The Need for Multi-Channel Distributed Capture

Document Management, Enterprise Content Management | Garima Rai

With an increasingly distributed enterprise structure, businesses today generate huge volumes of documents at multiple locations, each day. For such geographically dispersed enterprises, a centralized capture approach is no more feasible, as it involves shipping of paper documents to a central site for scanning and processing/archival. This is a time-consuming and costly process.

With technology enablers such as internet, scanners, multi-function printers, smart-phones, tablets, etc., becoming commonplace and affordable, multi-channel distributed capture has emerged as the most feasible model for document capture. Multi-channel distributed capture enables document capture at the place of origination of a document, including mailrooms, branch-offices, departments, and out-of-office locations.

This model, for document capture at the point of origination, enables quick decision making, faster processing of critical business transactions, reduced operational expenses, and less administrative complexities. Paper-intensive organizations such as banks, financial institutions, government organizations, etc. can leverage distributed capture to improve business performance and enhance customers’ experiences.

However, while a completely distributed capture framework might be ideal for a specific organization, it might not suit the business needs of another organization with a different organization structure and nature of transactions. Before choosing a capture framework for your business, you must first do a need-analysis and then select a capture model that best serves your requirement.

Bio: Garima is part of the Marketing team at Newgen Software.

Mobility – Ensuring Business Success for Insurers

Business Process Management, Customer Communication Management, Enterprise Content Management, Insurance | Garima Rai

Driven by the rise in penetration of mobile phones and tablets, in the past few years, it has become ineluctable for every business, to embrace mobility. Especially any business, for which success depends largely on customers’ service experiences, must have a sound mobile strategy, in alignment with the changing customer preferences.

While mobility finds its applicability across all industries, it can play an essentially critical role in the success of an insurance organization. When leveraged across the insurance value chain, mobility can yield real business value, in terms of enhanced customer satisfaction, simpler processes, and reduced cycle times and administrative costs.

Insurers can use mobile technology to establish virtual offices for their field staff, allowing them ‘anytime-anywhere’ access to relevant information, such as customer details, new policy features, policy quotes, etc. This would result in faster sales cycles and improved revenues. Using mobile applications, insurers can enable sales agents to capture customer information at the point of contact, transfer it to the central processing office in real time, and initiate the processing of applications instantly.

Customer self-service is another area where mobility can add immense value. Today, mobile phones have become a norm, and the proliferation of smartphones is witnessing unprecedented growth rates. In such a scenario, in order to retain and expand its customer-base, it becomes imperative for an insurance organization to offer self-service tools, allowing customers to access their policy information, locate agents, pay premiums and apply for claims over their mobile devices.

Owing to the benefits that it promises to insurers, the case for adoption of mobile solutions is very strong. However, before an insurer invests in mobile solutions, it is important to outline a sound mobile strategy based on its specific requirements, in order to maximize the benefits of mobility.

Bio: Garima is part of the Marketing team at Newgen Software.

Think Big Data

Business Process Management, Enterprise Content Management | Swapnil Naik

It took me exactly a day to write this blog. In the same time the following happened.

1. 1 billion pieces of content were added to Facebook.

2. Zynga processed 1 petabyte of content for players, a volume of data that is unmatched in the social game industry.

3. More than 1 billion searches were performed only on Twitter

4. More than 2 billion videos were watched on YouTube

That is not all. According to IBM, every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. That is a unit of data I never thought existed even in the dictionary and for me an Urban Legend so to speak. The amount of data created each day has increased to such levels that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data is big data. An understatement to say the least.

Big Data will be of no use till the time it remains Data. The Big Data needs to be converted to Big Information.

The term Big Data is used to describe voluminous amount of unstructured and semi-structured data a company creates — data that would take too much time and cost too much money to load into a relational database for analysis.

So how do we manage the so called “big data“? What is the objective of managing it? What is the expected outcome of this extremely tedious exercise? The massive size of Big Data goes beyond the ability of average database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze them effectively.

Bill Hoggarth, speaker at the ITWeb BPM Summit, says “Unlike any other IT catchphrase, big data is here to stay because it’s being led and sponsored by business thought leaders.” From a BPM perspective, he also adds “It’s not so much how BPM helps with addressing big data, but rather how big data helps to address BPM challenges”. As companies shift towards more customer-centric approaches to managing their business, they are looking for frameworks to manage their business processes that can actually predict customer behavior.

Organizations have increasingly started thinking in terms of business processes rather than individual applications. The combination of BPM and advanced analytics tools that have ready access to massive amounts of data creates intriguing possibilities that could serve to automate any number of business functions.

