your organization view the Cloud?  How will the Cloud affect your ECM business?  What will the Cloud do to the traditional pricing models that exist in the market place today?  What will the Cloud do to my top line revenue growth forecasts? How do I address commission/comp plans?  Can I finance Cloud receivables?  These questions are just a tip of the iceberg.  You can either stick your head in the sand and ignore the challenge and deny the opportunity or you can choose to face the challenge head on and find the "opportunity."

You can see the topic of the Cloud will open an entirely new set discussions at an executive level and will present a new set of challenges. 

No doubt there is a whirlwind of change occurring right before your eyes with your customers.  If you haven't been talking to them about Cloud-based initiatives they are contemplating, I'll betcha dollars to donuts your competition is.   The economic value proposition is simply undeniable and let's face it, "dollars and cents" do a lot convincing these days with buyers in the sales cycle.  

First, if you know nothing about Microsoft Azure, here is a great set of resource to start with, although I promise you reading through the abundance of Microsoft authored whitepapers will take more than a few minutes:  http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/whitepapers/  

For the sake of time, let me provide you with an abridged version.  Microsoft Azure is a group of computing services based offered via the "Cloud." In other words, rather than buying, installing, provisioning and maintaining your own hardware/OS platforms, why not exploit the massive availability of web-accessible Windows servers in the market today?

Today, Microsoft Azure services can be broken down into the following 4 major categories: 

1) Windows Azure AppFabric;
2) SQL Azure (which CAPSYS CAPTURE announced support in early February);
3) Windows Azure and;
4) Windows Azure Marketplace.

• Windows Azure: A Windows environment similar to what you have experienced in the past, only this time hosted in the Cloud for the purposes of running applications and storing data on computers in Microsoft data centers. 
• SQL Azure: Relational data services in the cloud, based on SQL Server - again hosted in Microsoft's Datacenter.
• Windows Azure AppFabric: Cloud-based infrastructure services for applications running in the cloud or on premises, hosted in Microsoft's Datacenter.
• Windows Azure Marketplace: An online service for purchasing cloud-based data and applications.

So, why should you care and how does affect your business as a CAPSYS business partner, what is the opportunity for you and your business?  Here are a handful of points to noodle on and get your started in the right direction:

1. Are you interested in "completely resetting the table" from a competitive positioning standpoint or do you like the idea of walking into a competitive situation and saying "we can do that, or me too?"    
2. Do you sleep well at night hoping for the "one hit wonders" every quarter that you have banked on for years knowing that that they are growing further and farther in between due to CAPEX restrictions or; 
3. Are you interested in a more predictable revenue/profit growth model?  Albeit at a smaller clip than on-premise transactions, but PREDICTABLE.
4. Have you grown tried of fretting over whether or not your largest Software Assurance Renewals are actually going to "renew" year after year?  Or, perhaps your customers have caught wind of the "game" and know to beat you up every year for a 10% discount while your vendors are somehow justifying raising their cost to you for SWA renewals?  Tired of getting squeezed? 
5. Are you interested in putting forth a solution in front of your prospect that any on-premise based competitive offering would have a very difficult if not impossible time task of matching or beating terms of: Time to Market, Cost and ROI?

If any one of these questions hit a nerve, than you should give serious thought to looking into Cloud based solutions because the Cloud is positioned very well to address everyone of the questions/challenges raised here plus offer plenty more opportunity than I can discuss in this post.

One other point I will leave you with.  Consider Microsoft's massive marketing machine and give some thought how your business can effectively ride that wave.  Did you know that you can market your solution through Microsoft's Pinpoint online marketing engine - for free? Assuming you are an authorized Microsoft Partner.  Don't have a Microsoft Azure solution to go to market with?  Well, if you are an authorized CAPSYS Business Partner, than you need to rethink your answer because YES you do!   CAPSYS now supports Microsoft SQL Azure.  So, update your Microsoft Pinpoint profiles.  Perhaps your business is not currently a Microsoft Authorized Business Partner.  visit www.https://partner.microsoft.com/ and as Larry the Cable Guy says, "Get 'er Done!"







 

Economic Value Proposition and Creative Marketing on behalf of one of our valued Partners

There is something to be said about going the "extra mile" to get your point across.  Our industry for many years has relied on publishing its customer successes using traditional printed materials, then relying on proactive PR efforts to hopefully pick the story up and publish it in some trade journal.  Well, times have changed as a result of social media.  Here is a fine example of - courtesy of one of our business partners - what I personally think is a more creative way to get your partner successes evangelized in the marketplace - YouTube.  Yes, a bit more pricey than traditional forms of marketing, but from a cost and impact per impression standpoint - rather hard to beat.  Plus, as we have all seen, YouTube videos have the potential in going viral.  Rather difficult task for a printed case study to become "viral."

