Loading ...
brandonmount
Other
DIR - Document Imaging Report
3
0
Try Now
Log In
Pricing
Page 1 Table Of Contents What’s Coming in 2022? A Few Semi-Educated Guesses 2 Seismic Shift in Capture Landscape in 2022 4 8 Predictions – RPA, AI, and More 5 Hardware Scanner Vendors Will Begin to Embrace Cloud Services Solutions in 2022 7 Redefining Normalcy 7 Microsoft Office 365 Expands Footprint 8 Hyperautomation and Intelligent Document Processing Will Take Center Stage 9 A Prediction Four-Pack 9 Rising Importance of Network Scanners 10 Is a Network Scanning Data Breach Inevitible? 10 Micro Services Emerge and WFH Increases Worker/Employer Divide 12 Network Scanning Gains More Traction 14 BPOs Will Adjust Service Offerings 15 Page 2 What’s Coming in 2022? A Few Semi- Educated Guesses I’ll take no time in getting to my annual prediction: things will get better, faster, cheaper. OK, given the ongoing pandemic and in□ation, maybe not cheaper this year, but I’m sticking with better and faster. Last year, I had a few thoughts about the future based on an industry past that hadn’t changed (January 8, 2021 issue). Of course, the technology itself improved, but the market for capture technology continues to have a green market feel to it. Conversations with new capture vendors (such as DoubleYard, May 5, 2021 issue) entering the market lent that feeling weight over the course of 2021. On the other hand, I had noted that in a 2007 interview, AIIM Vice Chair Barry Lurie "pointed to the slow growth of the industry as possibly the result of lack of integration into LOB software and spotlighted that distributed work would increase and be enabled by EIM (electronic image management." We all know how important digital documents are to distributed work and we saw that importance □lter out in real-time to the business world as the pandemic gripped all of us from the summer of 2020 to today. That integration into LOB software looks to be accelerating as many vendors are increasingly focused on creating solutions for speci□c applications based on capture tools. Capture increasingly becomes a commodity. The differentiation and value comes in how it’s packaged together. That’s not an original insight, but it is a trend that will most likely culminate in the capture industry becoming a behind the scenes technology. Obviously, that has market implications. As Infosource’s (and former DIR editor) Ralph Gammon points out below, the capture market is merging/collapsing into/colliding with (pick your favorite description) the process automation market. Given that a digitized document and the information it contains is only as useful as it can be used in a business process, this is more a culmination of a long-term trend than something new. Page 3 Under the surface, the currents run deep though. The ongoing white collar work from home shift is going to be interesting. In some ways, the claims that employees will quit unless work shifts to a more balanced home/of□ce split feels like the early 2000s claims that enterprise 2.0 was going to eliminate hierachies and democratize work. As someone who has worked from home for the majority of my career, I hope this debate tilts towards employees. Will the shift be as large as some expect? I have my doubts. Regardless of the degree of the WFH shift, digitization will be crucial. Capture will be a core component of making digitization possible. It increasingly strikes me as ironic that as the capture industry becomes increasingly critical to successful business, it will also become less visible. So what are my predictions for 2022? Beyond "better, faster, (and most probably) cheaper," I think: Here’s to a great 2022 for all of us! □. The need for basic document management and document capture remains strong. □. Cybersecurity becomes more important in the industry as cybercriminals attempt to exploit any loopholes in network scanning and capture. □. Low-code/no code becomes the next "put it in the cloud" trend (in 2023, businesses realize that low-code doesn’t necessarily mean "easy to manage"). □. We’ll still be calling the capture industry 20 different things by this time next year – intelligent capture, intelligent information automation, etc., et cetera, and et cetera! □. WFH will see a blowback from management. I don’t think that will slow industry growth though. □. One of the legacy capture vendors is bought by a process automation vendor. □. The concept of "capture" and "document" continues to expand. Bryant Duhon, Editor-in-Chief, Document Imaging Report bdu@info-source.com Comments, criticisms, and witticisms welcomed. Page 4 Seismic Shift in Capture Landscape in 2022 I expect 2022 to be a pivotal year for the Capture Software market. 2020 saw growth in the market driven by distributed Capture and RPA implementations that needed to ingest documents. Preliminary indications are that as the pandemic lingered through 2021, the results may be similar with many large on-premise projects once again getting pushed further out. No doubt, the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation initiatives and in many cases these have included Capture technologies. Our numbers show that the amount of revenue that Capture ISVs are generating from software attached to scanners is declining, but in some ways this is misleading. Most of the new IDP (intelligent document processing) vendors acknowledge that they are seeing a lot of documents that started out as paper, but they pick them up through VPNs or watched folders, so to them, they are electronic □les. Which brings me around to my major prediction for 2022 – as Deep Throat once said during the Watergate