A couple of articles back I wrote about Capture Data Interchange or CDI (in short like CDI is like EDI but a lot closer to point of inception of a business process). To the best that I can search the web, the term CDI is not used anywhere else at this time (8/31/2008) and there are some limited references to Data Interchange within Data Capture literature in the direct sense such as EDI.
Well what is CDI and what are the potential impacts of CDI on our echo-system? These are two questions that needs to be answered.
First what is CDI conceptually?
Imagine if we could bring the business devices (scanners, digital cameras, cell phones, MFP, etc.) closer to business applications and connect them using one single but intelligent button. What do I mean by that? Best is to use an example: imagine a car dealership gets a car and can walk up to the car take a digital picture from the car, index it right there on the camera, take a picture of forms related to that car (title, insurance card, etc.) and have the GPS location, the digital pictures, the forms and all other information about the car up to the auction database for the car to be auctioned DIRECTLY FROM CAMERA. That's just one example, how taking the business application closer to business devices (or by definition, CDI) can make a difference.
Now imagine this, your customer provides you with a number (e.g., ABCD-NNN-XYZ) and says if you send them anything related to your products use this number. Where this number appears in is irrelevant. Now, customer is in control since they can filter through anything that comes to them and look for that number and start categorizing and processing the information more intelligently and have your full records cataloged properly and processed. CDI and ways to apply CDI has a lot to do with capturing the initial piece of information intelligently and start cutting out manual handling at very early cycles of the process. Once the data is better organized, categorized and automated research elements are performed then people can get involved. This will allow companies to not only reduce the one-to-one interaction madness that we are experiencing but also start putting sense around the data that comes in and goes out of the enterprise with full chain of custody as to how and what happened when!!!
The main impact of CDI is really Green Business Process Automation (GBPA). GBPA is the business processes made greener and more echo friendly. Why CDI has huge impacts on implementation of better and more echo-friendly GBPA? because it simply eliminates the most inefficient piece of the business processes, the initial process start period by automating and getting the business processes closer to the business process inception point.
Take the same car dealer ship without such integration. He or she would fill out a form (say electronically, even though all of them are more than likely are paper) take a digital camera pictures of the car. Electronically cut and paste the pictures into the form or attach them and print a copy for files, fax a copy to auction house or send using email. This is a broken process and what starts wrong becomes even worst, since from now on both sides of the process depend on multiple pieces of information (form, camera pictures, etc.) and are going to need to resort back to paper document as soon as there is a problem.
My message is CDI has great impact, far beyond the business process automation, efficiency and savings... it's Green and it can help the environment... thoughts and comments are welcomed.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Let's Talk eCopy
Ok... I am taking the gloves off for this one... sorry but it's got to be done this way....
First, who is eCopy? For those of you that may not be familiar with them, eCopy is known for creating eCopy ShareScan product line. Originally started as a hardware PC sitting next to copiers, they created a brand name in copier market around PC based scanning for copiers.
Second, Canon carried their products almost exclusively up to three years ago and then they tried to branch out to other manufacturers with a lot of hit and miss. Well the only ones that really carry their product is Ricoh and then volumes really falls off with HP, Sharp, Toshiba... none of these latter set of manufacturers really carry any large eCopy volume.
About three years ago they really tried to branch out of the Hardware model to a software only model with two product lines:
1. The eCopy Desktop - a desktop application for PDF manipulation
2. The eCopy ShareScan OP - a software only version of ShareScan that runs on the panel of MFD devices.
They have 25 desktop licenses included on every license of ShareScan OP and that's how they got their license counts to grow (their claim is some ridiculously high number of desktop licenses.) and they have not had any successes on the ShareScan OP embedded side... don't believe me ask from manufacturers (not eCopy) for references of deployment of the software only version that is larger than 100 Devices. Only a few exists.
Now, here is the way I see it, Customers are getting the ShareScan product through their trusted office channels ( the copier salesman) at $5K to $6K a pop. The office channel has no incentive to really provide a lower cost / higher featured solution to the customer (hello customer wake up!!!) since they will be getting less dollars per device license sold if they provide any alternatives to high cost eCopy... So what do customers get: "Don't ask, don't tell". That's right, keep the customer blind folded and push the expensive eCopy devices into the deals. Now, what happens as soon as a customer gets information about competing products and asks the dealer... first reaction: "Muddy the water..." and present other solutions as "Second line of products... you want the elite then pay for eCopy..." which is completely false... there are products at $600 per device (that's right your eyes are reading this right... $600 as compared to $5000!!!) that do the same or better for the customer... but without direct research and closer review by customer, dealers pull the wool over the customers eyes and hide these under the covers until they asked for them by name.
So be aware and ask for eCopy competitors and if you are told there are none, ask a competing office automation dealer to bring you the competing solutions... Ask Xerox (they don't carry eCopy)... Ask Sharp (they carry eCopy as secondary line)... Ask HP (they will show you their internal home grown solution, then show you other third party solutions partners)... then go back and ask your original office automation and do tell them this time "don't muddy the water... you know there are lower cost better applications out there... maybe they will listen to you this time :)"...
If you are told that the other solutions are "Second Line"... Ask them to demo and do your own research by going to the manufacturer of the "second line" solution and get the real story. There are many competitors to eCopy, like EFI (http://www.efi.com/), NSI (http://www.nsius.com/), and many more.
If you want more info... just post your comments here...
First, who is eCopy? For those of you that may not be familiar with them, eCopy is known for creating eCopy ShareScan product line. Originally started as a hardware PC sitting next to copiers, they created a brand name in copier market around PC based scanning for copiers.
Second, Canon carried their products almost exclusively up to three years ago and then they tried to branch out to other manufacturers with a lot of hit and miss. Well the only ones that really carry their product is Ricoh and then volumes really falls off with HP, Sharp, Toshiba... none of these latter set of manufacturers really carry any large eCopy volume.
