Digital Transformation sounds sexy. It’s about taking all
your manual and paper processes and making them faster and electronic. The
impetus behind this transformation is that everybody is connected today, though
wi-fi, satellite networks, mobile devices, and even laptops and PCs. A lot of
work has been spent on enabling the UIs on these devices to help users to have
a top notch digital experience. However, it seems that back-end systems, where
information coming in from these UIs is processed, are still not up to speed.
At least this is what we were told when putting together stories for our last
[Jan. 26] issue.
“A lot of companies have mobile apps and digital interfaces,
and they are very fast at pre-approving a loan,” Alan Swahn, VP of marketing at
ISV and systems integrator AI
Foundry, told us. “But, to actually issue that loan, they are still dealing
with a lot of paper and armies of people keying in data. So, while the UI may
have gone through a digital transformation, everything else is old school.”
Added, Ralf Göbel, COO of data capture software and
crowdsourcing specialist ScaleHub,
“The problem is that the back-end systems used to process this input are not
fast enough. The apps and Web sites might be flexible and fast enough to
provide a great experience on the front-end, but the back ends at many big
companies have not kept up, and they are too slow.”
This is not a new problem. It was back in 2010 that AIIM,
with the help of noted technology author and consultant Geoffrey Moore, first started talking about connecting Systems of
Engagement (the front end) with Systems of Record (the back-end). Since then it
seems the disconnect has only widened, as investments have tilted toward
improving mobile apps and UIs, and, as usual, back-end improvements in areas
like ECM, have been often pushed (no pun intended) to the back burner.
Obviously, this would seem to create opportunity for savvy
capture and ECM vendors and integrators who know how to package their software
and services as part of a total Digital Transformation solution. That said,
their systems need to be architected correctly to integrate with multi-channel
front-end input avenues, as well as other back-end systems that are driving
business decisions.
RPA is an interesting avenue for achieving some of this
integration. As we also went over in last week's issue, when Kofax first
purchased Kapow, it was presented as application integration software. This
capability (as well as the ability to learn by example) seems to be one of the
core tenets of products in the emerging RPA space. And indeed, while Kofax has
yet to see much crossover between capture and RPA, there are RPA vendors like
UiPath, which, through a partnership with ABBYY, have added document
processing to their RPA portfolios.
Kofax has seen a parallel between the capture and RPA
markets in the desire by users to introduce workflow automation to data being
gathered to RPA and data being captured from documents. This makes absolute
sense within the landscape of the Digital Transformation, where the desire is
to get things done faster and in a more automated way. So, if you look at it
from a process management standpoint, UI, capture, and RPA all should be
connected, along with automated workflows and back-end systems. That seems to
be the Holy Grail of Digital Transformation.
I'll leave you with one more analogy. Let's go back to my
first statement about the Digital Transformation being sexy. Unfortunately,
more often than not, however, today it seems to be like the beautiful person
you meet at the bar whose conversation might only go as deep as reality TV.
Introducing capture, RPA, and workflow could be akin to sending this person to
college (and even grad school), where they learn to discuss business, politics,
philosophy and all sorts of other interesting topics. Of course, the question
is, do you have the budget for that? It's my hunch that if you look at the ROIs
for college, and you look at the ROIs for completing the Digital
Transformation, they might be similar. At least I'm hoping their both positive,
with two teenagers in school and a business heavily invested in the capture and
ECM markets.