scandal, “Follow the money.” If you remember, last month post that Bloomberg reported that Kofax was exploring a $3B sale of the company. I then went on to try and justify that price by comparing it to valuations recently received by Capture start-ups Ocrolus and Rossum. Then, just before the end of 2021, Hyperscience announced it had raised another $100M, bringing its total outside funding to close to $300M. And these are just the most recent highlights. Over the past couple years, money has been pouring in to fund AI-driven Capture start-ups. , I wrote in a blog So, where is it all going to lead? Well, at some point, investors are going to want a return. It’s also obvious that Capture is being valued in the market like never before. The pressure is going to be on for the start-ups to continue hyper-growth to match their valuations and for traditional Capture vendors, with more mature technology to defend their turf. But, that turf is moving, it’s migrating toward the front of□ce, the knowledge worker, the cloud, subscriptions — all the stuff that start-ups hit on and the old guard is trying to move towards. I expect this all to come crashing to a head in 2022 and into 2023. There is stuff the legacy players do, in terms of high-volume processing and increased accuracy, that most of the start-ups can’t touch. But, when it comes to AI and the □exibility to address a wider array of documents, the start-ups have some advantages. Look, I love the Capture market, and we expect it to grow at a healthy CAGR of 8% from 2020-2025, but 8% growth is not going to support some of the valuations we are seeing. Page 5 That said, we have RPA-related Capture growing at a signi□cantly faster growth rate than the rest of the market. There are several factors for this, including the growth of the RPA market itself and the pressure RPA vendors are feeling to keep up these rates, which has increasingly led them to look toward unstructured input, aka Capture, aka, IDP. So, here’s the call, last year was the year all the RPA start-ups got gobbled up by enterprise software players, this year, it’s the Capture ISVs’ turn. Look for a bevy of acquisitions, starting mid-way through the year, where we have start-ups, established players, enterprise software vendors, RPA players, and VC funds all competing for Capture vendors. The fallout will drastically change the vendor landscape. Ralph Gammon (rg@info-source.com) is Market Analyst for Capture Software at Infosource. Capture will continue to converge with RPA and BPM There is increasing market interest in end-to-end process automation, ranging across departments borders e.g., procure-to-pay, order-to-cash. This requires the automation of the pure Capture process i.e., the automation of the ingestion of business inputs to be integrated with process automation solutions as well as enterprise systems. We expect Capture vendors to partner increasingly with RPA and BPM vendors and those with in-house capabilities to offer integrated process solutions. 8 Predictions – RPA, AI, and More Business analysts become the new solution architects - Capture will Increasingly become a part of Automation Centers controlled by Business Analysts Automation and digitalization of business processes is a key priority in the private and public sector in 2022. The shortage of IT developers creates a bottleneck and the need to focus on more complex projects including maintaining legacy applications. Business teams are looking for software solutions designed for citizen developers where they can easily implement and update the automation of information-intensive processes. Information Capture services with low-code capabilities will see a strong demand in 2022 to meet the increased demand for the automated ingestion of omni-channel business inputs. Page 6 RPA vendors are increasing embracing business applications involving unstructured and semi-structured business inputs. Those often target use cases that are considered classic capture applications like invoice processing, customer onboarding, and claims processing. We expect to see M&A activities between Capture and RPA vendors to continue in 2022. The future of work is partly remote - Increased remote work is the new normal Acceptance of a larger mix of business inputs in case management solutions AI-based platforms will pivot The subscription economy has reached the Capture market Capture is increasingly moving to the cloud The digital divide is widening - closing major de□cits in digital transformation will drive Capture demand Petra Beck is Senior Analyst, Software, with Infosource, pb@info-source.com. Page 7 We have started to see more of an acceptance of cloud service solutions in the traditional hardware scanner space in 2021 and Infosource predicts a more rapid expansion of these solutions through 2022 and beyond. As the shift to digitization intensi□es in the of□ce, the next natural progression is intelligent document processing. Once digitized, storing and retrieval of previous paper-based data will be of the upmost importance to businesses for more accurate sharing, collaboration, and processing of digital work□ow. Furthermore, the impact of the pandemic continues to alter the way people work. The hybrid work model isn’t going away anytime soon and the need to communicate remotely and securely will require cloud solutions. Note: A few days after receiving Barbara’s prediction, Kodak Alaris and Laser□che announced a pairing of scanners with the Laser□che Cloud. . Read it here Barbara Richards (br@info-source.com) is Senior Analyst at Infosource. Redefining Normalcy Given the foreseeable state of the