01732 759725
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
40
The right stuff
Kodak Alaris is attempting to make the transition from a hardware company
to a software and services-led business.
Technology Reseller
finds out how
from Siddhartha (Sid) Bhattacharya, VP of Global Marketing for the Kodak
Alaris Information Management division
and the opportunity to upgrade equipment
more frequently than they might have done
in the past.
The launch of Kodak Alaris’s new
scanners and improved software (see
below) gave
Technology Reseller
the
opportunity to find out more about this
strategy from the man himself.
Data chaos
Sid Bhattacharya started by explaining
that in an era of data chaos, with
exponential growth of both structured and
unstructured data, in which organisations
use or analyse less than 0.5% of the
data they hold, Kodak’s raison d’être is
to solve the problem of big data. It is
doing this by focusing on the notion of
information capture, rather than just image
capture, and its use in essential business
processes through easy integration with
other software solutions.
“The starting point for the ecosystem
is the bigger narrative around data chaos;
it’s all about turning that data chaos into
business opportunity. The fact that data
is growing exponentially, not just paper
but digital documents, not just structured
data but unstructured data, and the fact
that it is coming from multiple and diverse
sources – MFPs and scanners, tablets,
mobile apps – mean that for many of our
customers, the question is not whether
they should make the journey to digital
transformation but where and how to
begin. That is the problem we are looking
to alleviate with the launch of the eco-
system,” he said.
The Alaris IN2 Ecosystem is built upon
three of the company’s key strengths:
1
Science
– its decades of R&D and
IP in capture, recognition, extraction and
integration;
2
Technology
– Kodak Alaris has won
the Buyers Lab Inc (BLI) Scanner Line of
the Year for two years running (2016 and
2017) and has more BLI Picks (23) than
any other scanner manufacturer; and
3
Partnerships
– the development and
delivery of new services through technology
partners and system integrators.
Kodak Alaris is bringing all three to
bear in the development of solutions
for five horizontal applications common
to businesses and organisations in all
industry sectors – mailroom automation,
records management, forms processing,
on-boarding and accounts payable.
“We feel the expertise we have with
our scanners and our software and
our partners really helps us take our
customers on the information capture
journey. Our scanners, software and
services work in an integrated way with our
solution partners. Through our eco-system,
we allow customers to deal with different
documents and formats; to identify index
information; to route documents to the
business process; and to lower their costs
and increase their ROI,” Bhattacharya
explained.
By focusing on information and
business processes, rather than scanning
per se, the Alaris IN2 Ecosystem is
extending the company’s reach in an
attempt to future-proof Kodak Alaris and
its partners.
“We understand the fact that paper-
based workflows are declining, though
they are still more than 50% of many of
our customers’ business operations and
processes. The eco-system and technology
expertise we have to offer are as relevant
and important to workflows that originate
digitally as they are to workflows that
originate with paper,” he said.
Getting it right
Bhattacharya adds that, taken together,
the three elements of the ecosystem –
Science, Technology and Partners – deliver
three end-user benefits:
n
The Right Fit:
“We are able to offer
information capture that is seamless to
customer businesses. We have trusted
partners to deliver the right solution; we
have best-in-class scanners, ranging from
desktop to high value production models;
and we are able to work in the customer’s
environment to optimise their overall
investment,” he said.
n
The Right Experience:
“This is
about ease of use, the user experience,
everything we offer in terms of easy
management and set-up and the fact
that we can bring in a set of services that
allows remote monitoring and inspection
to make sure that our scanners are up
and running and to handle preventative
maintenance, as and when required.”
As key enablers of digitisation, scanner
manufacturers are agents of their
own destruction. The more successful
they are at facilitating the transition
to paperless processes, the less the
need for their products – or for their
hardware, at least.
In this respect, companies like Kodak
Alaris face many of the same challenges
as printer manufacturers, with whom they
are linked by a shared dependence on
paper – for input in the case of scanners
and for output in the case of printers.
It is fitting therefore that the man
responsible for defining and implementing
the company’s new marketing strategy,
Siddhartha (Sid) Bhattacharya, VP of
Global Marketing for the Kodak Alaris
Information Management division, should
have spent 14 years with Xerox, where he
helped launch the company’s ConnectKey
MFPs and solutions platform.
Currently, well over 80% of Kodak Alaris
revenue comes from scanner hardware,
including services relating to break-fix and
maintenance. However, just like Xerox, it
is attempting to evolve from a hardware-
focused company into more of a software
and services-led business.
To facilitate this transition, it has
developed a new marketing approach,
the Alaris IN2 Ecosystem, and is actively
developing partnerships to increase
revenue from an expanding portfolio of
professional and managed services, like
its new leasing solution that provides
customers with an alternative to the
outright purchase of scanners and services
The starting
point for the
ecosystem is the
bigger narrative
around data
chaos; it’s all
about turning
that data chaos
into business
opportunity.
Siddhartha Bhattacharya
