Premier Golf Organization: A Hole in One for Enterprise Automation

The data capture software had to meet a variety of requirements. First, the solution had to integrate easily with their existing Alfresco Content Services solution. The process needed to be seamless from scanning to storage in Alfresco: the captured content would be recognized by type and transferred into Alfresco with its metadata. Alfresco rules would then rename and file the content based on that metadata, which made it easy for a business user to find.

The golf organization wanted to start with a few key use cases and add departments over time. Thus, the architecture of the solution needed to support expansion and be flexible enough to adapt to the needs of a variety of departments. In addition, the software needed to be robust enough to handle large batches of documents at once.

The document content varied greatly, including check stubs with supporting documents, player handbooks, records of document destruction, scanned player file folders and benefits, and various printed manuals.

Since the solution would be used across multiple departments, it needed to support security that controlled who had permission to view and manage documents of a particular type. Although some of the documents are a single page, the solution needed to be able to assemble most documents without relying on manual sorting or separator sheets. For extraction, they needed to not only intelligently capture simple fields but also capture table data spanning multiple pages.

The client chose Ephesoft as a best-of-breed solution that would be a simple integration with the existing system and scale to accommodate growth and security requirements. It was also seen as an accelerator to many of the content and data challenges they identified throughout the organization.

Ephesoft Transact extracts meaning from unstructured content—that is, takes input from a variety of sources, identifies that input, extracts any usable data, and releases that information to a downstream system or process so that it can add value to your organization.

Ephesoft is built around a Java-based workflow engine to provide flexibility in creating rules for processing different types of documents. A set of related documents, invoices or purchase orders, for example, are grouped into a Batch Class, and there is no restriction on the number of Batch Classes that may be created. Also, each Batch Class has its own set of access rules, so only specific User Groups have the right to review and manage document batches.

Each department within the organization imports documents into Ephesoft from a variety of sources that best suit their workflow. These include scanning documents to a folder directly monitored by Ephesoft, as well as creating monitored email addresses and folders that instantly load attachments into the system.

Once ingested, Ephesoft performs image processing (cleans up the images by sharpening, adding contrast, etc.) and turns the images into searchable PDFs. This was critical to the golf organization because even though the most important information is extracted as metadata, once the document is released to Alfresco, the full text of the document is searchable, making it easy for users to find exactly what they need.

Because the customer utilizes Alfresco, Ephesoft’s built-in support for CMIS in the export module made setting up document exports a simple process. They currently only require a single Ephesoft server, however, Ephesoft has a flexible deployment architecture that allows for a clustered deployment for high load and high availability applications. They are confident that their solution can grow as demand requires.

Ephesoft and Alfresco have drastically improved the organization’s ability to manage their scanned content, and they recognize the benefits of intelligent data capture throughout the organization. Here are some examples:

Human Resources

Ephesoft Transact has transformed the way Human Resources manages employee files. The filing and managing of paper documents that would take hours when done manually, is now automated and streamlined, taking only several minutes. For example, when a new employee is hired, their entire folder is scanned into the system automatically creating a profile, folder and subfolders to house all relevant information like tax and payroll information.

Ephesoft Transact also recognizes key metadata like an employee’s name and ID and Alfresco uses the information to intelligently name and file the employee documents in the system.

Finance Department

The Finance department receives check stubs with support documents attached. These paper documents need to be converted to searchable PDFs, and metadata needs to be extracted so that the documents can be filed and searched for by different properties, like vendor, check date and payment number.

Ephesoft allows documents to be assembled without separator pages and begins new documents by identifying a new check image and creating a new page. This is done automatically and does not require any user input.

Important metadata fields are then extracted by Ephesoft and exported into Alfresco. Confidence threshold values and validation rules can be configured so that users can easily review any issues with extracted metadata. Alfresco’s configuration allows searching for these fields, so that documents can easily be retrieved, and the documents are named and filed in a logical manner.

Beyond the simple fields, the organization also needed to extract table data (specifically, line items on the check) and send that information to Alfresco. Unfortunately, the CMIS standard leveraged by the default CMIS export adapter does not support this sort of complex data structure. Luckily, Ephesoft provides hooks that allow for easy creation of custom Java logic when needed.

Certificates of Destruction

The golf organization requires records of document destruction to be tracked and maintained. They created a form to list documents that have been destroyed according to a retention schedule. Ephesoft made retrieving these forms a simple process.

The date ranges of the documents in the form are recorded using Ephesoft’s table extraction process customized with a Java hook. An entire table of year ranges are extracted by Ephesoft from the document automatically. Then, the script hook translates them to metadata fields to then send and store in Alfresco with the forms. This process used to require manual filing and pulling out the correct information, but now users can find the right files within seconds.