CEO Reflections and 2022 Outlook
Moving into a new year has inspired me to reflect back on this past year, think about today and the momentum and excitement for 2022. If you know me, I am a glass-half-full kind of guy (actually, more accurately I am a glass-overflowing kinda guy) with a desire for incremental improvement over delayed perfection. My outlook is always looking towards the future, especially when it comes to technology and how I can help our customers. It’s my ambition and purpose that never goes away.
Learning from the past is critical to future success. The pandemic is still with us and has forever changed the way we work. The interesting part of this was to see how resilient our team fared during a global crisis. As a tech company, we had the advantage of already having a tech stack that could be accessed remotely; we had productivity and collaboration tools in place, so the transition was fairly easy. Also, we have been good at hiring high EQ (emotional quotient) individuals which were able to navigate calm and nimble through these challenging times.
Additionally, navigating the way we meet and work with customers and partners had its challenges since the beginning of the pandemic. What has been the hardest for me personally is not seeing so many people in person, which is one of the ways I get energized.
2021 Accomplishments
Ephesoft’s achievements and progress over the past year are remarkable in many ways. Digital transformation initiatives and the quest for hyperautomation led many customers to knock on our door. If it was not known previously, the pandemic showed us that to stay afloat in this competitive world, businesses need actionable, structured data. And, that there are AI-powered tools like Ephesoft to deliver this data automatically!
[New Opportunities]
Highlights included expanding our footprint in the federal government with product recertification by the Air Force Network Integration Center and available on Project Hosts' Federal Private Cloud FedRAMP-authorized platform. Both will make intelligent document processing automation faster and easier to deploy for agencies.
[R&D]
We also released a major breakthrough with the ability to extract handprint, handwriting and cursive data with 88% accuracy. While we see accuracy levels with type print up to 99.9% accuracy, cursive handwriting has traditionally been difficult – until now. I bet you never thought having a computer correctly read and extract information from a doctor’s prescription pad would be possible!
[Customer Feedback]
Ephesoft was also recognized by our customers, partners and the analyst community. Our customers wrote reviews on G2 throughout the year, so we were recognized as leaders in OCR and Data Extraction categories as leaders for four consecutive quarters.
[Partnerships]
We also partnered with new channel partners, system integrators, global consultancies and joined several iPaaS marketplaces, making intelligent automation even easier for customers. You can find connectors for us on Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Power Automate, Mulesoft and Workato marketplaces for both Transact and Semantik Invoice.
[Analyst Recognition]
Finally, Ephesoft was recognized in 2021 Gartner® Competitive Landscape: Intelligent Document Processing Platform Providers Report, validating Ephesoft as an unstructured data specialist and the overwhelming importance of IDP.
2022 Outlook
[Product]
I can barely contain my excitement about this new year and what’s on the product roadmap. Our R&D team made up of data scientists, engineers, product managers and cloud ops have been working tirelessly to develop our next generation of adaptive AI technologies as it relates to intelligent document processing. In fact, you can get a bare-bones “taste” of it in our AI Labs. But this is only the beginning and it will change Ephesoft and also the whole IDP industry. This next-gen AI technology will be weaved into both Transact and Semantik platforms.
The innovations coming out of our AI Labs will become an important part of any company’s hyperautomation strategy. You might remember from previous years, I’ve always believed that if a machine can do it, it should. Automate anything that can be automated. Eliminate tedious manual data entry and extra work. At the end of the day, all businesses want to make their customers happier and give them an experience that makes them come back for more. Unlocking trapped data and putting it to work with IDP automation will make this possible.
[Partners]
An important part of 2022 will be our partnerships around the world. We need our partner ecosystem to continue to help us make work processes easier for our mutual customers. “It takes a village,” as the saying goes. Supporting our network of partners will be a top priority for us. Our strategic partnerships bring expertise and a large knowledge base that will only benefit customers. Our partner and marketing teams are growing to help support this priority. IDP is the cornerstone of hyperautomation and, with the help of our partners, we will become closer to achieving our vision. We need to engage our partners more than ever (Voice of Partners) when we develop our products so that we can be the best eph’n IDP platform for our partners worldwide.
