Having already established itself with regular capture-enabled business process management (BPM) solutions, Kofax is turning its attention to smartphones and media tablet as a way to extend capture-enabled BPM capabilities.
Clients such as insurance companies, large banks, and hospitals have been using Kofax’s solutions to capture images from sources such paper, fax, email, PDF, XML, and SMS, before then extracting, classifying and sending them to people, effectively cutting out manual processes. Kofax is now planning to enter the mobile space with the upcoming Kofax Mobile Capture, which will allow people to use cameras in their devices to capture and manages images just as they have in the past.
Kofax chief technology officer, Anthony Macciola, said Kofax Mobile Capture is expected to allow people to do things they could not do before.
“Historically, the content around business processes that we automate had to come into a branch office or a central place where they were captured,” he said.
“With mobile, the same scenario can happen real-time in the field and it will allow a mobile employee base to initiate business processes while out in the field and get real-time feedback.”
Following the impact that mobility has had on any other aspect of our lives, Macciola expects that this year it is going to have an impact on the capture industry.
“It’s going to allow our customers to afford a whole new level of automation and efficiencies that they have not been able to gain until now, so we’re optimistic about the growth opportunities right now,” he said.
Macciola adds that this move is the result of watching the market for three or four years, and in that time the company has built three of four prototypes.
The reasons for the timing include that the mobile OS platforms back then were not mature, the level of control they gave from an API perspective was lacking, the optics on the devices were limited, the over the air bandwidth was not sufficient, and the CPU power was inadequate.
“It became apparent when we were looking at this last year, the new generation of devices such as the iPhone 4S, the Samsung Galaxy series and the new iPad, were going to be the first devices that really had the combination of everything that we needed to start this,” Macciola said.
“They are still a little slow and the optics could be a bit better, but they’re good enough for most organisations to start.”
Macciola expects that when the next generation of devices come out, whether it is the iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy SIII, this type of solution will go mainstream.
“A year from now, the devices being shipped will be more than powerful enough, the over-the-air bandwidth will suffice and the optics will far surpass what we need,” he said.
Releasing this solution now allows Kofax’s enterprise customers the opportunity to field test the product and think about how they want to reengineer their processes, to pick some business processes that are controlled and start to learn.
“As they start to increase their knowledge, we’ll go through a point release or two, the hardware and the software will mature, and by this time next year, we fully expect this to be mainstream,” Macciola said.
Kofax’s go-to-market strategy in Australia will consist of a 50-50 approach.
“Our partners will be able to resell this and we will be able to pursue opportunities directly,” Macciola saod.
Kofax Mobile Capture is expected to be released this quarter in Australia, sometime before the end of June
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