A look at Lexmark's Acquisiton of Brainware

Sorry it took me so long to get around to this, but I've been catching up on a few things. Chances are by now you've seen that Lexmark paid $148 million to acquire Brainware. My first reaction was "Wow. That seems like a lot of money." But, then I started doing some research and apparently, Harvey Spencer Associates has Brainware ranked ahead of Top Image Systems in worldwide market share, and, as we recently reported, TIS recently reported annual revenue of close to $30 million.

 So, Lexmark apparently paid less than five times revenue- which is still a pretty good premium. Lexmark hinted that more financial details about Brainware may be available during its first quarter earnings call in April.

For those of you who don't know Brainware, it is an intelligent data capture (IDC) ISV. From what I understand, most of the heavy lifting on the development side is done in Europe, with the sales and marketing headquartered in Ashburn, VA. Brainware has enjoyed meteoric success in the invoice capture market in the past 5-6 years.

Formed out of the ashes of the flameout of German ECM ISV SER, Brainware's management team spun the company out of a call center software business and aggressively grew sales by focusing on ROI related to invoice capture. Unlike some of its competitors, Brainware has historically de-emphasized the workflow piece of the invoice processing equation and really focused on what it terms as "straight-through processing." This involves automatically extracting enough information off of invoices so that they can be matched with P.O. and shipping data and automatically posted to an accounting/ERP system without anyone having to approve them.

Brainware has also done some high-volume forms and remittance processing implementations, but to date invoices has been its real sweet spot. It sounds like Brainware will be working closely with the Perceptive development staff on additional data capture applications in markets like higher education and healthcare where Perceptive has a strong presence.

Perceptive is the document management ISV that Lexmark bought in 2010. Lexmark paid more than 3 times revenue for Perceptive, which is in a market where companies have historically had a lower valuation than the IDC market where Brainware plays. So, Lexmark has a history of paying a good premium for software vendors.  And, if you remember, HP paid like more than 10 times revenue for Autonomy last year. That fact is hardware vendors typically have to pay a decent price to get a decent software vendor.

Part of this is because I think the general consensus is that hardware companies don't know how to run software businesses. And this was certainly a widespread concern when Lexmark bought Perceptive. But, you know what, I think because Lexmark has done such a good job allowing Perceptive to remain autonomous, there were really no similar questions that came up this time around. In the meantime, last year Lexmark acquired a BPM software provider, Pallas Athena, to compliment Percpetive and recently reported 30% organic growth for the Perceptive business.

There's a ton more I can write on this, which will show up in my next premium issue. But, for now, it appears full speed ahead for Brainware as part of Perceptive, taking advantage of the Lexmark resources. And Lexmark now has pretty much a full capture, workflow, document management suite, putting it on the cutting edge in the world of MFP vendors.

Top Image Completes strong year

Document capture software specialist Top Image Systems recently announced another strong quarter and a strong conclusion to its 2011 year. The Tel Aviv-based ISV, which sells primarily in Europe, reported 25% revenue growth for the quarter and 32% for the year. This brought its annual revenue to $28.7 million. TIS also reported a non-GAAP net income for the year of $3.4 million, which represented an 82% growth from the previous year. The company now has more than $2 million in the bank and has eliminated its debt.

TIS focuses on the banking, digital mailroom, accounts payable and census markets. TIS reported strong business in Europe, the UK, Latin America and Asia-Pac. It is also planning to open a U.S. sales office to market its mobile technology.

In the earnings press release, CEO Ido Schechter stated,  "Looking ahead to 2012, we will continue to execute our long-term growth strategy by focusing on our Digital Mailroom and Banking Platform solutions as well as on our strong global partnerships. For 2012, TISA expects growth of between 17% and 23%, revenues of between $33.5 million and $35.3 million, and Non-GAAP operating income in the range of $4.3 to $4.6 million."

Capture + MPS on the Horizon

There is certainly a lot of interest in introducing document capture and management applications into managed print services contracts. One of the most active discussions I've ever seen on LinkedIn, for example, has focused on the question of will "the next big move for MPS providers will be document capture / workflow?". The discussion takes place within "The Document Imaging Group"  and has more than 60 comments since being started a year-and-a-half ago - the last one coming just a couple days ago.

