Introduction
As with all segments of the ECM market, the capture software vendor industry has undergone significant and accelerating evolution over the past several decades. Document capture software is generally defined as applications which have the capacity to automate the process of scanning paper documents and, whilst most scanners and copiers have the ability to scan any number of image file formats, including PDF, TIFF, JPEG etc., such basic functionality can be significantly augmented by document capture software.
The primary motivation for acquiring a document capture solution is always to reduce the time spent on tedious, manual tasks but also to mine valuable business metadata from the scanned documents, which can then be searched, viewed and utilised to aid collaboration and business critical decisions.
This is, of course, a much simplified and abridged overview of the document capture sector and, we know that, for most post-recession organisations, automating business processes is the “Holy Grail” as they continually seek reductions in costs and improvements in business process efficiency. To learn more about current capture solutions, their applications and just how much they assist in increases in efficiency, productivity and streamlining the automated flow of information, Boss News spoke with Didier Charpentier, Chairman & CEO of French process, capture and automation giant, ITESOFT.
BN: Welcome, Didier. Could you start by giving us some background on yourself and how you came to found ITESOFT?
DC: My background is technical and I graduated as an Engineer (INSA Lyon, France) and Master of Science (Purdue University, USA) in Electrical Engineering.
I started working as a software development engineer to process satellite images for the Brazilian Space Research Center.
I founded ITESOFT when I was 25. I did not have any clear business plan, no cash, networking or professional experience, etc… but I did enjoy developing software and was convinced that technology would change the world. That was the vision.
In 1989, we developed one of the very first PC-based technologies in the world to read hand-printed characters and forms. We were among the pioneers and we kept innovating to bring more and more benefits to our customers.
ITESOFT is now a public company with more than 200 employees and is still driven by innovation.
BN: What is the core value proposition of your products & services, and how do you differentiate your organisation from other capture software vendors?
DC: ITESOFT's mission consists of transforming our customers' costly manual processes into automated, digital data flows that reduce costs, cut delays and generate significant profits. By freeing our customers of tedious, repetitive and cost-ineffective tasks, we enable them to unleash their innovative potential by redeploying critical resources where they can make the most impact.
ITESOFT offers a complete solution, called SCPA (Secure Capture and Process Automation), that allows our customers to streamline their document intensive, human centric processes for adaptive Digital Transformation.
SCPA is quite unique as it is built upon three pillars and key differentiating technologies:
- An omni-channel capture technology, with the highest automation rate on the market, which understands and extracts data from all types of documents, paper and electronic, structured and unstructured.
- A unique, Saas based, document fraud detection "smart machine", enabling companies to systematize their work and reduce liability risks and fraud costs without compromising the customer experience.
- A superior business process automation technology, based on BPM market standards, enabling processes to adapt dynamically, depending on the sequence of interactions, to anticipate resource needs and assign tasks intelligently, according to priorities as a result of our administration and end to end supervision system, and to identify specific behaviors that require intervention by the company.
This combination, dedicated to excellence in customer / supplier relationships, provides ITESOFT's customers and prospects with a unique solution, enabling them to rapidly offer new experiences and services to their own customers / suppliers. In this way, they differentiate themselves from their competitors and protect themselves for the future from new competitors in an iterative and agile manner.
As you can see, ITESOFT is much more than just a capture software vendor.
BN: Which geographic regions do you cover and in which specific markets are you the strongest?
DC: Most of ITESOFT's customers are large global organisations and we are able to sell, install and support our customers wherever they operate.
We have 650 customers in 35 countries including the Americas, Europe, Africa and APAC.
We are strongest in Europe and, of course, in our domestic market (France).
BN: Which applications and sectors contribute the greatest demand for your products? Has ITESOFT had to add additional services and solutions to meet this demand?
DC: ITESOFT sells SCPA solutions to all sectors. The main traction is currently coming from insurance, financial services and the public sector for customer-centric applications and we deliver SCPA/C (SCPA for Customers) to automate customer-related processes.