[Our Team]
Lastly, I want to thank and acknowledge our fantastic leadership team and all Ephesoftians. You are the people that are making a difference in our partners’ and customers’ work lives. It is great to work with all of you; thank you for being part of my and Ephesoft’s journey and I humbly strive to not only create the best products on the market but offer an awesome culture. Cheers to 2022! Let’s make it a great one.
Data Compliance Tops List of Use Cases for Document Capture for IT and Operations Decision-Makers
In a recent survey on CIO.com on intelligent document processing and document capture, CIOs, IT Management, Operations, Finance and Business Analyst and Security leaders in the Americas and Asia Pacific regions gave us insight into their top use cases and interests. Respondents were mostly from medium to enterprise size Finance/Banking/Accounting and Manufacturing industries, with others in Government and Insurance.
The most telling information about the state of data and document capture needs was that 61% of respondents said that data compliance prompted their interest in a document capture solution. Responses for invoice processing or starting a digital transformation initiative both resulted in 10%, followed by loan origination at 7%, RPA/BMP and government application processing both at 5% and customer/patient/student/employee onboarding or mailroom automation both at 1%.
Why is data compliance at the top of most IT, operations and finance leaders priorities?
Data compliance is the practice of ensuring that organizations follow regulations to ensure the sensitive digital assets (data) it possesses are organized, stored and managed so that they are guarded against loss, corruption, theft and misuse. Data compliance often goes hand-in-hand with data security and privacy. With government regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and CCPA, companies must be prepared and not only know and understand their data but treat it responsibly.
With the recent and unexpected COVID-19 crisis, contact tracing became an important data compliance and data privacy topic for IT and business leaders. McKinsey makes an interesting point in their article on the the topic:
“A few principles advanced in the GDPR are important in this respect. The regulation requires ‘data minimization’ and ‘purpose limitation.’ These two guidelines specify that as little personal data as necessary should be used and for a specific, narrow purpose only—in this case, to limit the spread of the virus and protect employees’ health. Transparency is also required, meaning that affected individuals must be informed about the usage of their data in simple, clear language. A further principle is protection: data must be sufficiently protected both technically against cyber risk and organizationally against unauthorized sharing.”
This example of the pandemic and GDPR helps explain why leaders should be concerned about their data and why organizations should be considering intelligent document processing (IDP) solutions. In any future scenario, both governments and businesses will need IDP to quickly and proactively meet data compliance requirements. Additionally, once data is captured, classified and extracted, it can be used for decision-making and insights to further help grow their business. Customers expect and demand transparency about their data is handled, which can build trust and confidence with the company they are doing business with.
With all of these reasons and more, the survey findings can be used to help guide your next digital transformation initiative as it revolves around documents, data capture, data extraction and data compliance as well as learning what other leaders have on their minds.
For more information on how to achieve data compliance with your documents, please contact Ephesoft about its leading intelligent document processing automation solutions.
Kickoff “Project Productivity” in 2021
There are so many ways enterprises can still accelerate automation and digital transformation to propel productivity. It all boils down to continuously improving the customer experience, both behind the scenes and what’s in front of each customer every day.
With this in mind, I first wanted to thank you – our customers, partners, employees (Ephesoftians), investors, community and other interested parties – for enduring and conquering 2020 with me. Thank you. It's certainly been a challenging year from many aspects, from losing thousands of people to COVID-19 and to mental health issues to being locked-up and widespread social injustices. Some describe Courage as "strength in the face of pain or grief," so all of us certainly fit this profile.
In retrospect, 2020 brought us many good things: we learned to appreciate our healthcare workers and scientists who work on medicine; perhaps we will be a little bit more prepared for the next crisis; we adjusted to working from home and trying new ways to be together through technology; and, hopefully, there is now more awareness toward equality. I am grateful and always look for silver lining and opportunities. Adapting to change is a constant, especially as we help to boost productivity through technology and processes for our customers.