So, scanning is definitely a hot topic among those in the MPS market, but how much of it is really being sold with MPS implementations today? DIR recently sat in on a briefing about a number of MPS infrastructure players getting together to deliver a solution providing end-user information to resellers to help them improve their MPS deployments. Unfortunately, from our standpoint, the whole discussion focused on print.

We followed up with a question to Doug Johnson, senior VP of MPS for Supplies Network, a St. Louis-based organization which services some 6,000 North American resellers, providing them with products like toner, paper, IT supplies, and data storage media. Supplies Network also has a hosted MPS offering, which was discussed in the briefing. We were introduced to them through DocSolid, which offers an MFP capture platform designed for cloud environments.

Johnson told us, "To date, scanning (and particularly solutions around the scan function--content repurposing, further document workflow, storage, archival, retrieval, etc.) has largely been ignored in the MPS engagements between resellers and end users. We believe it is due to a lack of solutions that are integrated across the scanning value chain. An efforts like the one we recently discussed [on printing], eliminating white space across scanning solutions to create a seamless end-to-end solution, is needed."

 

So, while there clearly is plenty of interest in scanning in the MPS world, it seems the logistical pieces have not been put in place to really unleash it. This is not surprising, considering that printing is still the lead dog for MFP vendors and dealers, and they are still figuring out how to properly deploy it in MPS environments.

We also did a teleconference last week about a re-org at Xerox that discussed MPS, but was almost entirely focused on printing.  Here's two interesting quotes that came out of that teleconference, which may explain some of the interest in printing: "Retail printing is $700 billion market," and "direct mail is growing exponentially." (The figure I found showed that the market for direct mail is actually predicted to shrink slightly over the next five years, but it's still worth well over $10 billion annually, so I guess when you compare it to the document capture software market size of under $3 billion [per Harvey Spencer Associates], you can see why the MPS focus remains on print.)

But - remember, the document capture market is growing in double-digits and someday will catch a declining printing market (if indeed it is declining), which explains all the interest in document scanning amongst, apparently forward-thinking people in the MPS market.

KTM Developer Launches New Company

Alexander Goerke, one of the most experienced and respected developers in the field of intelligent document recognition (IDR), has started a new company. Skilja, which is based in Germany, is focused on the area of document understanding. According to the company Web site, "Skilja.com features several articles per month about the technology of document understanding and decision making...Skilja is also company that actively works in producing software for document understanding. We do this either through consulting and project management in cooperation with other companies or by programming our own components."

For the last several years, Goerke has been with Kofax, which acquired a previous company he started, called LCI. LCI's technology has been incorporated in Kofax's Transformation Modules (KTM), which have been a key element in the Irvine, CA-based ISV's successful move upstream in the document capture market. Previous to founding LCI, Goerke was with SER AG, where his team created the Distiller capture product, which is now sold by Brainware, a competitor of Kofax's in the IDR space. Georke has been in the capture market since 1993.

We look forward to following the progress of his new company, as well as reading his posts on the emerging market of "document understanding."

Former Pegasus now Called Accusoft

Tampa-based imaging SDK vendor Accusoft Pegasus is now officially known as just "Accusoft." Accusoft, which is based in the Boston area, was acquired by Pegasus in 2009 and the company has used the joint name ever since. Pegaus had previously acquired SDV vendor TMS Sequoia in 2004 and last year acquired browser-based viewing tools and application specialist Adeptol.

According to the press release, "The transition of the company name to Accusoft reflects our dedication to provide an even broader range of products to enable our customers to create top-of-line products and integrate cost saving applications," said Jack Berlin, CEO of Accusoft. "With the new direction of the brand, we continue to differentiate ourselves in the global marketplace as a company with a very diverse product portfolio of applications and SDKs."

No, I'm not really sure what that means either - maybe just that Accusoft is a more encompassing name than Pegasus? Either way, the new Web looks good.

ReadSoft Posts Strong Numbers

Document capture ISV ReadSoft finished 2011 strongly, reporting 13% growth in terms of constant currencies for both the fourth quarter and the year. This included software license sales growth of 17% for the fourth quarter and 19% for the year. This helped ReadSoft increase its operating profit EBITDA for the year to $11 million on $98 million in revenue.

According to ReadSoft's financial report, in the fourth quarter, "All three market areas improved with 'U.S. and the rest of the world' in the forefront with 18% growth." ReadSoft, which is based in Sweden, also saw 13% growth in non-Nordic European markets - a geography where its top competitor Kofax has reported recent weakness.