Additionally, industry is an important sector for our P2P automation solution and we deliver SCPA/S (SCPA for Suppliers) to automate supplier-related processes.
In order to meet those demands, ITESOFT needed to increase its capacity for process automation, and therefore, last year, we acquired W4 (a French BPM specialist, recognized by the analysts as a market leader).
ITESOFT has also been investing a lot of effort in document fraud detection and this is going to be increasingly important as organizations move to the “Digital Channel” because fraud is growing.
All ITESOFT's solutions are now built on these unique key technologies: omni-channel capture, business process automation and document fraud detection.
We firmly believe that the Digital Transformation in which our customers and prospects are deeply involved will require these three components, unified in a single solution and SCPA is unique on the market.
BN: What are the main market drivers you are seeing at the moment for your products & solutions and how do you see this changing over the next 2-3 years?
DC: ITESOFT is seeing Digital Transformation and customer satisfaction as the two main drivers at the moment for our products and solutions.
We expect these trends to grow in the next 2-3 years as customer experience management is at the top of the CEO's agenda. It remains very challenging to create a superior customer experience that will serve as a sustainable differentiator and ITESOFT helps its customers achieve this goal.
BN: Are you experiencing an increase or decline of large volume capture projects as documents are increasingly "digitally borne"? What about the impact of MFP’s on your business?
DC: As documents become increasingly “digitally born” ITESOFT is seeing a growth in large volume projects because customers are looking for support in their Digital Transformation and they have more documents to process, more quickly, through more channels.
This Digital Transformation requires an efficient omni-channel capture technology able to handle documents from multiple sources (including paper, email, SMS, EDI, XML, portal, photo, voice, IOT, ..) and to recognise, verify, categorise and interpret each of these information flows.
We will be adding more sources to our omni-channel capture technology, such as video and social medias.
The ever-improving quality of MFP’s and smartphone cameras makes the capture of documents simpler and allows for a quicker turnaround time. They have made a positive impact on ITESOFT's business.
BN: What has been impact of Mobile, Social, Cloud and SaaS on your business and how have you adapted your products to address these new technologies?
DC: Mobile, Social, Cloud and SaaS form a nexus of forces that we, at ITESOFT, have anticipated.
Our omni-channel capture technology has been providing mobile capture for many years, and our solutions include mobile-related features such as invoice approval.
We have built a cloud-based, collaborative platform for our community of partners and customers to build and share processes thus fostering co-innovation.
More recently, at BPMNext in Santa Barbara, we demonstrated a combination of a structured process with an enterprise social network for highly flexible case management to improve collaboration and flexibility.
The architecture of ITESOFT's solutions allows for cloud-type implementation and, even though our current business model is based on licences, 50% of our turnover is recurring revenue. We can offer subscription-based pricing to our customers interested in SaaS.
As I mentioned earlier, ITESOFT will continue to focus considerable effort on document fraud detection technology as a Cloud-based SaaS offering. We believe that this is a unique value proposition and differentiator that we have built in collaboration with European research laboratories.
BN: What are your current business growth initiatives over the next 12 to 18 months?
DC: ITESOFT will continue to expand by executing its SCPA go-to-market strategy. We are focusing on our unique value propositions (omni-channel capture, business process automation and document fraud detection) to raise our customers' benefits to the next level and to make their Digital Transformation a major success.
The international market is obviously a key initiative for us as our subsidiaries and partners will gain additional traction from the growth of SCPA in their regions.
We are also investing to raise our visibility with the market influencers to ensure we are noted as being unique. SCPA is an exceptional solution, combining three advanced and major technologies.
ITESOFT stands out as a unique company amongst the crowd of "paper dinosaurs" and "eInvoicing gurus".
BN: Are those objectives likely to be achieved through organic growth or do you have an ear to the ground for acquisition opportunities as well?
DC: All those objectives are being achieved through organic growth because acquisition is hard to predict, but we, at ITESOFT, keep our ears open to every opportunity that could accelerate our growth.
