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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Ephesoft is an open source document capture solution. Everyone talks about the paperless work place but the reality is that paper still exists and will continue to be part of your business. Capturing the document's content using Ephesoft can minimize the time your company spends reviewing and processing physical documents."Intelligent Document Capture with Ephesoft" teaches you about document capture in general and implementation of document capture using Ephesoft. Start by learning about document capture, the history of document capture, and intelligent document capture. Progress to a tour of Ephesoft's key features, including operator and administrator interfaces and then learn to configure Ephesoft to process your business's specific document types and extract content from those documents. Finally, learn advanced customization techniques that make Ephesoft accommodate your unique business needs."Intelligent Document Capture with Ephesoft" will teach you to optimize the processing of your physical document, saving your company time and money.
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Seitenzahl: 175
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Table of Contents
Intelligent Document Capture with Ephesoft
Intelligent Document Capture with Ephesoft
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
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First published: September 2012
Production Reference: 1060912
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-84969-372-1
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Cover Image by iStockPhoto
Credits
Authors
Pat Myers
Ike Kavas
Michael Muller
Clifford Laurin
Reviewers
Eric Harper
Megan Hoffman
Anita L. Feeley
Alicia Libucha
Acquisition Editor
Mary Jasmine Nadar
Lead Technical Editor
Mary Jasmine Nadar
Technical Editor
Jalasha D'costa
Project Coordinator
Sai Gamare
Proofreader
Maria Gould
Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Graphics
Aditi Gajjar
Production Coordinator
Shantanu Zagade
Cover Work
Shantanu Zagade
Foreword
In my recent e-book #OccupyIT: A Technology Manifesto for the Cloud, Mobile, and Social Era (http://www.aiim.org/occupyIT), I talk about the revolutionary changes that are impacting how we make enterprise technology decisions.
On the one hand, we have "the business," awed and impressed by the changes and speed of implementation in the consumer technology space (think Facebook, Google, Twitter), asking their IT departments why enterprise technology has to be so "old fashioned," why implementation needs to take so long, and why enterprise technology has to be so darn expensive.
On the other hand, we have "IT", struggling to maintain order amidst the chaos, and struggling with expectations from "the business" that are escalating exponentially. IT spending by IT is flat, while IT spending by "the business" is increasing significantly. Clearly the traditional world of enterprise IT is changing.
In many ways, the cloud and open source revolutions are two sides of the same coin. They stem from the desire to buy technology "by the glass," to buy technology in which the release cycles are frequent and manageable rather than long and frightening, and you can "try before you buy" (and especially before you scale!).
According to a recent global CIO survey, 60 percent of organizations are ready to embrace cloud computing over the next five years as a means of growing their businesses and achieving a competitive advantage. The figure is nearly twice the number of CIOs who said they would utilize the cloud in the previous study.
The impact of the cloud and open source, though, will be massive beyond the immediate revenues that will be classified in industry studies as cloud and open source because they fundamentally change the way we look at IT services, how we pay for these services within our organization (capital spending versus operating), and how we view upgrade paths (and who is responsible for these upgrades). Organizations that do not incorporate rapid and flexible implementation and adoption models into their thinking do so at their own peril.
This frame of flexibility and rapid deployment is how we need to think about an aspect of the content management industry that has been with us for a long time; capture.
No matter how elegant the frontend, Systems of Engagement (for a white paper on this, see http://aiim.org/futurehistory) cannot operate in an environment in which the processes that support and complement these Systems of Engagement are engulfed by paper and inefficiency. The reality is that most organizations exist in a hybrid environment in which process information may come from paper documents, paper forms, web forms, faxes, telephony, e-mails, SMS, mobile, and social.
Automated capture of information as early as possible in the business process and as close to the point of origination produces cleaner data, resulting in higher quality information, less exception handling, and better process management. The more important the process is to a business, the greater the impact such improvements will have. Once paper-based information moves into the digital realm it can be used to enrich social and mobile applications. In paper form, that information might as well not exist since no one can get to it without great effort.
