The pressure to automate business processes and eliminate manual tasks continues to grow as businesses and government organizations scramble to meet their digital transformation goals. Document-centric processes are under intense scrutiny by C-level executives, and for good reason, since paper-based information directly impacts customer satisfaction and business profitability. Responding not only to the need for reduced business process complexity, but even more for getting ahead of ever-changing business requirements, an organization’s technology infrastructure plays an essential role. But it is often overlooked.

Market dynamics
The rate of change is accelerating in literally all industries. This keeps IT and business operations managers on their toes, constantly needing to adapt workflows to meet changing requirements. As they look for solutions to enable the automation and optimization of business workflows, there is always the risk of choosing the wrong technology, which would limit their future capabilities.

New technologies like intelligent workflows and robotic process automation coupled with the shift from thick to thin client applications and the growing adoption of cloud-based business applications present significant opportunities to advance digital transformation initiatives. That said, they can also render recent technology investments obsolete if they do not support these technologies.

Not only are productivity-enabling technologies changing, but the deployment of these technologies is changing too. The traditional technology stack consisting of devices and software layers has been disrupted; job functions can be done anywhere. Changing business requirements coupled with rapid technology advances create new opportunities for document scanning solutions that offer increased flexibility and adaptability.

VoC defined requirements for capture solutions
Flexibility and adaptability are essential both for business leaders as well as IT decision makers. Business leaders are looking for a solution that can quickly adapt to changing requirements without risk of impacting customer facing processes. Embedding capture workflows directly into business processes saves knowledge workers time and allows them to focus on the customer request they are working on. This creates significant advantages from an operational cost perspective and justifies investments in tools that accelerate digital transformation.

For IT management teams, connectivity has far reaching impacts. It starts with ease of integration into business software and the ability to configure the application based on business requirements. The reduced complexity of network configuration can be measured in days of IT resources saved, which multiplies per installation and per update.

Being able to deploy solutions that are aligned with the security protocols of business workflows is another essential requirement for business leaders as well as IT teams.

Future-proof architecture
Scanner vendors need to anticipate customer requirements and develop technology that provides organizations with solutions that address tomorrow’s needs. One key example is System on a Chip (“SoC”) integrated circuits, which handle mission-critical image processing functions and a combination of new software routines to deliver flexible solutions with cloud connectivity, security and superior ease-of-use.

Unlike conventional ASIC platforms, SoC is programmable and therefore adaptable and scalable to future requirements. Investing in this architecture creates a future proof asset that remains adaptable, scalable and offers cost savings for many years to come.