pandemic and employee sentiment, the rise in remote and hybrid work lifestyles will not be ending anytime soon. The traditional of□ce commute has evolved into “distributed enterprises,” with employees spread widely across varied geographical locations, know commonly referred to as WFH. This drives the need for highly available, adaptable, and easy-to-use ECM (aka content services) based solutions as technology consumption is pushed all the way to the employee’s home more than ever. Hardware Scanner Vendors Will Begin to Embrace Cloud Services Solutions in 2022 Page 8 However, these hybrid work realities means that partners and consumers are also now remote. Companies must not only plan for the tactical impact of supporting workers everywhere, but also the adaptation of changing partner and customer business models. IT organizations must pivot to the changing customer delivery demands from the new normal. When most everyone is WFH, this leads to increased pressure from increased work/life blending and causing greater employee fatigue. The great resignation trend, especially from the boomer generation, will continue to challenge business management and adds to employee fatigue. So, what does this mean for customer ECM-based applications in 2022 and beyond? MSP offerings will grow in popularity to address the growing gap for experienced ECM talent Demands to improve ECM team productivity and reduce worker fatigue by a reduction of the mundane – such as ECM system management and security oversite tasks Virtual-□rst, remote-□rst ECM architectures rule ECM solution design principles More hybrid ECM cloud solutions maximizing cost ef□ciencies, workload □exibility, and risk mitigation A ‘know before you go’ theme guides the ‘which cloud?’ answer during ECM cloud decision planning The net - making it easier to do business inside as well as outside the organization is a high premium for successful customer and partner organizations. . Brian DeWyer, AIIM CIP, is CTO of Reveille Software. Reach him at +1-336-918- 6171 or bdewyer@reveillesoftware.com Microsoft Office 365 Expands Footprint My prediction is that Microsoft O365 will continue to gather market share and smaller vendors will □nd it dif□cult to complete on functionality and price. Most companies, at this point I think, own some version of an O365 license and will □nd it doesn’t make sense to have O365 and one of the ECM companies or a cloud ECM. I think O365 is continuing to evolve adding features and functions and will become, even more, the dominate player in the industry. I predict that the smaller ECM companies will either close shop or try to get purchased by a larger company. Bud Porter-Roth ( ) is a long-time ECM consultant. budpr@erms.com Page 9 Hyperautomation and Intelligent Document Processing Will Take Center Stage Hyperautomation (HA) initiatives will continue to target document-intensive tasks and the mountains of data that are piling up at unprecedented rates. Actionable, structured data is needed to power any automation, which will place a greater importance on the need for intelligent document processing (IDP) solutions. With over 60% of business processes including records access or documents, this focus provides quick wins for automation teams, and with the right tool, can provide signi□cantly improved business outcomes. The ability to structure the unstructured will provide a gold mine of insight for customers who make intelligent document processing the foundation of their hyperautomation document strategy. From there, automation possibilities are endless. Stephen Boals, SVP Strategy & Evangelism at Ephesoft. Connect with him on LinkedIn: linked.com/in/stephenboals. A Prediction Four-Pack The Microsoft eco system of large, international partners becomes more focused on RPA and successful with RPA while the smaller, regional niche Microsoft players struggle with RPA and process automation Customers start to realize the difference between no code solutions and custom-built environments and start to take advantage of no code solutions for verticals such as insurance and banking BPOs gain additional traction in selling solutions to end customers on top of the normal outsourcing Hybrid solutions of cloud and on prem or private clouds emerge as the top deployment over public cloud Bob Fresneda is President, TCG US Operations. Reach him at bob.fresneda@tcgprocess.com or +1-504-510-2687. The TCG Process team is focused on selling thru partners its own IP for AI and ML being fully integrated into document-driven processes to automate the capture, work□ow, and integrations of the process into legacy systems. Page 10 Rising Importance of Network Scanners The importance of reliable and easy-to-use scanning solutions, speci□cally network scanners that enable easy workgroup sharing, has never been more apparent. As business begins to normalize, organizations across a wide range of industries are looking to invest in technology that drives productivity. As a result, we are seeing a surge in demand for robust scanning solutions that meet the needs of fast-paced of□ces, whether working in the corporate, home of□ce, or hybrid work environments. While multifunction printers include scanning capabilities, they are not suf□cient for scanning large quantities of documents and are inef□cient for of□ces in paper-heavy sectors. Businesses are installing standalone scanners that deliver quality scans at fast speeds, include authentication features, support long-term investment through strong warranties and service, and provide seamless integration with existing work□ows. However, not unique to our industry, there are supply