The reality that exists in most organizations suggests that although capture and its associated technologies are mature technologies, the market and the scale of implementation is anything but.
According to a recent AIIM study (Automating Financial Processes: User Feedback on the Real ROI), the average cost to process a paper invoice is still more than $9. Overall, 52 percent of organizations surveyed have yet to adopt any automated AP systems. One third of organizations receiving more than 25,000 invoices per month are still using paper-based processes.
These findings were reaffirmed in a follow-up AIIM survey (Process Revolution: Moving Your Business from Paper to PC to Tablet). A third of small and mid-sized companies and 22 percent of the largest have yet to adopt any paper-free processes. Only 20 percent of organizations of any size proactively evaluate all processes for driving out paper. The percentage of processes that could be paper free is actually only 14 percent. Seventy-seven percent of invoices that arrive as PDF attachments get printed. Thirty-one percent of faxed invoices get printed and scanned back in.
I could go on and on. Perhaps the most astonishing thing about all of this is how compelling the ROI actually is for scanning and capture – once people can be convinced to make the jump.
Per Process Revolution, on average respondents using scanning and capture consider that it improves the speed of response to customers, suppliers, citizens, or staff by six times or more. Seventy percent estimate an improvement of at least three times, and nearly a third (29 percent) sees an improvement of 10 times or more. Forty-two percent of users have achieved a payback period of 12 months or less from their scanning and capture investments. Fifty-seven percent are posting a payback of 18 months or less.
So the opportunity is there. I am convinced we can all do a better job of educating decision-makers about new cloud and open source models for delivering capture and content management technologies. I am also convinced that we can all do a better job of educating decision-makers about the benefits of capture and how to implement capture systems quickly and effectively. Hence, my great pleasure in writing the foreword to this book.
John Mancini,
Author, Speaker, and President of AIIM
About the Authors
Pat Myers is the Executive Vice President and a co-founder of Zia Consulting, a content centric solutions firm. Zia is a platinum Ephesoft and Alfresco partner that provides solutions from paper to mobile. Pat has over 10 years of Enterprise Content Management experience and 15 years of professional services and application development experience. Pat and Ike developed the official Ephesoft training.
I would like to thank my wife Margaret for giving me unconditional love and encouragement in everything I do, my daughter Zoe for making me remember what is important in life, and my God for giving me so many opportunities. Additionally, I would like to thank my extended family and friends for making my life so enjoyable. I would also like to thank my Zia family for making me want to go to work every day and achieve greatness.
Ike Kavas has more than 12 years of solid experience in document imaging, document management, workflow, and systems. Mr. Kavas is the founder and the Chief Technology Officer at Ephesoft, Inc., responsible for product design and roadmap. He is a serial entrepreneur with three successful companies. He has both a keen technical background, which he developed by implementing several multimillion dollar projects for a fortune 100 companies, and has outstanding sales and business experience, which he demonstrated by achieving and exceeding revenue-based goals.
Before founding Ephesoft, Inc., Mr. Kavas managed professional services at Kofax, Inc. and co-founded other technology companies in southern California. Mr. Kavas holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronics & Electrical Engineering and CDIA+ certification.
I would like to thank my family for all the support they have given me, namely, Birsen Kavas, Fuat Kavas, and my wife Melanie Kavas.
I would like to thank my Ephesoft team for creating and maintaining such a great product and helping us bring this technology to the marketplace.
Michael Muller is Director of Engineering at Zia Consulting. He has 25 years of professional software development experience, currently specializing in enterprise content management.
Clifford Laurin has over 17 years of professional experience as a software engineer, including 11 years in the field of Enterprise Content Management. He is currently an ECM Architect at Zia Consulting.
About the Reviewers
Eric Harper is the Director of Software Consulting at Zia Consulting. He has several years of software development and consulting experience in content management, customer relationship management, web application development, and data warehousing. Prior to Zia, Eric was a co-founder and chief architect of the CRM services startup eConvergent where he led the software development team through an acquisition by the analytics and credit scoring leader, FICO.