This year, we’ll be focusing on what I’m calling “Project Productivity.” The pandemic showed us that it’s more important than ever to automate, be agile and scalable. This means enterprises of all sizes will need to look at the critical technology trends of cloud, AI, low/no-code solutions and overall process automation improvements in order to succeed in 2021 and beyond.
At Ephesoft, we want to bring Project Productivity (i.e. accelerated and intelligent digital transformation) quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively so any type of entity can benefit and maximize their productivity around business processes and data. In plain English, our customers are saying, “Save me time by implementing the best solution fast” – and that’s exactly what we must do. This ideology is at the heart and soul of Ephesoft in creating the most innovative and customer-friendly intelligent document processing solutions. We want our customers to respond as we’ve seen them do thus far (check out our G2 software reviews here). We want the customer experience to continuously levitate around digital transformation. We believe that work doesn’t have to be hard if we have the right tools in place. In fact, one of our guiding principles and core values is to “Breathe Productivity.”
This year I expect to see some great things happen in terms of customer experience, product development and exponential growth with the help of our partners and customers by our side. Don’t get me wrong; we’re still knee-deep in the pandemic and there will be some big hurdles to conquer. But, together, we will be working towards Project Productivity. Keep an eye out for the latest innovations with both Semantik Invoice and Ephesoft Transact this year. We’ve got a great team at Ephesoft to help generate this new reality of productivity. I’m encouraged by what an amazing effort I saw in 2020, so I only know it will continue to explode!
I wish everyone an abundance of health, fulfillment, joy and success in 2021.
COVID-19 Update: We’re Here For You
Dear Ephesoft Community,
Here at Ephesoft, we are closely watching the developments around COVID-19. Our hearts go out to anyone who's been impacted by the virus, either directly or indirectly, and for those on the front lines, thank you. While the situation is fluid, we are working to assure the well-being of our employees, company, community and you, our friends, customers and partners.
Our commitment to all of our customers, each and every day is to deliver ongoing reliability and availability so you have the tools to accelerate and automate your business processes, regardless of the situation. We are a cloud-first organization, and every department at Ephesoft is available and enabled to do our jobs, whether they are remote or in the office. For the next few weeks, Ephesoft will practice responsible social distancing by suspending non-essential travel, in-person meetings, tradeshows and other gatherings. Many employees at our headquarters location and throughout the world will also be working remotely. And while we might not see you in person, know that we will be working harder than ever to deliver great solutions and service to you, with safety and health at the forefront.
We are committed to your safety, health and success. Ephesoft’s operations will continue to serve all of our customers in every industry, but especially in the healthcare and government space to support the COVID-19 efforts underway. It’s even more important now to have productive and efficient processes to help solve the issues at hand.
Our priority is to keep moving forward to solve the challenges that face us today and in the future. As we shift to a new way of working, it’s even more important to stay connected. If you are signed up for upcoming live training classes at Ephesoft, please check our website as we evaluate the situation.
On behalf of all of us at Ephesoft, we’re here for you.
Ike Kavas
Founder and CEO
Ephesoft Announces a New Logo and Website: A Journey to the Future
When I set my sights on innovating a new way to capture content and created Ephesoft, I always kept an eye on the future. I didn’t want to be “out-innovated” as we had done in 2010 to other capture companies. Since then, Ephesoft has evolved and grown, serving hundreds (and thousands through OEM partnerships) of customers worldwide from smaller organizations to many Fortune 1000 companies. We have a strong partner ecosystem that uses our technology to make headway into solving the growing data challenges that companies face. With the intensifying need to for digital transformation throughout an enterprise, unlocking hidden data is essential to success.
With all of this in mind, it was time to give Ephesoft a new look that reflected our modern approach to enterprise content capture and data discovery. We interviewed many employees to define our unique Ephesoft personality. From this exercise, we realized that employees at Ephesoft possess similar qualities: we are challengers, we are diplomatic, we work hard with casual intensity and we are futuristic. We also uncovered Ephesoft’s core values that are the foundation of who we are:
Day 27. Earn the right to believe.
