Organizations, when doing digital transformation, have recognized the benefits of digitizing documents. But now they can extend their digital transformation journey by moving from manual processes and adding capture software and process automation. When your organization can automate these tasks or identify better solutions to complete them, you can deliver a variety of benefits that positively impact your organization's performance and profitability, and protect the investments that you made into your back-end systems.
Why Kodak Alaris
From award-winning scanners and capture software to industry-leading service, Kodak Alaris transforms documents and data into information better than anyone else. At Kodak Alaris, we make the trip from the document, to digitize, then into a process, fast, accurate, and easy. And you can count on greater uptime with our industry-leading reliability and service.
Information Capture Starts with Accurate, Reliable Scanners
The first step in this journey starts with accurate document capture. Scanners from Kodak Alaris capture documents utilizing our image-optimizing Perfect Page scanning technology that accurately unlocks info in even damaged documents. Our award-winning SurePath paper handling reduces manual steps and misfeeds, and you can count on greater uptime with our industry-leading reliability and service.
- BLI tests found that scanners from Kodak Alaris can feed batches of different sized media better than the competition- we ran 35,000 pages with no misfeeds*
All of this means that for whatever process you are doing- simple scan to file, starting a business process, or doing repeatable process automation (RPA) – our document scanners are the right choice.
Processes Can Be Optimized with Capture Software
Once the data is captured and digitized, our portfolio of capture software can automate any business process with intelligent information capture technology that plays well with your business processes. Once a document is captured or a digital file is collected, some of the most common process automating tasks that you can add are conversion, enhancement, classification, data extraction, data validation, and routing.
Capture software and scanners from Kodak Alaris can help you at every phase of the process
Conversion
Data is constantly arriving at organizations in varying formats (paper or digital) containing organization-critical knowledge, and all of it generally has a process that needs to be followed. Converting paper-based documents or digital data into the right digital format is the crucial first step in automating any process. Scanners from Kodak Alaris can make quick work of any amount of paper documents and do this with greater accuracy than other scanners. This fact has been verified by Keypoint Intelligence - Buyers Laboratory (BLI) with consecutive years of Scanner Line of the Year.
- With a complete line of scanners from personal, to desktop, and up to production we have the exact right scanner for any business or process
- For converting digital data, our Info Input Solution can do information capture from scanners as well as smart devices and digital files (including email) from one application across your organization – wherever the location
Enhancement
Being able to enhance the digital image to reduce the unnecessary noise on a document and amplify the data is important to the accuracy of the process. OCR accuracy is the heartbeat of process automation rates and an increase in automation levels has a direct impact on profitability. Scanners from Kodak Alaris, with Perfect Page technology, can automatically do document clean up and enhance it by removing the clutter and amplifying the data. This feature is built into the Kodak Alaris portfolio of scanners to ensure data clarity is optimized so that OCR accuracy is maximized while creating the smallest file sizes possible.
- BLI tests found that Kodak Alaris provides 20% better OCR read rate than the competition on average and up to 70% better than the lowest performers*
- BLI also found that scanners from Kodak Alaris output file sizes at nearly ½ the size of competitive devices on average*
Award-winning capture software from Kodak Alaris also has powerful image adjustment tools that improve image quality by correcting skewed scans, adjusting contrast, and more. This means operators can make quick adjustments--for high-quality images that result in less waste and greater productivity.
Classification
Once the data is converted and enhanced, understanding what document type has entered the system and what the next step is for that document type is crucial for automating multiple-step processes. With our Capture Pro or Info Input software, these solutions can take images from our scanners (or third-party scanners, mobile phones, emails, MFPs) and enforce classification rules based on document content, document layout, barcodes, or indexing data.
- Our software can determine what type of document is ingested using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR), and/or Optical Mark Recognition (OMR).
- Classification will determine if a document is, for example, an invoice, patient record, loan file, or tax record. And our Info Input Solution can do advanced document capture with only one or two samples to “learn” to classify the documents.
Kodak Alaris accomplishes this via patented machine learning algorithms. The system uses a variety of techniques to classify the data: search content, images, bar codes, and one document merging. If the system has low confidence in any document it attempts to classify, the process can call upon a human operator for confirmation.
Data Extraction
Extracting the most crucial information out of a document to use as metadata or index data is vital for retrieval and processing. Automated classification based on rules informs the system of what key information should exist within a document and often where this information should be located. Our software solutions can identify, extract, and create a copy of that information to use as metadata for the next phase of the process. In the case of documents, metadata can be used to organize, find, and/or feed documents into another type of business system. With these solutions, you can extract the data based on business rules and information that a company needs through database lookups and users can set-up the indexing process to automatically extract key data from documents (via bar code, OCR, ICR, or OMR), reducing processing time.
Data Validation
Being able to validate the completeness and accuracy of the data you have collected is important for process accuracy. Our solutions are also able to conduct some simple data validation checks such as ensuring boxes are filled and signatures are present to ensure data is complete. We are also able to complete some simple checks to ensure that data is consistent and accurate. This might be as simple as checking that stated monthly pay on a form and the supporting bank statement are the same. If any documents fall below pre-set tolerance levels, they are highlighted for human review.
- For example, this can happen when there are smudges, spills, blurry characters, missing fields, or if the system is not sure if it has identified the correct line in a bank statement. The system alerts you to these documents for manual verification and correction.
This functionality is vital in ensuring no data is processed incorrectly and supports an organization's regulatory standard and reduces the costs and customer dissatisfaction that can arise because of lost or incorrectly processed documents. On occasions where documents have come in from current customers or suppliers on your record system, key data can be used to search for these records conducting authenticity checks.
- For example, is the stated customer number, name, and address consistent with what you have on record? Not only can the system make these checks and flag any inconsistent documents, but it is also able to extract additional information from these back end records and add it to the new document as index or metadata. Enriching data like this makes retrieval and processing more efficient and accurate.
Routing to a Process
Finally, once all those processes are complete, you need to be able to route that information to the next step of the process for decision making and archiving. Connectivity is everything. Having the system automatically route to an endpoint with enforced business rules saves time and prevents errors. As well as a long list of standard output destinations such as Email, SharePoint, and file folders from our free bundled software, Smart Touch, there can be direct links made by our INfuse Smart Connected Scanning Solution into third-party systems to enable the scanner to directly send to the business application.
And Capture Pro and Info Input can send information directly to ECM, EMR systems, and secure FTP. They use Intelligent Barcode Reading to automatically read barcodes and route data. For a more customized solution, Kodak Alaris' professional services can create custom links to third-party systems and databases.
Take Your Capture Up A Notch
Advanced automation solutions like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) take digital transformation farther. The high-quality images and accurate, readable information provided by intelligent capture solutions from Kodak Alaris are the foundation for accurate data, advanced decision-making, and process automation to be successful. Kodak Alaris partners with global technology leaders to deliver best-in-class digital transformation and automation solutions that drive digital business.
In summary, automated processes are much faster. When an organization chooses a solution from Kodak Alaris they can make what were manual processes more efficient and accurate, and add in automation and intelligence that can enforce business or regulatory rules. And all this saved time, improved accuracy, and automated processes will positively impact an organization's performance and profitability.
*Based on 3rd Party testing performed by Buyers Lab and commissioned by Kodak Alaris. Test was designed by Kodak Alaris with all devices tested in similar operational conditions and where tested with similar operational methods.