Note that this video focuses on the customer talking about how they re-engineered their internal business process - essentially "externalizing their business process" and making it directly available to their partner channel via CAPSYS CAPTURE.  With CAPSYS, this customer now has found a new, innovative way to externalize the economic value of the process directly to their elite partner channel.  Hey, enough of my talking...watch the video and let us know what you think?  

Bekins Van Lines Outflanks the Industry Giants!

20 Years later...No Brainer Opportunity

Our industry for over 20 years now - even to this date, continues to over complicate (needlessly) the ECM buying process for the business consumer.  There is a plethora of choices, compounded by the fact beyond the usual providers in the market, there is a huge indirect channel of solution providers in the marketplace.  You also have the Regional, National, and Multi-National Systems Integrators who are looking for their piece of the ECM pie.  Adding to the already complicated buying process, you have the MFP vendors and their respective channel partners all who make various claims as to their offerings and value add in the overall ECM marketplace. 

Let's zero in on the Document Capture component of the market for a moment. Question: after 20 years in the industry, has any software vendor made the buying process or implementation process any simpler?  It is nearing the end of 2010 and you still take software out of a box - granted on a DVD now - pop the DVD into your DVD drive and run a Setup.exe.  Or, perhaps you go to a secure FTP site and download, then run a Setup.exe.  Well, you don't run the Setup.exe, you have your authorized business partner providing the solution do that for you, or have the software vendor fly their Professional Services team out to run a Setup.exe.  Yep, that is what 20 years worth of software engineering efforts in the Document Capture market has brought to you the Business Consumer. Innovation? Aren't you ready for an experience that is radically different, more importantly an alternative that saves time, money and is more efficient for everyone involved?  

You the Business Consumer  - the ones with the business problems you are trying to solve with limited dollars and resources - shouldn't be plagued with chasing down your IT staff to spec out servers, operating systems, databases, etc.  Only to then move on to having your purchasing departments bid out server hardware to save a few pennies on the dollar.  Maybe, after all this passage of time, 90 days later - after you cut all your PO's, equipment and software begin to finally roll in. Schedules of your IT staff become available, your integrator or PS team from the software vendor begin to arrive, and your installation & configuration begins.

Meanwhile, you spent all that cash for products -software and hardware - but you have nothing to show for it other than pieces and parts that need to be assembled by those "in the know."  Your business process is still lacking the efficiencies, lacking the organizational compliance mandates, and your department is bleeding cash. You basically bought a very expensive "erector set" and patiently will need to continue to wait until your expensive erector set is finally all assembled, tested and put into production.

And, from a Channel perspective, the value add of our Channel Partners should not be bogged down in software installation processes and hardware provisioning.  Our Channel Partners should be focused on delivering cost effective Document Capture solutions that solve problems and offer the lowest cost of ownership in the industry.  Their focus should be on the customer's business challenges and they should be focused on problem solving.        

So, it got us all here at CAPSYS thinking. Can we significantly simplify the buying and implementation experience for both our Channel Partners and our Business Consumers when it comes to On-Premise based Document Capture solutions?  We have already successfully tackled the option of Software as a Service - CAPSYS CAPTURE ONLINE...but what about simplifying the On-Premise option?



The Birth of CAPSYS AXIOM
Going back to the tail end of 2009, we had on the drawing board the concept of developing a Single and Multi-user document capture network appliance.  A solution that we could  pre-install and largely pre-configure for our Channel Partners and the Business Consumer -90% complete if you will.  That means the operating systems, SQL, CAPSYS software application, transactional content management workflow, etc. are all pre-installed, provisioned, pre-tuned - "matched" if you will - to server hardware that will meet the performance demands placed upon it.  All the same features and functionality that you would get with a traditional on-premise solution, but designed in such a way that we remove all the headaches previously described for both our Channel Partners and the Business Consumer.  The end goal: design a solution that could be made available in a "small form factor, superbly packed with features, functionality, and simplicity."   

On 9/27, my InformationWeek arrived in the US mail.  Low and behold, the headline on the front page of the magazine was, "Rise of the Appliance."  In that article they cited how all the major IT suppliers - interestingly enough - OUTSIDE of the ECM industry - are quickly rushing to bring out an "appliance based solution." Companies like: HP, IBM, SAP, Microsoft, Teradata, EMC...you get the point.  Full article available here.

We temporarily shelved the idea because of other pressing development priorities and mixed responses from our channel partners whether or not the concept of a "network appliance" would make logical and practical sense in the marketplace.  In hind site, perhaps we should have released of CAPSYS AXIOM earlier in the year.  Hey, like any other company, we were faced with limited resources and only so many hours in the day, so you have to face "reality" when it strikes you square between the eyes.