Be a multiplier. Teamwork makes the dream work.
Builders and fixers wanted. Think globally and act locally.
First one’s free. Be honest and learn from your mistakes.
Invent the future. Create the future customers want.
Own it. We get stuff done, no excuses.
In our mission of making meaning out of unstructured data for decision-makers worldwide, we looked to incorporate our personality traits, values and a look to the future, and began the creative process of depicting a new brand identity and style. After many iterations, discussions and design comps, we are happy to present our new logo that will be proudly displayed on our new website.
I hope you take some time to explore our new website, new content and learn more how Ephesoft can help you unleash the loads of valuable data your organization holds, taking digital transformation to an intelligent level with Smart Capture® technology.
The Digital Race is On
Reprinted with permission from PIA Management Services Inc.
Published in the April 2019 issue of Professional Insurance Agents
Millennials and Generation Z are used to Amazon-like immediacy. And, they expect no less from their insurance providers. Professional insurance agents already have seen a surge of new, cloud-based insurance company disruptors gain market share; they’ve seen a growing population of tech-savvy millennials using apps and mobile for almost every aspect of their lives; and they’ve become aware that data intelligence can help them be more competitive and gain market share.
Technology is driving the insurance industry’s future— pundits call it Digital Insurance 2.0. Digital transformation is apparent in many aspects of insurance—most using a twist on artificial intelligence and supervised machine learning tools. From claims processing and assessments to disaster recovery, privacy, compliance, prevention and even individual health monitoring, insurance organizations are turning to technology to help boost profits and customer experience, while minimizing security risk.
The InsureTech Connect 2018 conference offered educational sessions, panel discussions and vendors representing all of these trends. Industry partners throughout the globe; and insurance providers who attended the conference all agree: insurance professionals want and need to learn about smart technology solutions to take their organizations to the next level.
As insurance providers navigate the fast-paced, high-tech Digital Insurance 2.0 world in 2019 and beyond, here are some trends to watch.
Onboarding data for analytics
Professional insurance agents can use technology to help their clients make better decisions about their insurance coverages. Data on clients, their property and more is available, but it can be buried in files, PDFs, databases and emails. In fact, Gartner estimates that more than 80 percent of enterprise data is unstructured, which means that it can’t be searched. Insurance companies are clamoring for AI or machine learning tools that can transform data into a format that agents can use to determine trends quickly; process claims; and expedite inquiries. Enterprise content capture and data discovery tools are becoming a growing necessity. Consider investing in this technology if you haven’t done so already.
RPA/IPA
Robotic Process Automation and Intelligent Process Automation are the freshest buzzwords. Also known as, the digital workforce, the intent of RPA is to minimize the amount of human intervention required on repeatable processes, office workflows and operational tasks. Efficiency is the name of the game, and IPA is the pinnacle of the evolution of the digitally transformed workplace—especially insurance.
Gartner predicts that, spending on RPA software will reach $1 billion by 2020, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 41 percent from 2015 through 2020. McKinsey explains why RPA is taking off: RPA helped one large insurance cooperative to reduce excess queue procedures affecting 2,500 high-risk accounts a day, freeing up 81 percent of free-time equivalents to take on proactive account-management positions instead.
Given the success of RPA technology, insurance professionals should look for solutions that make RPA tools even smarter and more effective. When other intelligent software pairs with RPA, it gives leeway to IPA, which offers a more innovative and comprehensive option for digital transformation.
Driving analytics with data
Imagine having insurance data from claims, weather reports, landscaping, alarm history and more. Once data is structured and aggregated, dashboards and analytic tools can help insurance professionals make smart decisions. Predictive analytics, which also use AI and machine learning algorithms, can help make significant reductions in loss ratio and expenses while growing the top line. For example, insurers can reduce expenses by using third-party data to predict outcomes and enable more targeted use of the data, such as motor vehicle reports, property inspections and credit reports. They also can use this technology to generate quotes more quickly, which often can be the difference between winning a new customer.