Also, in the fourth quarter, ReadSoft reported one of the largest deals in the history of its company. The deal was with, "a leading European high-tech manufacturing group. ReadSoft partnered with a global systems integrator to deliver its SAP-certified invoice automation solution to this company with a newly established Shared Service Center, handling accounting and purchase services. The deal is worth [$1.4 million], and includes several years of maintenance."

ReadSoft Acquires foxray

ReadSoft, a leading capture software ISV, which is based in Sweden, has acquired German document capture ISV foxray, which develops a capture framework for high-volume environments. foxray's founders came from the ticketing arm of the German airline Lufthansa, and its xbound application acts as a framework that can incorporate multiple capture processes.

According to the ReadSoft press release, foxray's revenue is approximately 7 million Euro, just over $9 million. The initial acquisition price is 7.85 million Euro, with an additional .65 million Euro worth of ReadSoft shares going to foxray's two owners, who are going to remain on board. There are earnout incentives of up to an additional 3.3 million Euro through 2014.

Kofax Reports Half-Year Revenue

In line with pre-set expectations, Kofax's revenue for the first six months of its fiscal 2012 (ended Dec. 31) was basically flat. The Irvine, CA-based document capture technology ISV reported second-quarter revenue of $70 million with half-year sales coming in at $128.5 million.

"This was very consistent with the expectations we set in November," said Kofax CEO Reynolds Bish during a conference call with investors. "We are generally pleased with our overall progress, especially in light of challenging year-over-year comparisons due to a strong six months in the previous year and in light of the overall economic weakness in Europe."

Indeed, Kofax's overall revenue in Europe was down 12% on an organic constant currency basis in Europe, with software licenses down almost 23%. Software licenses, in fact were down 9% overall compared to last year, but a 10% increase in Maintenance Services helped offset this, which we're not sure is that great of a sign.

Overall though, Kofax remains financially healthy, with $62 million in the bank, and in the last year has executed a pair of acquisitions, Atalasoft and Singularity, that Bish indicated are already producing better than expected returns.

London traders seem to take the report in stride. After a week of slight gains preceding the results, Kofax's stock value shot up slightly in early trading before leveling off and finishing yesterday at just under 310 pence per share, which was near where they started. Plans for a public offering on the Nasdaq continue to be in the works.

Kofax Lands Million Dollar Upgrade

Document capture technology specialist Kofax recently announced a million upgrade by a "leading global semi-conductor manufacturer." The manufacturer is implementing a series of Kofax technologies, including the Kofax Transformation Modules, VRS, Kofax Monitor, and the Kofax Communication Server to enhance its Kofax Capture implementation in its A/P department. The manufacturer deals with approximately 2.6 million invoices per year and posts data to an ERP system and the images to a Mobius archiving application.

There is no mention of what type of workflow technology the manufacturer is using and Kofax's MarkView was not part of the deal, but nonetheless, any seven-figure capture deal is worth mentioning.

Psigen Posts strong first-half results

Document capture ISV Psigen recently announced it had 91% revenue growth for the first half of its fiscal year, which ended on Dec. 31. The Irvine, CA-based company credited "a strong domestic market, expansion into Europe and APAC, and a long list of competitive capture replacements," as driving its growth. Also, "The most recent quarter also included several large contract signings for services and OEM deals which will significantly boost revenue through 2012 and beyond."


Psigen's Irvine-based neighbor and competitor, Kofax, is scheduled to announce its Q2 results next week.
Kofax's stock value was up about 10% in the last week- not sure if this means a favorable report is coming or just a sign of overall market conditions. We'll see.

Lexmark Reports Strong Fourth Quarter for Perceptive

Perceptive Software apparently saw its revenue jump 40% in the fourth quarter of 2011 - up to $31 million. Part of that is attributable to the acquisition of BPM and output ISV Pallas Athena, which was announced in October, but 30% of the growth is said to have nothing to do with the acquisition. The fourth quarter growth rate is probably more in line with Lexmark's expectations than the third quarter growth of 15%, in which Lexmark seemed somewhat disappointed.