chain challenges stemming from the pandemic impacting ful□llment. To navigate these challenges successfully, organizations should prioritize technology investments, and work strategically with distributors and partners to implement realistic goals to streamline operations, thereby lessening the impact of potential disruption. With the right systems in place, organizations can continue to stay agile and better serve customers in 2022. Is a Network Scanning Data Breach Inevitible? Tim Anderson ( ), group product manager, commercial scanners, Epson America. He is responsible for product management of commercial scanners at Epson America. With over two decades of experience managing technology products at Epson, InFocus, and IBM, he brings a deep understanding of tech hardware and the commercial distribution channel. tim.anderson@ea.epson.com As the popularity of network-attached document scanning systems continues to grow, the risk of a data breach is also increasing because these are IP-based/always-on devices at the ‘edge’ of the network. It is P3iD’s prediction for 2022 that at least one major data breach will be a direct result of using a network-attached document scanning system that was poorly designed from a cybersecurity standpoint. Page 11 Speci□cally, and likely, this will be because of the many required open □rewall ports in order to deploy and operate a traditional document scanner centralized client/server type architecture, instead of a modern, cloud-□rst, centralized document capture solution. Once the Hacker has access to the network via an open □rewall port then they can get to the critically important network infrastructure services such as Active Directory/LDAP that contain all the usernames and passwords; which is a bad as it gets from a data breach perspective. Open □rewall ports are only one example of a data breach risk, but there are many other cybersecurity concerns that aren’t being taken seriously to think that this predication will not come true in 2022. Insecure API’s, non-encrypted endpoints, man-in-the-middle exposure, lack of zero trust enforcement, no adhere to principals of forward secrecy are several other threats that expose these technologies to potential risk. Vendors have a responsibility to deliver a minimal level of security by-default to their customers, and we’re afraid to say that far too many vendors are willing to cut-corners on cybersecurity and it’s going to burn someone in 2022! Page 12 Kevin Neal (kneal@p3idtech.com, Founder and CEO of P3iD Technologies Inc, is a 25+ year veteran and industry-recognized expert on the topic of the document imaging capture and information management. His company is also on the Board of Directors for the TWAIN Working Group developing the next industry-standard imaging hardware device-to-software application device driver standard with the TWIAN Direct project. Micro Services Emerge and WFH Increases Worker/Employer Divide Prediction #1: The trend toward composable technology enters the ECM/Capture market. One intriguing technology trend that has emerged over the last few years is the interest in what Gartner calls “composable technology.” I like the term “micro services” a bit better, but whatever you call it, we should all be paying attention. Micro services describes a shift in how companies buy technology. We’re moving away from buying licenses for products and toward paying for only the components or services that we actually use (estimated to be less than 20% of available features). It’s a trend that bene□ts both software manufacturers and customers. Pendo estimates software companies invested $29.5 billion in features that are rarely or never used, so manufacturers can better track feature usage and laser focus development efforts on true customer needs. Customers bene□t through the ability to “custom build” technology solutions that exactly □t their needs and target spending on capabilities they will really use. [1] Much like cloud changed the economics of the technology industry for everyone, this trend toward micro services will begin to shift revenue patterns for technology resellers over the next few years. It’s an emerging trend to key an eye on, so that you’re prepared and have already aligned your product offerings and business processes to accommodate this new revenue model. Prediction #2: The Disconnect Between Leadership and Workers Deepens over WFH Page 13 A record 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in September. Why? After experiencing work-from-home (WFH) and fulltime family life, many adults are □nding ways to simplify their lifestyles in order to keep at least one parent at home. Due to health concerns, some older workers have decided to leave the workforce a little earlier than originally planned. And, some have left jobs that didn’t allow a WFH or hybrid option in order to □nd employment with more □exibility. Today, only 62% of US adults want to work. What does this mean for you? Your business will need to compete more effectively for workers. Here are two changes you should expect to make in 2022 in order to □nd and retain top talent: [2] Expect to increase salaries across the board to compensate for in□ationary pressures and to attract candidates in a tight labor market. Get clear about your hybrid and WFH policies. Forrester has pointed out that only 10% of companies are really embracing a WFH model, while others may offer WFH but continue to design meetings, job descriptions, and promotions to favor in-of□ce workers. They note, these companies will experience higher attrition rates than industry averages until they begin to align more closely with worker needs. [3] Stop longing for a return to pre-pandemic business practices! As you embrace a remote workforce and build a distributed customer experience model, you’ll realize signi□cant business bene□ts. Gartner explains that these forward-looking companies should expect to grow at least 25% faster than more traditional peers. [4] Thomas, Suja (2019, Feb 5). 