Megan Hoffman is a Project Manager at Zia Consulting and has over 10 years of experience implementing and managing software solutions. Throughout her career she has held a variety of positions including business analyst, project manager, and product manager. Having had some experience writing software training material in the past, Megan was excited to take on the project manager and reviewer roles for this initiative.
Anita L. Feeley is a Project Manager living in Nederland, Colorado. Anita has over 14 years of experience with software implementations including project management, business analysis, testing, reporting, and training as well as database management and XSL stylesheet creation. She has worked in the insurance and financial industries as well as with government agencies. Anita has an M.A. from the University of Maryland and enjoys reading, biking, hiking, and spending time with her family in the mountains.
Alicia Libucha has 15 years of technical marketing and communications experience specializing in media/analyst relations, customer programs, and social media. During that time, she has worked with leading enterprise software companies in the document management, imaging, mobile, and security space.
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Preface
Enterprise content management tools help large organizations process large quantities of documents. There are many components involved in a comprehensive content management solution; a repository stores the organization's documents, a workflow engine facilitates business processes, and a records management tool ensures compliance with your organization's document retention requirements. These tools all assume an understanding of the documents that they're managing; they must be able to distinguish an invoice from a loan application, and know that invoices have purchase order numbers on them, and that loan applications have social security numbers.
Therefore, prior to sending your documents to your organization's enterprise tools, you must identify the document type and enter any associated "metadata" (like the purchase order number). Without Ephesoft, this is an expensive, manual, time-consuming, and error-prone process.
Ephesoft automates document type identification and the extraction of metadata. In this book, we teach you to use Ephesoft to save time, save money, and improve the quality of the information in your organization's enterprise tools.
What this book covers
Chapter 1: Introduction, introduces Ephesoft and intelligent document capture.
Chapter 2: A Quick Tour of Ephesoft, covers a walk-through of Ephesoft's user interface.
Chapter 3: Creating a Batch Class, covers learning to set up Ephesoft.
Chapter 4: Processing a Batch, covers learning to use Ephesoft.
Chapter 5: Core Ephesoft Features, covers expanding on the features introduced in Chapter 3.
Chapter 6: Ephesoft Extended Features, covers learning advanced Ephesoft features.
Chapter 7: Tips, includes productivity enhancing tips.
Appendix: Reference, includes some reference material.
What you need for this book
You will need Ephesoft Enterprise 3.0+ running on a Windows box.
Who this book is for
This book is intended for information technology professionals interested in installing and configuring Ephesoft for their organization, but it is a valuable resource for anyone interested in learning about document capture in general.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "You can use generic variables, which are EphesoftBatchID and EphesoftDOCID."
A block of code is set as follows:
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Administrators can use the Up and Down buttons to reorder the plugins or the Remove button to remove plugins from the module."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. Introduction
Ephesoft is an open source intelligent document capture product offered by Ephesoft, Inc. Ephesoft classifies and separates page images into documents and extracts metadata from the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) content of a document. The web-based user interface allows operators to review documents and validate extracted content. The assembled documents and their associated metadata can be exported to other enterprise content management (ECM) systems for further processing.
If that explanation didn't make any sense, fear not; in this first chapter we will introduce you to the basics of intelligent document capture also known as document captureby walking you through the following topics:
Overview
Organizations need tools to manage their information, or knowledge. Document management, workflow, web content management, document capture, records management, portals, and other knowledge management systems are a few of the tools categorized as enterprise content management, or ECM. Since information or knowledge can be stored in many different electronic systems, these ECM tools communicate not only with each other, but also with other corporate systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, accounting systems, customer relationship management (CRM), and other assorted databases.
ECM is a combination of tools to manage information or knowledge for organizations.
This book focuses specifically on one of these tools—document capture. More specifically, we will examine how Ephesoft is used to implement document capture systems.
Document capture deals
