By Peter Hentz, Senior Document Capture Solution Architect
Recently, we’ve completed several projects as part of our document capture practice that point to a trend: Clients don’t always keep their Captiva document capture environment in prime condition. This can lead to loss of efficiencies and cost implications. The good news is that a short assessment can identify and address issues to put your Captiva implementation back on track.
A recent example comes from a client who was several major versions behind on Captiva for invoice processing. The scanning staff was frustrated by excessive manual steps and hampered by repeated crashes of the system. The IT department was unnecessarily paying a premium for extended support.
Captiva Assessment: Client Example
To address these issues, Flatirons conducted a two-week assessment of their Captiva operation that ultimately resulted in savings of over $150,000 per year. We reviewed all aspects of their scanning processes: document prep, indexing, validation, error handling, export, and more. Special attention was paid to new features and advanced capabilities in version 16.5 that could increase automation and reduce manual steps.
The assessment delivered over a dozen recommendations along with a clear path for deployment. While upgrading to the latest version of Captiva was an obvious suggestion (giving them simplified deployment support using Microsoft Azure, reporting integration with OpenText’s Information Hub that allows use of iHub Analytics Designer, and support for departmentalized distributed capture processing), several other areas would lead to immediate improvements.
- Reduced Manual Steps: One specific concern the client had was that their Accounts Payable (AP) specialists were having to touch each invoice multiple times. We were able to eliminate two of those points through automation, leveraging the Advanced Recognition module for improved accuracy. Instead of having every invoice manually classified, Captiva is now doing the work and only involving a human on an exception basis.
- Improved Data Quality: We also improved the quality of data extraction through data lookup and additional field-level validation. This dramatically reduced the rework and exception processing from errors in the accounting system.
- Faster Document Preparation: Improvements to document prep yielded additional efficiency. Over 80% of invoices were scanned in at field offices, each belonging to a specific department with a dedicated AP specialist. Since the invoices from the field offices were commingled with all others, the AP specialists wasted time locating invoices for their department. Through an overhaul of the field office multi-function scanner configurations and batch naming, AP specialists can now immediately zero in on their invoices.
What’s in a Captiva Assessment?
With a Captiva Assessment, we can help fine tune your capture operation to put you on the path to a better, faster, more efficient image capture operation. We’ll review all aspects of your operation and provide a series of recommendations, including an implementation estimate for each of the identified improvements. We’ll also work with you to prioritize the improvements, fitting within your budget, schedule, and operational constraints. When you’re ready to go, we’ll put those improvements in place.