Senior Management want businesses run on data-driven decisions. They want scenarios and simulations that provide immediate guidance on the best actions to take when disruption occur, disruptions ranging from unexpected competitors or an earthquake in a supply zone to a customer signaling a desire to switch providers. Management wants to understand optimal solutions based on complex business parameters or new information, and they want to take action quickly.

Of course, many business executives have been reluctant to attempt to automate many of the processes for fear that the data those decisions are being made on is either incorrect or incomplete. But as the volume of data for those decisions increases, the confidence in those decisions increases because the level of extrapolation being made based on the available data is significantly less.

It’ll be interesting to see what impact Big Data ultimately has on BPM adoption or vice versa. It is of utmost importance they complement each other to contribute to the growth of the organization. It is not just a matter of what came first – The egg or the chicken.

Name: Swapnil

Bio: Swapnil is part of Newgen's Presales team, working for the company's Regional Office in Mumbai.

Capture Customer Information at the Point of Contact for Faster Claims Processing

Enterprise Content Management | Garima Rai

Are you faced with challenge of retaining customers? Are transportation/processing delays resulting in customer churn? Are you paying huge costs to physically transfer customer information from the branches to the processing centers?

In the insurance industry, where customer service is highly document intensive and process cycles last multiple days, the importance and need for innovative technologies to gain a competitive edge is critical. Some of the major challenges faced by insurers in processing claims include:

• Missing data
• Submission delays – transportation of documents
• Data entry errors

The answer to these problems is ‘Mobile Capture’. Insurance workers in the field can leverage on mobile capture technologies to capture customer information at the point of contact with the customer and deliver this information electronically to enterprise applications for processing. Field executives simply need to snap photos of customers’ driver’s licenses, insurance cards, etc., and subsequently route the resulting digital information via a mobile app to a central site for processing. Thus, Mobile Capture enables insurance companies to connect decentralized insurance agency networks and reduce cycle times for processing claims. 

Business Benefits

• Real-time communication
• Paperless environment
• Digital storage of data
• Reduced cycle times for processing claims
• Enhanced customer experience
• Cost savings
  • No scanning required
  • Reduced courier costs
  • Duplicity and storage costs

Bio: Garima is part of the Marketing team at Newgen Software.

Data Capture/Entry without Operators -ICR/IWR Technology

Enterprise Content Management | Hemant Sahni

Can you read the below text?

(A) ICR (Inteligent Charactre Recogniiton) techonlogy is the idael solutoin for msot compelx and vooluminus fomrs prossecing jobs. This esay-to-configrue data capturnig soltioun lets you extcrat biusness-critcal informtion from Forms for furhter use in extrenal Databsee Aplication, Docment Mangaement, Workfolw, Biusness Procses Menagemant, Contnet Mangaement and other Infomration Managmeent Systmes.

Normal Text:: ICR technology is the ideal solution for most complex and voluminous forms processing jobs. This easy-to-configure data capturing solution lets you extract business-critical information from Forms for further use in external Database Application, Document Management, Workflow, Business Process Management, Content Management and other Information Management Systems.

Now try this (little challenging…lets see…)

(B) It is a kownn fact that oitnizgnoaars (grvmneenot or privtae) are mivnog troawds wnikrog tohurgh srtctuerud way of dtaa reatneptrisoen, but the fact is that, in sipte of alabiilivtay of stueutrcrd forms, it is not being uesd as it was dgnesied for. A Splime ealpmxe is of hte Tlcoeem itnsdruy wrehe all Cotsmeur Aitlcoppain Fmros (CAF) are dsngeeid in srutceutrd from but no otniziaoagrn till dtae uses auamettod dtaa enottricaxy peorscs like ICR tgolohnecy for data ctuarpe.

If you can read paragraph (B) also then just imagine that in the first attempt you were able to make sense of a totally messy paragraph, and this is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself but the word as whole.

Now similar technology is being used to enhance the power of ICR technology to make it more robust and accurate, this technology is called IWR (Intelligent Word Recognition) and is breakthrough in reading not only printed handwritten information but cursive handwriting as well. ICR works on character by character but IWR works with full words or sentences.  

IWR is actually not replacement of conventional ICR but is mainly for free forms and hard to recognize data fields that are challenge to ICR technology.

You still don’t believe this? Then try to press the below mentioned numeric keys as a text message in your mobile phone with dictionary feature enabled (the same technology is used in your mobile phones also, and you already have it with you).

937 8447 47 76774253

Note: Below is the actual paragraph for those who were not able to read.

(B) It is a known fact that organizations (government or private) are moving towards working through structured way of data representation, but the fact is that, in spite of availability of structured forms, it is not being used as it was designed for. A simple example is of the Telecom industry where all Customer Application Forms (CAF) are designed in structured form but no organization till date uses automated data extraction process like ICR technology for data capture.