Aerial drones and planes
Natural and unnatural disasters happen. Surveillance drones and imaging have become sophisticated in collecting all types of data through video and images, allowing for quick response times, and making it safer for first responders. Assessing damages is faster, which can expedite claim payouts to help customers in need. Consider investing in drones as well as training for your staff to maximize the use of this aerial technology.
Security, compliance and regulations
Insurance is a heavily regulated industry, and AI and machine learning tools can help detect anomalies; meet compliance standards; accelerate audits; aggregate data from multiple sources to protect investments; and prevent fraud, data and security breaches. AI-based cyber defense systems for entire networks are seeing major growth as insurance organizations realize the heavy fines and risks for not protecting their confidential and sensitive data.
According to a KPMG survey of more than 100 insurance CEOs, “less than one-in-five believes their organization is fully prepared for a cyber-event. And 42 percent think cybersecurity is their most pressing risk, far outweighing their concerns about other key risk areas such as regulatory risk.” While this survey was published a year ago, it recognizes that security, compliance and regulations remain a serious concern.
GDPR
Legacy insurance companies have unfathomably large document databases and records management systems. We worked with one insurance underwriting firm that had tens of millions of documents stored in six different policy administration systems; six different claims systems; and six different billing systems. While secure, these databases and files often are disorganized and no one is accountable for them. Even for companies with far smaller databases, data hidden within these documents is notoriously difficult to track and extract.
The recent adoption of the General Data Protection Regulation by the European Union and similar U.S. based initiatives like the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 mean insurance companies are going to need to be able to find, extract and even redact a customer’s information on-demand. How can you do this if you can’t locate all of the information they shared with you?
Insurance professionals are going to need to do a lot more than institute clean-desk policies or add a privacy policy disclaimer to their websites. Insurance professionals need to consider adopting a combination of solid online encryption programs; IT infrastructures; the latest in smart document capture and data discovery; plus old-fashioned discipline to keep that content secure.
Hybrid cloud platforms
While moving to full cloud solutions for all aspects of the business may be the ideal way to move forward, making a business case for this move might not be attainable if an insurance agency can get by using its existing, on-premises enterprise systems.
Vendors with multiple solutions offer insurance professionals an alternative by using their existing on-premises solution and off-loading specific tasks or functionality into the cloud to process. If there is high-volume data being processed at certain times of the month or of the year, the data can be processed in the cloud, and then returned into the on-premises system to finish its workflow. An example could be during hurricane season when damage claims need to be processed quickly. The benefits can be impactful by helping those affected by a disaster quickly and are worth consideration.
Stay updated
In this fast-paced, high-tech world, insurance professionals need to stay on top of the latest technology to help make their businesses more efficient, secure and customer-service friendly. Before you migrate your data to a cloud-based server; build a new website or app; or hire additional IT staff, be mindful of new policies and technological advances that can help drive your business in the digital insurance race.
Devil in the Documents: The Forgotten GDPR Liability
Is your biggest GDPR risk sitting in a filing cabinet?
The last time you went to the bank to open a new checking account, refinance your mortgage or apply for a student loan, you filled out a barrage of paperwork that documented everything from your social security number to your personal credit history.
Had you completed this process online — at least since the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mandate took effect in May — there’s a good chance you would have first clicked through a pop-up stating the bank’s updated privacy policy. The new EU law promises to give citizens autonomy over their private data, including “the right to be forgotten.” For companies doing business in Europe — regardless of where they are headquartered — the law demands comprehensive accounting of all customer data with heavy fines for non-compliance.
Privacy and Sensitive Data
Since Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed the true fragility of our internet privacy, it’s understandable that we’ve come to view GDPR—and similar legislation recently passed in Australia and California—as protectors of a purely digital realm. After all, when you opened that checking account at the bank, the teller didn’t ask you to agree to the bank’s latest privacy policy or remind you of your right to control the data you shared. But, the GDPR law was drafted years before this dire era of internet privacy and it’s meant to preside over all data.
