| Upgrading Legacy Scan Applications
by David Talarico
Numerous customers are using legacy scan applications to scan and index documents into their workflow or image repository. Implemented many years ago, the legacy scan systems are behind today's technology. These systems generally provide little advanced OCR capabilities other than some bar code reading. Enter Ephesoft. Great opportunities lie ahead for customers who can upgrade their existing scan applications and add value to enterprise software.
These customers they have three choices. Let's review each one in detail:
1.) Keep the existing legacy scan application and renew the vendor contract
This is clearly the easiest choice as it does not involve much work. Most importantly to note, it will not bring any benefits to the company. Chances are the platform is based on an older, more expensive technology and does not provide today's automation to help streamline business environments.
If the customer decides to renew and upgrade the current system, time will be spent to install a new version of the software. Nonetheless, it will have close to the same implementation of features resulting in an increase of labor and upgrade costs. With no true productivity benefits other than on-boarding the vendors latest "enhancements", the customer loses out on benefits of a more modern technology platform or additional advanced capture capabilities.
2.) Enhance the application with advanced capture capabilities
As technology begins to evolve faster every year, Ephesoft offers a modern thin client and advanced capture platform to the market. Using the existing scanning capability, Ephesoft can be used to collect images from existing scan applications and provide advanced capture capabilities which are not in the current scan client.
Ephesoft's advanced capture ability includes auto document separation without the need to use separator pages or barcodes. In addition, the capability to extract variable moving metadata from the documents to assist in starting a workflow process or aid in indexing documents into an image repository. The advanced capture solution will very likely present a return on investment of less than one year. The customer can keep their existing legacy scan application, which their operators are already accustomed, and augment it with enhanced capabilities by adding a modern advanced capture solution to the process.
3.) Enhance the entire application with a modern complete advanced capture solution
Once the customer has a scanning system implemented for a few years, it may be time to revisit the process of refreshing the software and business processes. The current scan client was most likely built and configured with the customer's first exposure to document imaging. Although it might work great, there may be opportunities to re-visit the entire process by researching new technologies which could enhance the process immensely. Some of these technologies can include thin client scanning, thin client OCR processing, and advanced capture technologies which are more cost effective than they were in the past.
If your company has an existing scan operation for scanning, bar code reading, and/or separator pages in process; there is an opportunity to revisit it and add enhanced modern capabilities which will increase overall productivity of the imaging operations. | | |
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