Name: Hemant

Web Site: http://www.newgensoft.com

Bio: Hemant is Senior Manager - Processing Services with Newgen Software Technologies Limited

“Case Management” includes usage of content, collaboration and support for dynamic work allocation

Business Process Management, Enterprise Content Management | Rohit Thakur

Traditionally, small parts of a process (work-step/s) have been performed by different workers who add some value at each work-step. However, increasing automation has led to reducing of the repetitive work and work-steps involve very little value addition from each worker. To keep work interesting and meaningful for a knowledge worker, and to enhance efficiencies, each knowledge worker is expected to perform the task end-to-end. This requires knowledge workers to collaborate in both structured and ad-hoc manner depending on how the case shapes up. Typical “case management” application areas include a benefits claim processing, an investigation by a government agency or a loan request processing.

“Case Management” includes usage of content, collaboration and support for dynamic work allocation. Within such cases, exceptions are unpredictable and rather become the norm. Such “ cases” can only be visualized and modeled into a process after they are completed. Therefore, to successfully manage the “Case”, along with the Content Management tools, the information worker also requires social/collaboration tools for the ad hoc work, and tools like BPM, and business rules for managing structured work.

Bio: Rohit Thakur is Senior Manager-Marketing, at Newgen Software

Digitization and Process Automation in Government Departments: Need of the Hour

Banking, Business Process Management, Enterprise Content Management | Neeraj Koli

With increased focus on transparency, compliances and better services within a specified period of time, more and more government departments are realizing the need for investing in their IT Infrastructure.  Government departments, specially the customer centric ones, such as Transport, Health, Passport, and MNREGA, are constantly faced with an uphill task of managing huge volumes of documents and processes. These departments need a system that can help them deliver citizen centric services to the people at a faster pace, with improved transparency and accountability.

Large public sector enterprises have already taken steps towards embracing e-Governance and Digitization. There are examples of organizations such as DMRC – very recently they have adopted a SaaS-based Document Management System, seeing digitization as the need of the Hour.

There are multiple other examples where Newgen has helped organization such as Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Gujarat Industries Power Company Ltd, Madhya Pradesh Transport Department, Estate Office Chandigarh, Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals, LIC of India, and many public sector banks to realize their objective of a ‘Less Paper Office’ through its award winning end to end document management and process automation solutions.

If technology has enabled us to go paperless and achieve better governance there is no reason why organizations should not go with it. 

Name: Neeraj

Bio: Neeraj Koli is part of the Global Business Development team at Newgen, and is responsible for the APAC Banking market.

“Banking Transformation Needs Smart Automation”

Banking, Business Process Management, Enterprise Content Management | Imroz Adeeb

Last night I participated in a webinar titled “Banking Transformation Needs Smart Automation”. The webinar highlighted BPM and ECM as catalysts for financial services transformation and how business benefits could be accrued from their implementation. The speakers included Derek Miers, Principal Analyst of Forrester Research and Mridul Sharma, Senior Vice President, Solution Delivery Team, IndusInd Bank and Ritesh Verma, Head, CoE Banking Practice.

Mr. Derek Miers talked about “Driving Transformation in Financial Services.” He began by stating that most organizations today are in the midst of one of the most disruptive shifts in economic history. The shift has been from producers and those who hold capital to consumers. Consumers he said had a plethora of choices today and even more so in the finance and banking industry. He went on discuss the gradual transition from the way banking services were delivered on paper to the 360 degree approach that is followed today. He stressed on the fact that since customers had so many choices, the greatest differentiator was how customer experience was delivered to customers. If customers were dissatisfied, they would invariably jump ship. To keep in tune with customer needs, organizations had to evolve and transform themselves. Mr. Miers spoke about how processes were at the center of this transformation from Traditional Line Management to Processes and Services Management. He argued that this did not warrant a Band-aid approach where specific systems or parts of the organization were changed but more like a “Wellness Program” which brings overall vitality, rejuvenation and business transformation. He felt that customer centricity should become the default behavior of the organization and especially its front line.

This approach reminded me of the term “Big Process” that I read in an article by Connie Moore titled “Embrace Big Process Thinking” where she said, “Big Process is when senior-most business and technology leaders embrace business process change by shifting the organization’s focus from isolated BPM and process improvement projects to a sustainable, enterprise-wide business process transformation program that is then supported and driven by top executives.” I think this aligns perfectly with what Derek was trying to explain.

Derek went on to elaborate on how organizations should build their transformation plan by focusing on outcomes and working backwards to the processes it needs to deliver that outcome. He concluded by highlighting that organizations should look at this as an opportunity to shine and take the lead rather than waiting for change to happen.