2019 Feature Adoption Report. Retrieved from: https://go.pendo.io/rs/185-LQW- 370/images/2019%20Feature%20Adoption%20Report%20Digital.pdf 2 Emmer, Marc. (2021, Dec 9). Trends Facing Business in 2022 and Beyond, Vistage. Retrieved from: https://www.vistage.com/research-center/business- □nancials/economic-trends/20211209-trends-facing-business-in-2022-and- beyond/? ls=Email&lsd=Member+LTN2+December+Blog&cp=ltn+member&ecid=CVSTG0000064461 12-14-LTN2-Member-Econ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua 3 Forrester (2021). Predictions 2022. Forrester Research Inc. Retrieved from: https://www.forrester.com/predictions/ 4 Groombridge, David. (2021) Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2022: 12 Trends Shaping the Future of Business. Gartner. Retrieved from: https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/insights/top- technology-trends Christina Robbins ( ) is Director of Strategic Communications at Digitech. christinar@digitechsystems.com Page 14 As we know, networking scanning had been discussed throughout the scanning industry for quite some time. Most scanner manufacturers have worked to offer some sort of solution in this area, but to date there hasn’t been a lot of adoption. The TWAIN Working Group has spent several years building a royalty free, open-source standard for software developers and manufacturers called TWAIN Direct, designed for driverless scanning over a network or via the cloud. Evidence of network scanning is gaining more traction within the industry. Visioneer is the □rst manufacturer offering TWAIN Direct which is built into Visioneer’s VAST technology. This solution is currently offered in the Xerox D70N scanner and is available for purchase. The TWAIN Working Group expects other manufacturers and developers to adopt TWAIN Direct within their network enabled devices in 2022, and for users to better understand the value of secure, driverless scanning, ultimately “cutting the cord” between PCs and document scanners. Additionally, developers will further understand the value of a “develop once” solution for acquiring images from a scanner regardless of brand and model, eliminating the need for compatibility testing. Erin Dempsey (erin.dempsey@twain.org) is Marketing Administrator for The TWAIN Working Group (TWG). Network Scanning Gains More Traction Page 15 BPOs Will Adjust Service Offerings Torsten Malchow ( ) is Co- Founder and CRO of ScaleHub. He has 20+ years of international sales management at Kofax, ABBYY, Lexmark, and ReadSoft - in the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia. torsten.malchow@scalehub.com DOCUMENT IMAGING REPORT Business Trends on Converting Paper Processes to Electronic Format DIR is the leading executive report on managing documents for e-business. Areas we cover include: □. Document Capture □. OCR/ICR, AI, and Machine Learning □. RPA □. ECM □. Records Management □. Document Output □. BPM My prediction is focusing on the trends related to the BPO and the BFSI Shared Service Center market segment: The business user is not interested in buying technology – the business will request high quality data to secure smooth processes. The business is asking for committed service levels (turnaround times) and a high data-accuracy paired with data-security requirements. Those requirements are speeding up the process to shift market shares away from the traditional data capture companies to managed service companies. BFSI SSC: Driven through the global pandemic situation more Enterprises will re-design the already outsourced and the future business in the way to put not all eggs in one basket, which means that BPO’s are required to expand their offering to satisfy their end-customers with diversi□cation strategies to reduce the risk. Adding Managed Services like Crowdsourcing for Business Case Classi□cation, Data-Entry and Data- Labeling will become more and more prominent and will be a differentiator in the market. The demand for processing paper-based documents will decrease and the volume is shifting to digital input like mobile capture. BPO Market: Page 16 Vol. 31, No. 12 Managing Editor: Ralph Gammon ( ) rg@info-source.com Phone: +1 (301) 275-7496 DIR is published approximately 15 times per year by:Infosource SA Avenues des Grande-Communes 8, 1213 Petit-Lancy, Geneva, Switzerland http://www.info-source.com Copyright @ 2022 by InfoSource SA. Federal copyright law prohibits unauthorized reproduction by any means including photocopying or facsimil distribution of this copyrighted newsletter. Such copyright infringement is subject to □nes of up to $25,000. Because subscriptions are our main source of income, newsletter publishers take copyright violations seriously. Some publishers have prosecuted and won enormous settlements for infringement. To encourage you to adhere to the law, we make multiple- copy subscriptions available at a substantially reduced price. Subscriptions: Single user: $597 (electronic) or $670 (paper) per year. Two user: $897 From 3 to 5 every extra user: +$100 10 user: $1,497 Company-wide subscription: $2,500 Enterprise-wide subscription: $4,500 Editor-in-Chief: Bryant Duhon ( ) bdu@info-source.com DIR brings you the inside story behind the deals and decisions that affect your business.
