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.

SaaS based Document Capture - No Brainer decision

It makes all the sense in the world: scan, index, QA, rules-based batch and document workflow processing, all conducted over the web via a browser. Take it a step further and have all this functionality w/o having to buy and install any client or server software, SQL databases - regardless of how simple or complicated your document capture process may be. No server hardware needs to be purchased either...regardless if your content management systems is located on-premise or is SaaS based.

From a partner perspective, your sales cycle is accelerated and measured in days or weeks. Your focus is on the matters of addressing the business needs of your client via your professional services organization. Their focus is on provisioning the service: configuration & integration. No need to fight the battles with IT anymore about who is buying the servers, where are they buying them from, when they will be delivered, how much is the business user being charged by IT to manage the application servers, or if by chance you get the rare opportunity to sell the iron, OS, DB, etc...the need to wrestle over doing business in single digit margins - the turf wars are finally over.

From an end user perspective, you get immediate value, return on investment, and lowest TCO compared to any other on-premise alternative. The SaaS based transaction is likely to be SALES TAX exempt - so it saves your organization some precious cash as well(check with your CPA or CFO). From a time to market perspective, on-premise based rollouts are simply no match for SaaS based capture solutions. From a time to market perspective, the age old on-premise delivery option is no match for SaaS!

It really is a "no brainer" decision.

Is your ECM project "a go or no go?"

The economic data continues to look rather bleak, GDP forecasters for Q3 are predicting somewhere around 1.0-1.5% GDP. That is extremely weak and expectations are unemployment rates will continue to grow higher in the near-term. The month of August from a stock market perspective delivered the worst performance in 9 years. Growth predictions for the 4th quarter are almost non-existent from the reports I have been reading.

So, how does all this very alarming economic statistics affect the data and document capture world?

Well, if customers in either the commercial sector or public sector continue to look for the means to pay for ECM projects - via the traditional capital expenditure process (software, software assurance, hardware, hardware maintenance, professional services) they are simply going to run into significant road blocks, delays and perhaps entire project cancellations. This is especially true in the public sector with declining tax revenue being the norm - which are the primary source of funds used to finance public IT projects.

Let's face it, the Executive Teams throughout Corporate America take into account the economic climate when making informed business investment spending decisions. One would reasonably expect the Public Sector would wake up to the stark reality of budget crunches and maintain some semblance of fiscal responsibility with our tax dollars.

Corporate spending on IT related CAPEX projects certainly are not immune from economic data and certainly will affect those business decisions - whether the projects are "a go or no go." Today or within the last hour, the economic data might be ok, and the Executive Team may be in support of your ECM project, but come tomorrow that may quickly change and without notice, the Executive Team may have decided to immediately shut down your ECM project. As I write this, fuel costs shot up .25 per gallon overnight...the trucking and transportation industry no doubt are all talking about the dramatic, unexpected increase in costs of doing business that didn't exist last Friday, but now exist come Monday morning!

However, there is a very bright light at the end of the tunnel - Software as a Service (SaaS). For CAPSYS customers and CAPSYS partners, CAPSYS CAPTURE ONLINE provides a viable alternative to stalled, dead, or no-decision ECM projects because CAPEX budgets are either frozen, non-existent or have been completely vaporized. The Software as a Service option takes the mystery and uncertainly out of whether or not your ECM project will be funded because you aren't seeking six figures of CAPEX budget dollars to support your project.

Interestingly enough, we are finding that our partner's Global 2000 customers are tracking with the SaaS trend more quickly than the mid-market. I suspect this is because the mid-market organizations still are emotionally attached to maintaining physical possession of their equipment, software and data. Mid market companies are eventually going to get the message...save your cash, embrace SaaS and get business done today...if you don't, your competition will.

CAPSYS Tech Tip

Did you know that you can release documents and associated metadata to multiple repositories from CAPSYS CAPTURE? For example, you are working with a customer that has deployed SharePoint in their Human Resources department and FileBound in their Finance/Accounting department. For each document type, you select which repository (i.e., Document Management System) you want to release to by simply placing the Release Module QSX on the Document Type process map (Standard licensing policies apply).

CAPSYS CAPTURE can release to a unique repository for each document type. Additionally, you can even release the same document type to multiple repositories simply by placing each release module QSX in sequence on the Document Type process map. CAPSYS CAPTURE can be used to perform all of the document and data capture needs for a client regardless of the number of document management systems are installed - they don't need a different document capture product for each system! Very cool, huh?