Mridul Sharma then took the speaker’s role and discussed how Newgen’s BPM solution helped the bank to improve processes, reduce turn-around-times, foster transparency and lay the foundation for a paperless and green office.

Ritesh Verma concluded the presentation session by discussing Newgen’s capabilities in BPM and ECM and stressing on how Newgen is in the business of transforming banks. He went on to point out how Newgen has become a key enabler for fast growing banks. He also enumerated the company’s achievements in the BFS industry and its pedigree of 850+ installations across 45 countries. He concluded by showcasing the number of clients Newgen has worked with and how it has helped 119 banks across the globe to achieve their business goals.

The webinar was wrapped up by a Question and Answer round where participants interacted with the key speakers.

Name: Imroz Adeeb

Bio: Imroz is Associate Manager - Corporate Communications at Newgen Software.

Microfilm or Digitization: Simplified View (Continued…)

Enterprise Content Management | Hemant Sahni

This is in continuation to my earlier article “Microfilm or Digitization: Simplified View”. In earlier article I discussed why digitization should be preferred over Microfilms, although microfilms have certain advantages over digitization like life expectancy of microfilm is of 500 years, it is eye readable and is also an analog technology.

In today’s scenario digitization has proved itself over the advantages of microfilms; for e.g. storage media cost is cheap today and transfer of data from one media to another (in case of technology upgradation) is also simple or automatic. Scanned/digitized images cannot be read through naked eye from the storage media directly (without attaching it to a computer system) but a computer system is now available at every corner of the globe and is rapidly expanding its reach.

Below is the comparison of Digitization and Microfilming/Scanning to understand the concept in detail.

Name: Hemant

Web Site: http://www.newgensoft.com

Bio: Hemant is Senior Manager - Processing Services with Newgen Software Technologies Limited

Newgen Brown Bag Club – Sharing P2P Information

Banking, Business Process Management, Customer Communication Management, Enterprise Content Management, Shared Services | Sumit Sahdev

Information sharing is a process through which team members collectively utilize their available informational knowledge/resources and make it available to their peers for a mutual learning experience. With the ever increasing demands to fulfilling business needs it becomes extremely important to stay ready and face any business challenge with relative ease. The situation gave us an idea to create a platform for peer Newgenites and it embarks the birth of Newgen Brown Bag Club.

What is Brown Bag?
Brown bag is a symbol for meals brought along by the attendees, or provided by the host. In the most part of the world, those are often packed in brown paper bags.

Brown Bag Session:
A brown bag seminar, session or lunch is generally a training or information session during a lunch break or during a non productive hour. Brown bag seminars normally run an hour or two. The aim is to use regular breaks, e.g. the lunch break, to share some information amongst the attendees in a voluntary and informal setting. It is often followed by a discussion on the topic. This is an interesting medium for knowledge management and internal communications.

Brown Bag Club Vision:
To create a platform for knowledge and information sharing amongst peer Newgenites.
To allow them to grow horizontally and vertically in all Newgen involved domains and practices.
To make the brown bag club reach at a level where it can be used by the peer Sales and Pre-sales teams to allow Clients/Prospective clients have a strong reference.

Objectives of the Club Sessions:
1.    Creating an environment of peer learning
2.    To share, what all information any member have on any domain and/or any process
3.    To debate on the concepts, brushing your workflow processes, discuss about an upcoming product/technology/business and anything or everything
4.    To polish your ideas on implementation, delivery methods etc
5.    To improve the project management skills
6.    To improve the communication skills of the members
7.    To improve the inter-personal skills of the members
8.    To create a knowledge vault of information

Outcomes/Benefits of the Club Sessions:
1.    To deliver a much refined process workflow for Newgen Customers
2.    Debating will clear the concepts and would invite fresh ideas and methodologies to polish up work
3.    To learn about various domains and industries, this would allow the members to bridge any gap with ease
4.    To expand horizontally and vertically across Newgen products and industries
5.    Better customer facing and presentation skills
6.    Information archival for future

Brown Bag Session – Conducting Procedure
1.    Finalize the topic voluntarily between the members / Invite someone outside of the club to present
2.    Finalize the date and time
3.    Discuss about the expectations of the members for the incoming session
4.    Share the expectations with the presenter
5.    Ice Breaking – Member nomination
6.    Session/Discussion
7.    Information archival for future use. (Archive articles, White Papers, Case Studies, PPTs etc. )

Brown Bag Club Moderators:
•    Sumit Sahdev
•    Sumit Aggarwal
•    Ranjan Kumar
•    Sparsh Arora
•    Gagandeep Madan

Brown Bag Session Schedule: