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.