Canon to acquire Belgian document imaging firm

Canon blasts into Europe

Japanese vendor Canon plans to acquire I.R.I.S. Group SA to accelerate solutions and services business

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus /London/ +++ Imaging behemoth Canon is to launch, via its subsidiary in Europe, a voluntary and conditional public takeover bid in cash for all shares, warrants and stock options of I.R.I.S. Group SA.

According to the Japanese vendor, their bid relates to all shares, including treasury shares, issued by I.R.I.S. Group SA, which are not held by Canon Europa N.V. The bid offers a price of 44.50 euros per share, and the price for warrants 

Paperless office still a pipedream – survey

Survey finds business still overrun with paperwork

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus /London/ +++ Two-thirds of businesses regularly need to scan more than fifty pages a day to transfer information to a digital format.

That’s according to a new survey from Anoto, creators of digital pen and paper technology, whose results of a survey conducted across the USA and Britain focused on the state of scanning in business today.

Alfresco teams up with Kofax in tech collaboration

Kofax goes Alfresco

Integrated promises return on investment

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Kofax has just entered into a new technology alliance with Alfresco, the open source enterprise content management software house.

According to the companies, Kofax’s capture enabled BPM solutions capture and streamline the flow of business critical information throughout an organization in a more accurate, timely and cost effective manner, enabling customers to be more responsive to their constituents, gain competitive advantage and better grow their businesses.

YouGov survey reveals firms still need to up their game with customers

We've Been Kofax'd (Photo credit: digitalsorceress)

YouGov survey finds a need for B2C businesses to be more responsive to their customers

By ECM Plus

ECM Plus +++ More than a tird of customers are abandning supplier due to poor customer service, according to a new poll by YouGov.

The Kofax-backed online research found that 35 percent of British adults stopped using a business within the last year due to poor levels of customer service. 

Original thinking as Kofax expands capture driven strategy

Kofax point of origination strategy expands reach of capture-enabled business process management

By PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Kofax has just taken the wraps off what it calls the ‘Kofax Point of Origination’ strategy, aimed at accelerating the migration of capture from centralized, back office environments to the “point of origination” where customer interactions actually take place.

Dutch design doyen calls on Kofax

Kofax goes Dutch

Arcadis opts for Kofax for accounts payable to Process to process 300,000 document invoices a year

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Dutch design and management firm has selected Kofax for its accounts payable automation system to implement Kofax Capture, Kofax Transformation Modules and Kofax VRS Elite to automate the processing of approximately 300,000 invoices it receives annually.

Kofax ups ante with 3.7% growth

Document behemoth grinds out progress against tough economic backdrop, sticks to acquisition plans

By ECM Plus Staff

ECM Plus +++ Document bellwether Kofax plc has just released it latest financial results for the quarter and six months ended December 31, 2011.

According to the company, total revenues grew by 3.7% to US$70 million, up from US$67.5 million for the previous year and for the six months up 5.2% to US$128.5 million from US$122.2 million in the previous year period.

REVIEW: Plustek OptiBook 3800 Professional Book Scanner

Specially-designed to scan books, without the dreaded ‘shady-spine-bending’ of traditional scanners

By PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Many people these days are throwing out their old flatbed scanners for more ‘upright’ pert multifunction devices, which makes the debut of new flatbed machines that much more challenging.

New document scanning node opens in Stafford, England

Iron Mountain facility in Staffordshire, England.

Iron Mountain unveils Europe’s largest document scanning and indexing centres

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Iron Mountain has just opened one of Europe’s largest document scanning and indexing centres for organisations to manage information in the face of what it calls “increasingly stringent national and EU regulation”.

DataStoreDSX ups the ante in ECM fray

Enterprise content and compliance controls relentless growth of content

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Enterprise content, risk and compliance management software vendor Hitec has just launched DataStoreDSX enterprise content management platform.

REVIEWS: Scanners – Plustek SmartOffice PS286 Plus

Even as the Internet has made online viewing and transferring of documents more commonplace, the rise and rise of document capture continues unabated.

Driven in no small part by increasing levels of compliance and red tape bureaucratic processes imposed by the burgeoning ‘jobsworth’ industry of central state ‘regulations’ and nannying ‘procedures’, a good scanner is your best friend in the home or office these days, with the need for nifty scanners for personal document capture continuing at breakneck speed.

Nuxeo’s PDF digital signature makes document management debut

Digital signature option for PDF launched

Document Management proffers digital signature option, print-sign-scan step in document lifecycle

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Open source enterprise content management insurgent Nuxeo has just announced the immediate availability of a new Digital Signature add-on for its Nuxeo DM document management software.

According to the firm, the digital signature tech is based on the X.509 standard. This new component provides a secure electronic method for signing PDF files in Nuxeo DM and verifying the signatures with a digital certificate in a PDF reader, the company said.

Billions blown on bad business processes – survey

Wasting billions: bad business practices. Image: Voxphoto

New survey identifies paper-based processes as costing far more than automated equivalent

By PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ New research has found that organisations are spending £15.5 billion to £18.5 billion interpreting and entering business information, 80 percent of which is unstructured.

Benchmarking research into the financial function of global business organisation by document automation specialist Readsoft has suggested that rolling out automated processes in conjunction with invoice processing could help British businesses cut cost per procurement to 92 per cent lower than the average.

Picture perfect? Kofax acquires imaging bellwether

Atalasoft flogged for development toolkits for portal and business process management

By PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Document-driven business process automation specialist Kofax is to acquire Atalasoft, the imaging SDK specialist firm.

According to the FTSE-100 plc, the acquisition will add to its product portfolio with unique capabilities for portal and internet browser based applications, strengthen the Company’s competitive position and increase its addressable market.