So, while my industry has failed for the last 20 years to simplify the Document Capture buying experience and implementation process, at least we did our small part and have stepped up to the plate to address an obvious, major void in the market.  I am CERTAIN others will follow shortly.  Word on the street is a major publicly traded company in the industry is soon to announce their appliance based solution...shhh, don't tell anybody though ;-)

One caveat to my generalizations about our industry....FileBound from MarexGroup has significantly simplified the ECM experience with FileBound Express.  Hats off to their innovation, creativity and recognizing the weaknesses in our industry.  As for the rest of ECM software publishers, take your lumps and listen up.

Integrating Remote Deposit Capture with Distributed Document Capture

We've been involved with a CAPSYS and Eastman Kodak partner who identified a rather interesting, really money savings application opportunity. Who isn't interested in money savings ideas these days? The project goes like this:

The Problem
This particular end user organization has a facility where they have been doing centralized document capture for years using a competitive thick client document capture solution integrated with a Content Management System for the content repository. The organization has large departmental document scanners to handle the voluminous amounts of documents that are rec'd on a daily basis from its network of independent agents. Contained in the batch of documents are business checks that are paying for the services rendered. The checks are separated by the mail room personnel who subsequently hands the checks off to accounting through an interoffice mail process. The mail room continues with prepping, sorting and scanning the remaining business documents.

Some of the independent agents are very good about turning the documents and checks around daily or weekly via their favorite courier (FedEx or UPS), others are not so expeditious about turning the information back to corporate in a timely and predictable manner. The current process is shall we say, inconsistent, has plenty of room for errors due to potential missing checks or missing supporting documents. 

Further, the checks may take a week or two to process due to their "in flight status." Because the current process is "centralized" - beginning with a mail room operation who has to sort/prep/classify/distinguish the checks from the business documents - using interoffice mail, the checks eventually make their way from the mail room to the accounting department who then follow through with generating the typical AR receipt matching process, and eventually deposit the funds with their respective banking institution. 

Whew, I left out a lot of minutia, but you are beginning to get the idea.  Frankly, not all that uncommon of a business process.

A Partner with Vision
After our partner carefully examined this client's situation, they proposed the better mouse trap. Capture the checks and business documents at point of origin with CAPSYS Capture - where the problem begins. Enable and empower the independent agents to capture the check and supporting documentation using inexpensive, TWAIN compliant document scanners - in this case, Eastman Kodak i1220's.

Now, the customer's independent agents immediately capture the check and the supporting documents at point of origin using CAPSYS via - you guessed it, a web browser. Everybody knows how to use a web-browser, so training is a snap.  The documents immediately follow the structured Transactional Content Management Workflow that is embedded inside of CAPSYS Capture.  Yes, that is what where the business process begins, thus a rules based workflow inside of a document capture makes all the sense in the world!

CAPSYS' workflow engine automatically detects and differentiates the check from the remaining business documents, routes the check to the Eastman Kodak t6000 Remote Deposit Capture solution which produces the X937 Cash Letter and Check Image(s) for presentment and deposit to the customer's banking institution. Since we captured the check and the supporting business documents together as a "batch" we are able to carry forward all of that data and post to the customer's ERP system, noting that the funds were received and the deposit was made, including a check number, a link back to the Content Management System for image retrieval. All of the supporting documents that tie the check back to the transaction are also linked and archived to the Content Management System for future retrieval.


Of course "stuff happens" and in a non-perfect world, imperfections are likely to occur. With CAPSYS' built in rules based workflow engine, you have the ability to deal with the exceptions that might occur...we deal with those in CAPSYS using Exception Queues. Exception Queues provide the ability for the customer to view exceptions and deal with them accordingly (rescans, add additional pages, delete pages, etc.).

The End Results

• Checks and Supporting Documents are Capture at Point of Origin, where the problem begins;
• Centralized Scanning and all of the associated headaches and costs with centralized scanning are eliminated (CAPEX expensive hardware, software, reoccurring maintenance contracts, etc.);
• Eliminates the expense required to Federal Express/UPS/US Mail checks and documents to the central office for processing;
• Funds are deposited the same day they are collected (remember, Cash is King);
• The CAPSYS/Kodak t6000 Solution allow the customer to be completely independent of any proprietary check imaging bank solution. The solution is completely portable from one bank to the next, in today's banking climate, that is absolutely essential;
• The client's business partners are all in compliance with customer's standardized operating procedures;
• If the Transactional Content Management Workflow Process needs to be changed, it all done using a graphical user interface, no programming required;
• On premise or SaaS...the deployment choice doesn't matter, take your pick. 

Now, think about all the applications that exist out in the market place where you can apply this exact same winning formula: Individual Health Insurers who take applications and checks on the spot, contractors who complete a job and accept payment via check, transportation firms who are inundated with paper work and accept checks upon delivery, the list goes on.  And, because it is entirely web based app, any where you have access to the internet, you can scan the business documents and the checks right there on the spot.  If you have a browser on your desktop, you are already have way there. No more need to incur the costs and time delays with Federal Express/UPS/USPS mailing documents.

Are your wheels spinning?  A Closed Loop Business Process that minimizes risk, maximizes profitability.