The data in those forms you left behind on the bank teller’s desk are yours to control—and theirs to keep track of.
Paper-intensive handling of sensitive data is common in a large variety of industries from automotive loan processing to healthcare records. Whether handwritten or e-filed, private information contained within documents scanned into large proprietary databases is every bit as much of a GDPR liability as the data we have shared over the internet in electronic payments, online forms and even browsing tendencies.
Billions of Decentralized Documents
Legacy institutions in law, insurance and pharmaceuticals have unfathomably large document databases. One major bank told me it has more than 100 billion documents scattered through disparate databases that while secure, are unorganized and largely unaccounted for. Even for companies with far smaller databases, data hidden within these documents — so-called “dark data” — is notoriously difficult to track and extract. With data privacy legislation knocking on the proverbial doors, organizations are turning to sophisticated new AI-powered machine-learning technologies to help wrangle their sensitive documents.
Despite the fact that many U.S-based organizations with European presences are adapting GDPR-mandated data privacy practices to customers worldwide (not just those in the EU), there are few signs that organizations are dedicated to handling their documents with particular caution.
Take Action
There has been a spike in proactive information security measures, like clean-desk policies and secure release technology on in-house printers. These are necessary initiatives, considering: an Information Commissioner’s Office report found that “loss or theft of paperwork” was the leading cause of security breaches in the legal sector, accounting for more than a quarter of incidents in 2015-2016.
But, it’s imperative that enterprises have the proper tools and resources to take reactive measures. So much of GDPR hinges upon a company’s ability to find, extract and even redact a customer’s information on-demand. How can you “forget” a customer ever existed if you can’t produce all of the information they shared with you?
Whether it’s GDPR, California’s Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 or future regulations that are poised to spread throughout the globe in coming years, complying with the latest data privacy legislation is a holistic endeavor. It’s a mélange of the digital and physical realms: the sum total of the most sophisticated online encryption programs and IT infrastructures, the latest in smart document capture and data discovery, plus the old-fashioned discipline to keep those papers in order. It’s an immense undertaking.
Whether or not it was the intention of the lawmakers, data privacy legislation is a big step toward repairing the trust between consumers and the enterprises that collect their data.
Trust is essential to any business endeavor. It pays to do it right.
Read more:
GDPR Compliance and the Value of Data
Webinar: Avoiding the GDPR Pitfall
RPA vs IPA: Intelligent Process Automation is the Next Frontier
As I was reading this survey from PwC’s website called “What PwC’s 2017 survey tells us about RPA in financial services today,” along with several Gartner reports, it inspired me to share my views on how Ephesoft fits into the narrative.
RPA in financial services today
2017 and the first half of 2018 have witnessed a wide adoption of RPA in the financial services industry.
According to PwC’s 2017 survey, a growing number of financial institutions have implemented or are in the process of implementing RPA. The data shows that operations, Finance and IT are the biggest beneficiaries. Additionally, Gartner predicts that “by 2020, 20% of organizations that used RPA will have replaced it with another tool, either for a lower total cost of process or improved straight-through processing.” Their research validates that growing trend of incorporating RPA into digital transformation processes, along with new vendor RPA entrants into the space, forcing costs and barriers to entry down. Gartner’s research also supports that the financial service industry will be drawn to RPA tools to cut costs and make an impact on helping both loan applicants and account openings by offering better customer service.In fact, the “2017 CEB Gartner 2017 Financial Services Technology Adoption and Investment Survey results indicated that more than 60% of financial institutions are using or plan to use RPA during the next 12 to 24 months.” (Source: Gartner) RPA technology enhances the customer journey, improving transactional experiences like making deposits, payments and trades as well as relational experiences such as event-driven activities like new account opening and other account services.
