Managed.IT - issue 57

14 MANAGED.IT COVER STORY 01732 759725 Consolidation Today, BPOs and centralised mailrooms tend to deploy a variety of scanning devices (including specialist devices like cheque scanners) to cope with heavy workloads and a broad range of document types. Each of these devices has an overhead in procurement and running costs, space occupied and the need for maintenance and operator training. In addition, the need for manual sorting prior to scanning is time-consuming, increases staffing overheads and reduces the volume of documents that can be processed in a day. Another problem, claims John, is that because of changing usage patterns some specialist devices (notably cheque scanners) may no longer receive as much investment and support from vendors, forcing erstwhile customers to look elsewhere for a solution. Others might be looking at a new device as part of the normal replacement cycle. “A lot of organisations are faced with hardware and software that has reached the end of its useful life and are having to make decisions about what to do next. This is an ideal time to recognise that the technology has changed dramatically and to consolidate that spend and make it much more strategic,” he said. The ibml FUSiON series is ideal in this regard as it has the speed and the versatility to handle the workload of several devices, giving organisations the ability to optimise their scanner fleet, workflow and mortgage and loan applications initiated in a local branch, with supporting documents collected and sent off to be scanned centrally ‘after the fact’. The same applies to processes that are initiated digitally, for example on a smartphone. He suggests that centralising the scanning of physical documents containing private information gives more control over the chain of custody, which is important for compliance reasons, and delivers significant productivity benefits, not just from faster scan speeds but also from better paper handling, which reduces the risk of errors like double-feeding; from greater intelligence, which allows the devices to identify errors within documents, such as missing signatures; and from streamlined integration with digital business processes. John adds that centralisation also helps automate the extraction of data from documents and the feeding of it into business processes at scale, citing the example of payments processing. “It makes sense to capture payments centrally because how those cheques are handled and how the data is captured from them and made available to business systems needs to be harmonised as a process. It makes sense for consumers to mail those items into a centralised location where data and content can be extracted and made available to business systems downstream,” he said. This example brings us to the second great opportunity presented by the FUSiON Series: consolidation. Imaging Business Machines, LLC (ibml), the leading global provider of intelligent information capture solutions, is set to transform information capture with the launch of the ibml FUSiON Series of high-volume scanners. Designed from the ground-up to eliminate the inefficiencies of existing scan processes, the FUSiON is not only the world’s fastest, intelligent, scalable document capture platform, it is also the most versatile, able to scan the widest range of materials, from small coupons and cheques to ECG output for medical records, in a single uninterrupted process. For organisations that need to process large numbers of printed documents, such as banks, insurance companies, utilities providers, healthcare organisations and government bodies, as well as scanning bureaus and business process outsourcers (BPOs), FUSiON provides an opportunity to cut costs, increase productivity and improve data governance through centralisation and consolidation of scanning activities. Centralisation While there has been a strong trend towards distributed scanning in recent years, for example via small desktop devices in bank branches, Susheel John, ibml Vice President Product Marketing, says that this has run in parallel with a demand for greater centralisation offering economies of scale and improved security. “We have been through a huge wave of decentralisation in all sorts of technologies and now, as organisations are realising how challenging it is to preserve the privacy and security and accountability and auditability of the information they are gathering, enterprises are starting to exert control again,” he said. John cites the example of Accelerate and consolidate The ground-breaking ibml FUSiON scanner offers much more than just a change of pace ibml FUSiON Scanner Issue 56 2020