About three years ago they really tried to branch out of the Hardware model to a software only model with two product lines:
1. The eCopy Desktop - a desktop application for PDF manipulation
2. The eCopy ShareScan OP - a software only version of ShareScan that runs on the panel of MFD devices.
They have 25 desktop licenses included on every license of ShareScan OP and that's how they got their license counts to grow (their claim is some ridiculously high number of desktop licenses.) and they have not had any successes on the ShareScan OP embedded side... don't believe me ask from manufacturers (not eCopy) for references of deployment of the software only version that is larger than 100 Devices. Only a few exists.
Now, here is the way I see it, Customers are getting the ShareScan product through their trusted office channels ( the copier salesman) at $5K to $6K a pop. The office channel has no incentive to really provide a lower cost / higher featured solution to the customer (hello customer wake up!!!) since they will be getting less dollars per device license sold if they provide any alternatives to high cost eCopy... So what do customers get: "Don't ask, don't tell". That's right, keep the customer blind folded and push the expensive eCopy devices into the deals. Now, what happens as soon as a customer gets information about competing products and asks the dealer... first reaction: "Muddy the water..." and present other solutions as "Second line of products... you want the elite then pay for eCopy..." which is completely false... there are products at $600 per device (that's right your eyes are reading this right... $600 as compared to $5000!!!) that do the same or better for the customer... but without direct research and closer review by customer, dealers pull the wool over the customers eyes and hide these under the covers until they asked for them by name.
So be aware and ask for eCopy competitors and if you are told there are none, ask a competing office automation dealer to bring you the competing solutions... Ask Xerox (they don't carry eCopy)... Ask Sharp (they carry eCopy as secondary line)... Ask HP (they will show you their internal home grown solution, then show you other third party solutions partners)... then go back and ask your original office automation and do tell them this time "don't muddy the water... you know there are lower cost better applications out there... maybe they will listen to you this time :)"...
If you are told that the other solutions are "Second Line"... Ask them to demo and do your own research by going to the manufacturer of the "second line" solution and get the real story. There are many competitors to eCopy, like EFI (http://www.efi.com/), NSI (http://www.nsius.com/), and many more.
If you want more info... just post your comments here...
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Connecting Back-Office to Front-Office
Yes, we all have heard this before... and yes we all know how it has been doing, NOT!!! The main issue is that the back-office is designed to do batches and batches are big huge boxes in the basement with a lot of business rules around them with customer willing to pay per batch to process them .... and front-office is designed to do transactions that are short, quick, easy to do and most importantly be done with!!! Two different animals... making them work together is kind of like pushing square peg into a round hole.
Well let's talk about front office operations first. It's all about the user and it's all about ease of use. Single touch, single click, keep my indexing to a minimum, don't make me and my users think. No wonder that MFP and Copiers are at the forefront of front-office distributed capture. As far back as I remember (and that is a very long time btw), the copier machines were the masters of getting a complicated system of copying down to a single green button that all of us use and understand everyday. WOW!!!... can front-office capture be as simple? Imagine that!! Single click and you have your documents go into applications in the way you want to have them... or even better, single click and have your documents read, processed, secured, delivered across the world into your customers, suppliers and vendors applications. Now, I think I have your attentions don't I ?
That's what exactly is going on in front-office capture applications or as I would call it front-office Electronic Capture Interchange or ECI. Yes, just like EDI, now ECI can leap us forward into the next generation of automated processes. ECI, is really far deeper than the current Capture Applications, it refocuses energy on "interchange" after "capture" is done. This idea take a totally different view of the capture world. In the ECI point of view Capture has to be open, it has to be available to all devices, desktops, applications, and other forms of input devices. There has to be an "Interchange" platform that allows on-boarded bits to be processed and inter exchanged between applications. Now combine that platform with an open SDK and you got something that can handle front-office transactions. Combining multiple data streams (another name for on-boarded bits) and creating a true transactional process that can end into business applications across the enterprise.
Huge idea with enormous reach and depth, ECI is the key to next generation of capture technologies and there are only a few companies and have realized this and harvesting it.
If you see the same thing, post your comments here. More on this on later posts.
Well let's talk about front office operations first. It's all about the user and it's all about ease of use. Single touch, single click, keep my indexing to a minimum, don't make me and my users think. No wonder that MFP and Copiers are at the forefront of front-office distributed capture. As far back as I remember (and that is a very long time btw), the copier machines were the masters of getting a complicated system of copying down to a single green button that all of us use and understand everyday. WOW!!!... can front-office capture be as simple? Imagine that!! Single click and you have your documents go into applications in the way you want to have them... or even better, single click and have your documents read, processed, secured, delivered across the world into your customers, suppliers and vendors applications. Now, I think I have your attentions don't I ?
That's what exactly is going on in front-office capture applications or as I would call it front-office Electronic Capture Interchange or ECI. Yes, just like EDI, now ECI can leap us forward into the next generation of automated processes. ECI, is really far deeper than the current Capture Applications, it refocuses energy on "interchange" after "capture" is done. This idea take a totally different view of the capture world. In the ECI point of view Capture has to be open, it has to be available to all devices, desktops, applications, and other forms of input devices. There has to be an "Interchange" platform that allows on-boarded bits to be processed and inter exchanged between applications. Now combine that platform with an open SDK and you got something that can handle front-office transactions. Combining multiple data streams (another name for on-boarded bits) and creating a true transactional process that can end into business applications across the enterprise.
Huge idea with enormous reach and depth, ECI is the key to next generation of capture technologies and there are only a few companies and have realized this and harvesting it.
If you see the same thing, post your comments here. More on this on later posts.
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