Part of  Lexmark's acquisition strategy was to expand the primarily North American Perceptive business internationally - taking advantage of Lexmark's worldwide footprint. That strategy seems to be paying off. Also it seems that while a restructuring plan has been put in place at Lexmark, there will be more hiring, rather than cuts, related to the Perceptive business.

Orbograph Launches Cloud-Based EOB Service

Recognition technology specialist Orbograph has launched a cloud-based service for capturing data from Explanation of Benefit (EOB) forms in the healthcare industry. Orbograph, which has its sales and marketing operations based in Billerica, MA, has long been a leader in the check capture space. It recent years, it has looked to move into the document imaging market, leveraging its Key-Pay Convene platform, which basically applies Orbograph's automatic recognition technology to capture as much data from forms as possible, and then uses a fleet of keyers to enter any data that couldn't be recognized with a high enough confidence rate. We're assuming the same type of concept is being utilized in the new P2Post™(paper-to-post) Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) solution.

P2Post has been implemented at a "major US pharmacy provider." According to the press release, "Orbograph P2Post can provide savings of 40-60% compared to the manual entry of EOB Service Line information, which can approach 40-50 cents per service line. The Orbograph P2Post solution was also benchmarked during the proof of concept process with near zero defects or errors on the EOB data originating from documents with single service lines to as many as 900. This accuracy level is up to 10 times superior to manual processes."


EOB's have long been an area of focus in the document capture market, and lately we've been seeing more signs, like this announcement) that our industry is finally making some progress in this area.

Laserfiche Institute 2012

Spent a good bit of last week at the Laserfiche Institute 2012 event in Anaheim. There were some 1,600 people there, a ratio of 70% end users and 30% resellers, so it was a pretty good size event (apparently a 20% increase over last year's event, which was held at the LAX Hilton. The new location, the Anaheim Marriott was very close to Disney and may have helped with the increased attendance, although the reason for the move was that Laserfiche was already growing out of the LAX digs.) Had your usual number of Laserfiche government customers, but verticals like financial services, energy, and even professional sports (the Houston Texans) were represented. No earthshattering new product announcements at the event, but Laserfiche certainly continues to move forward. The message of the conference seemed to be "putting the 'E' in ECM," and Laserfiche stressed how its product is going viral at many customer sites who are ramping up installs in terms of both users and departments. We'll have more on this in this week's premium issue of DIR.

Kodak Bankruptcy Press Release

Here's a link to the official press release from Kodak on its Chapter 11 filing, which was announced last week. (The highlights were made by me when I was working my story, which appears in this week's Premium edition of DIR.) Important to note that this is a Chapter 11 filing, which means Kodak is attempting to reorganize to the satisfaction of the entities it owes money to.

As far as the Document Imaging business goes, the way we understand it, DI is considered a valuable asset and Kodak will not do anything to harm one of its more profitable business units - because that would of course harm the long-term viability of the company. And even though Kodak is being presented as a printing company going forward, DI is reportedly a "major pillar" of its reworked enterprise solutions focus.

NSi Introduces AutoStore 6.0

Notable Solutions, Inc., the Rockview, MD-based MFP capture software specialist, has introduced a new version of its flagship AutoStore application. AutoStore 6.0 features a couple new modules. One is a WebCapture feature that enables users to capture electronic documents from their desktops into workflows connected to AutoStore. The second is a standardized version of AutoStore's SmartTicket functionality.

WebCapture complements AutoStore's AutoCapture technology, a thick Windows client for capturing electronic documents. AutoStore itself is typically used for capturing paper documents with MFPs and processing them. WebCapture is browser-based app.

SmartTicket enables admins to set up bar-coded cover sheets the identify documents being scanned at MFPs. Users log-on, print the proper coversheets, and can add meta data through check boxes or keying at their PCs. The Autostore server can identify scanned documents through the bar codes on the cover sheets and then execute a workflow based on the document ID. Previously, SmartTicket had been implemented as a customized app for some of NSi's bigger customers.

More on AutoStore 6.0 in our next premium issue.

Fujitsu Introduces New Workgroup Models

Fujitsu, which has long been the leader in the workgroup and departmental segements of the document scanner market, has introduced four new models priced between $1,200 and $2,500 featuring speeds of 40/80 and 60/120 ppm/ipm at 200 dpi in color, black-and-white, and grayscale. There are sheet-fed only and flatbed models available at each speed rating.