The PwC survey also shares best practices for successful implementations of this impressive technology. Average ROI seems to be around 14 months but can be as low as 6 months while others don’t see the benefits until 24 months.
RPA is extremely effective as a point solution for enterprise users who needs to automate repetitive tasks on their computers using combination of keyboard, monitor and mouse. Gartner’s foundational research report Robotic Process Automation: Eight Guidelines for Effective Results states that, “processes that are most suited for RPA have a high transaction throughput of structured digitized data, with relatively fixed processing paths and/or user interfaces, which do not change frequently, and are rule-based activities.” With most organizations reporting that 80% of their data is unstructured, this presents a large problem for incorporating RPA tools.
Why IPA (Intelligent Process Automation) instead of RPA (Robotic Process Automation)
The vast amount of unstructured data is why organizations need to look at IPA, or Intelligent Process Automation. Organizations must “feed” or onramp their RPA systems with a comprehensive set of structured data, which is exactly what IPA solutions encompass.
PwC’s survey indicates that RPA is in its early stages and it has a great potential to do much more than just repeating something without intelligence. The rise of AI and machine learning (no, we’re not even close to SkyNet yet, so don’t panic) will push RPA to mainstream practices soon, which is why some vendors are developing and adapting IPA. Intelligent robots will learn from users’ prior decisions to auto-adjust themselves. It will be harder to implement these new robots at first but that will ease off eventually.
The PwC survey states, “We’re also seeing a bigger push towards broader orchestration, integrating business process management, OCR (optical character recognition), NLP (natural language processing), and other technologies, enabling an overall digital back office.” While I agree OCR, NLP and digital back office are critical to business process automation, it is not enough to only use OCR to scan a document, which is different than extracting invoice amounts and payment due from an international invoice. The difference between two $/£/€/¥/₳ amounts might cost the entire ROI of the project. Organizations must extract the relevant data into structured environments in order to avoid mistakes and enhance RPA solutions into intelligent platforms.
How Ephesoft fits into RPA
At Ephesoft, we live and breathe these terms with every project. The result of this innovative digital transformation is helping us develop great partnerships with RPA vendors like Blue Prism and UiPath so that we can bring IPA to our clients today – especially in accounts payable, insurance, mortgage, account onboarding, KYC and trade finance. Our RPA partners know that we have perfected using OCR and NLP for metadata extraction using our supervised machine learning algorithms. We have already enabled hundreds of enterprise customers for digital transformation using our multi-channel service that spans from mobile cameras to fax machines to email inboxes using our out-of-the-box connectors or through OpenAPI Web Services.
RPA vendors recognize the need to partner with Ephesoft, so they can focus on making their robots AI-powered, while Ephesoft focuses on bringing AI and supervised machine learning-powered technology to turn unstructured content into actionable data. The combination of both capabilities empowers RPA/IPA vendors to provide a complete solution by streamlining and automating the full business process.
According to PwC’s survey, such use cases were in reconciliations, customer onboarding, KYC and trade reporting. These use cases are part of Ephesoft’s core competencies. We turn invoices and shipping manifests that comes in PDF format into data so that RPA can reconcile the data with purchase orders in ERP systems for accounts payable (AP) departments. We turn the data from passports and driver’s licenses into structured, spreadsheets so that an RPA tool can read them.
By turning high-volume and unstructured content into data, Ephesoft’s platform enables RPA to shine and quickly automate many business processes. Without Ephesoft’s content capture platform, workers still need to manually key in the data. Therefore, Ephesoft can help you recognize ROI in only a few months, rather than 14 months when it’s used with RPA technology.
Contact us to learn more about how Ephesoft can help boost your RPA platform or help drive IPA to your organization.
We’ve Moved! New Headquarters
We are pleased to announce that Ephesoft has moved its headquarters to Irvine, California. While we enjoyed our time, and made technology breakthroughs in Laguna Hills, we are excited to move into a larger space to accommodate our employee and company growth. Ephesoft is the only tenant in the new 15,000 sq/ft office building, leased by CBRE, which features a dramatic two-story lobby, multiple conference rooms, state-of-the-art server room, a large training room and room for better department collaboration. Additionally, the office is furnished with modern, high-end furniture and even has a walkway bridge with LED lights as you walk to some of the executive offices on the second floor.