United We Stand: Doc storage for intranet knowledge gets smarter

United we stand. Image: Clearly Ambiguous

Unifying document storage promises to transform intranets into single search point for organisational knowledge base with new SharePoint Connector

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Altrincham-based intranet specialist Interact has just taken the wraps off its latest SharePoint Connector, a dual-purpose development that connects Interact Intranet to SharePoint, which the company claims will make intranets a single searchable point for organisations’ knowledge bases. 

Bish bashes economic woes as Kofax bucks trend

From Jap meltdowns to market-making miasmas, political and economic machinations do little to upset document bellwether’s steady growth strategy

By PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Kofax has just revealed figures for its Interim Management Statement for the third quarter of its financial reporting year ending on June 30, 2011.

According to the Irvine-Calif-based firm, Kofax’s software business revenue growth has continued to progress in line with Board and management expectations of 14% year over year growth for fiscal year 2011 on an organic, constant currency basis and ahead of those expectations on an “as reported” basis due to favorable exchange rate movements, the company said in a statement.

Kofax hits the road for data capture best practices

Customer success stories and new product advances for data capture to be highlighted on the road

By PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Kofax plc (LSE:KFX) is hauling its asset down the pike in order to stage two multi-city seminar series during April and May.

According to the company, the ‘Kofax Express and VRS Elite’ Road Show and the ‘Kofax Connect Road Show’ series will feature real-world, best practice applications to show just how document capture is driving business process automation.

SharePoint support sees new Kofax Express 2.5 boost scan-to-archive

Scan-to-archive and SharePoint process integration

Kofax Express automated indexing and SharePoint integration added

By PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Kofax plc (LSE: KFX) has just released the latest version of its Kofax Express now on 2.5, scan-to-archive software package.

V2.5 now scans, indexes and exports documents for retrieval an in the new version can also automate indexing capabilities. V2.5 also boasts certification for SharePoint 2010 which, the company said, can improve the software’s ability to capture documents and data for faster processing, enhanced data quality and reduced costs. 

FEATURE: Mobile capture – pushing the boundaries

Mobile has been a significant growth area in communications for a long while, and the rapid shift towards mobility can be seen globally. According to Canalys, just under 300 million smartphones were sold worldwide in 2010, which is 80% more than in 2009. As the way we use our devices evolves, the importance of application mobility expands and now permeates a much broader range of industries.

By DAVE EVANS

Mobile phones have become ‘smart’ – they have morphed gradually into the ultimate digital toolkit and personal assistant with an ever more extensive array of functions. From a device designed purely for taking calls, we now rely on smartphones as our primary communication tool, for everything from business communications on the go, through mobile banking, to social networking. This opens doors for different types of businesses to take advantage of the mobility phenomenon. Mobile capture is one of the technologies widening our horizons, delivering tangible benefits to businesses. It unlocks innovative new functions for devices, connecting them with enterprise data management systems for advanced document management.

Jo’burg jaunt spreads the word for Kofax

Kofax conf set to be a gold mine of information

Partners to present best practices at South African document capture and business process automation conference

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Document bellwether Kofax plc (LSE: KFX) is to co-host the Document Capture and Process Executive Forum this week on April 7 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The event will also feature findings from a recent study that illustrate how electronic content is developing from basic “systems of record” to empowering higher value ‘systems of engagement’ and how document capture, the critical first step in the content management lifecycle, serves as a foundation for such capabilities.

Doculex pumps up Archive Studio for robust email capture

Sarbanes and Oxley

Document management firm releases V4 for Exchange 2010 archiving

BY PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus – Powering automated email capture and archiving for document management, regulatory requirements and accounts receivable workflow processing

DocuLex’s WebSearch component of the Archive Studio Software Suite V4 now has the capability to pull all inbound, outbound and inter-company email from Exchange 2010.

Second coming for Christian as Kofax CMO returns

Second coming for Christian

Martyn Christian re-appointed to AIIM board of directors

ECM Plus - Kofax plc’s Chief Marketing Officer, Martyn Christian, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Association of Information and Image Management (AIIM).

According to the company, AIIM is a non-profit industry association that helps organisations find, control and optimize information.

Upcoming UK Census data offshoring destined for more debacles

ONS offshoring Briton's personal data for £150m

Report reveals 2011 UK Census of private data set to go offshore to foreign agencies, increasing probability of yet more Government-sanctioned personal data breaches

ECM Plus - A new Guardian report indicates that the British Government’s Office of National Statistics is to pay a foreign agency £150 million in taxpayer money to undertake the collection and processing of Britain’s families and personal income data, with new extra questions in this year’s Census demanding to know the details of sources of incomes as well as additional personal data in the 32-page questionnaire, now destined to go offshore in the government cutbacks and ‘efficiency-savings’ outsourcing deal.

FEATURE: Moving to PDF/A

For many organisations, fear of change is the biggest hurdle in moving from their current electronic archiving format to PDF/A.

BY GARY HODKINSON

Many believe the transition to PDF/A is difficult to implement and expensive, and that their current systems are ‘good enough’. Throughout Europe and Asia, and increasingly at U.S. federal government and state government agencies, the PDF/A standard is being successfully adopted for long-term archival of scanned and electronic documents.

NEWS: Kofax does US$200,000 invoice processing deal with tech conglomerate

Invoice system automates processing of four million documents annually

BY PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Kofax, the specialist in document-driven business process automation has announced a new contract to provide an enterprise capture solution to a leading global technology firm. The value of the contract to Kofax exceeds US$200,000, the company said.

The customer, a manufacturer of safety, security and energy products and services, will implement Kofax Capture and Kofax Transformation Modules to scan and capture four million invoices and related accounts payable documents it receives annually.