Some of the cool new features:
Scanner Central Admin: "allows users to monitor scanner running status, update scanner drivers, check consumable status, and more, all over a network, from one location."
Enhanced Paper Protection: "A new advanced encoder inside the document feeder analyzes each passing sheet and stops scanner operation when an irregularity is detected during a page feed, helping to avoid document damage and increase pre and post scan operational efficiency."
"ScanSnap Mode” Function: The new “ScanSnap Mode” gives users that prefer the “one-button,” driverless experience of the award-winning line of ScanSnap scanners an alternative ad-hoc approach to being productive through scanning.

The new models, which go by the  names: fi-6130Z, fi-6140Z, fi-6230Z, and fi-6240Z, will be available in February. For the complete press release, click here.

Kofax Introduces Mobile Capture Technology

A little over a month after investing in a mobile apps tools specialist, Kofax has launched Kofax Mobile Capture. Mobile Capture is basically a set of apps for capturing images with smart phones and tablets, improving their image quality through the application of VRS (Virtual ReScan) technology, and passing them on to BPM and other downstream applications. There are iOS and Android versions of the technology, which capture images to a cloud-based component, Kofax Mobile Services, being hosted on Microsoft's Azure.

From the press release, "Kofax Mobile Services enhances images and delivers the content to the appropriate downstream Kofax processes. This allows Kofax customers to develop and deploy custom mobile capture applications while leveraging their existing Kofax capabilities with no change to their capture enabled BPM infrastructure."

Research Firm Finds $6 Payback for Every $1 Spent on ECM

Nucleus Research recently analyzed 37 case studies of ECM users and found an average ROI of $6.12 for every dollar spent on ECM technology. Nucleus presented its number at Digitech's recent reseller conference held at Denver's Inverness Conference Center. Digitech is a leading SaaS-based provider of ECM technology through its ImageSilo offering and also delivers on premise capture and ECM through its PaperVision line of products.

Nucleus' study found that second and third generation systems "deliver increasing ROI through more streamlined processes and greater productivity." From the Nucleus press release on the study, "In the analysis of Nucleus case studies, 62% of all returns came from direct benefits such as reduced paper or avoidance of staff or service bureau costs.  Another 38% of returns came from indirect benefits, such as productivity."

I was honored to be asked to present at the Digitech event. My presentation was entitled "News You can Use: Staying Ahead in a Rapidly Evolving Market." Basically, I encouraged VARs to embrace new technologies and selling techniques as we enter the "knee of the curve," as Ray Kurzweil calls it in his book "The Age of Spiritual Machines." I also reviewed my biggest stories of 2011 and tried to explain how I felt these stories are going to be affecting the market going forward.

Digitech made an interesting capture software announcement at the event. It released its new PaperVision Capture Desktop, which is a batch capture application to compete with Kofax Express and Kodak Capture Pro. The main difference is that Digitech is not increasing the price of Capture Desktop when it is run with higher volume scanners. The new product lists for $599 and is available exclusively through Cranel. More on this in our next premium edition.

Brainware Announces another seven-figure deal

A few weeks after announcing a $2 million sale to a European service provider, IDR specialist Brainware has announced a $1 million deal with a "U.S.-based product distributor serving the construction and retail hardware industries." It's an A/P deal initially for handling invoices and expense reports and includes integration with JD Edwards ERP systems.

Brainware CEO Carl Mergele was quoted in the press release: "For businesses that are experiencing growth through acquisition, the effective, efficient consolidation of back office operations can pose a significant challenge, requiring the reconciliation of diverse processes and legacy IT platforms. By providing the ability to capture and reconcile data across diverse transactional and content management applications, Brainware enables complex enterprises to achieve world-class performance in accounts payable without increasing headcount."

Sounds like Brainware is having some success in the emerging enterprise capture market.

AccuSoft Pegasus Releases Bar Code SDK for iOS

Imaging tools specialist AccuSoft Pegasus has released a new SDK that enables bar code reading from Apple mobile devices running iOS. The new version of Barcode Xpress Mobile complements the existing version that works with Google Android mobile operating system.

From the press release: "Barcode Xpress Mobile gives end users a frustration free experience when using their own mobile device, with faster and more accurate reads of barcodes. This in turn provides rapid access to data on their own familiar mobile phone or tablet, whether that device is iOS or Android based."