The office is conveniently located at 8707 Research Drive, which is close to the 405, 5 and 133 freeways – an important aspect for those who live in Southern California. Employees and guests have access to shops, restaurants, gyms and more within walking distance. And, the John Wayne (SNA) airport is approximately 8 miles away for easy access for those traveling to and from the office.
Here’s what some of our employees have to say:
“Moving to a new office is a great way to start off a new year! We're all excited to have a bigger space for collaboration and continued growth!” – Alexandra Wieting-Lukowski
“I am incredibly excited about moving into the new building. It's the start of the new year and a new period of growth for Ephesoft. What better way to take the company to the next level than by literally having a next level!” – Gary Allenbach
“Wow! A new office! How exciting. A great start to a grand year. To new and awesome things!” – Denise Hong
Stay tuned for more photos after we are settled!
Characteristics of an Ideal Innovator
Depending on your perspective, an innovator can have multiple characteristics, guiding forces and drivers in today’s global tech world. As a founder and CTO at Ephesoft, I find myself contemplating the source and drive to continuously improve our products for the benefit of our customers. With over 20 years of document capture experience, it is my passion and curiosity to find solutions that add value to our customers.
A coworker recently asked me, what gives me the inspiration and strategic vision to be an Innovator? Looking introspectively, and thinking about the answer led me to think about all the factors and characteristics of being an innovator. When I hear that term, I think of some of history’s well-known “game changers”: Leonardo de Vinci, Albert Einstein, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers and more recently the CEOs of Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google and Tesla. These men revolutionized and changed their environment through creativity, science, mathematics and curiosity.
However, innovation can be measured on many levels; it’s not just a concept for the “game changers” who developed electricity, airplanes or an e-commerce platform. At Ephesoft, we value understanding an existing problem or business challenge and offering a solution. This is the core of innovation: developing a product or service that embraces a new way of looking at a problem to improve a situation, remove a process bottleneck, provide insight for business decisions and/or achieve growth. It involves taking risks, embracing uncertainty, collaboration, instinct and a strategic vision for change.
Innovation also requires thinking out of the box, looking at a problem from a unique perspective and then being able to execute. Specifically, at Ephesoft, we consider a successful innovative feature to be in the form of a more intuitive user interface, a faster way to enhance performance, writing new code, creating a new product or other functionality that improves a product, service or process for our customers.
Most importantly, timing is an essential factor of innovation. Recently I read an article that concluded that 2008 mortgage crisis helped companies like Airbnb and Uber to thrive because there were many people who needed extra income, so the timing was perfect to launch these companies with innovative approaches to home rentals and taxi service. Timing should be applicable to your customers and they should easily see the benefit.
After working for years in the document capture industry, I could see that there had to be a better, faster and easier way to capture, classify, extract, review, validate and export documents. My partners and I felt the timing was right and decided to take a risk by leaving our jobs and created Ephesoft. We strived to have a dynamic culture where we share ideas and implement them to make our customer’s work more efficient and cost effective. The result, to date, was creating a successful company with over 500 customers (and rapidly growing) who use our patented machine learning technology, the first in the data capture sector, which we call “Smart Capture®.”
To answer my colleague’s question, the characteristics of an innovator vary, but for me, working in a collaborative, creative environment with a team who shares and respects similar values of change with room to grow, challenges me to be innovative. This includes tapping into our best resources: customers, partners and colleagues as well as to continuously evaluate advances in software worldwide. Keeping a pulse on cutting edge developments allows us to apply new tech to our industry, as seen with applying machine learning algorithms into Ephesoft’s Transact product with Smart Capture. And, there’s always the hope that our innovative technology will give our customers a competitive edge, put us in the history books, and positively impact the future for years to come.
