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INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
Siddhartha
Bhattacharya,
VP of Global
Marketing,
Kodak Alaris
Information
Management
Division
Building an ecosystem
Companies like Kodak Alaris face
many of the same challenges
as printer manufacturers with
whom they are linked by a shared
dependence on paper – for input in
the case of scanners and for output
in the case of printers. The more
successful they are at facilitating the
transition to paperless processes, the
less the need for their products – or
for their hardware, at least.
Currently, well over 80 per cent of
Kodak Alaris revenue comes from scanner
hardware, including services relating to
break-fix and maintenance. However, it
is attempting to evolve from a hardware
focused company into more of a software
and services-led business. To facilitate
this transition, it has developed the Alaris
IN2 Ecosystem, and is actively developing
partnerships to increase revenue from an
expanding portfolio of professional and
managed services, like its new leasing
solution that provides customers with an
alternative to the outright purchase of
scanners and services and the opportunity
to upgrade equipment more frequently
than they might have done in the past.
The problem of big data
Bhattacharya explained that in an era of
data chaos, with exponential growth of
both structured and unstructured data,
in which organisations use or analyse
less than 0.5 per cent of the data they
hold, Kodak’s raison d’être is to solve
the problem of big data. It is doing this
by focusing on the notion of information
capture, rather than just image capture,
and its use in essential business processes
through easy integration with other
software solutions.
“The starting point for the ecosystem
is the bigger narrative around data chaos;
it’s all about turning that data chaos into
business opportunity. The fact that data
is growing exponentially, not just paper
but digital documents, not just structured
data but unstructured data, and the
fact that it is coming from multiple and
diverse sources – MFPs and scanners,
tablets, mobile apps – mean that for
many of our customers, the question is
not whether they should make the journey
to digital transformation but where and
how to begin. That is the problem we are
looking to alleviate with the launch of the
ecosystem,” he said.
The Alaris IN2 Ecosystem is built upon
three of the company’s key strengths:
n
Science
– its decades of R&D and IP
in capture, recognition, extraction and
integration;
n
Technology
– Kodak Alaris has won
the Buyers Lab Inc (BLI) Scanner Line of
the Year for two years running (2016
and 2017) and has more BLI Pick and
Outstanding Achievement in Innovation
Awards (25) than any other scanner
manufacturer; and
n
Partnerships
– the development
and delivery of new services through
PrintIT Reseller
spoke to Siddhartha (Sid) Bhattacharya, VP of Global Marketing for
the Kodak Alaris Information Management division about the launch of its
IN2 ecosystem and the company’s transition from a hardware company to a
software and services-led business
technology partners and system
integrators.
Kodak Alaris is bringing all three to
bear in the development of solutions for
five horizontal applications common to
businesses and organisations in all industry
sectors – mailroom automation, records
management, forms processing, on-
boarding and accounts payable.
“We feel the expertise we have with our
scanners and our software and our partners
really helps us take our customers on the
information capture journey. Our scanners,
software and services work in an integrated
way with our solution partners. Through
our ecosystem, we allow customers to deal
with different documents and formats;
to identify index information; to route
documents to the business process; and to
lower their costs and increase their ROI,”
Bhattacharya explained.
By focusing on information and business
processes, rather than scanning per se,
the Alaris IN2 Ecosystem is extending
the company’s reach in an attempt to
future-proof Kodak Alaris and its partners.
“We understand the fact that paper-based
workflows are declining, though they are
still more than 50 per cent of many of
our customers’ business operations and
processes. The ecosystem and technology
expertise we have to offer are as relevant
and important to workflows that originate
digitally as they are to workflows that
originate with paper,” he said.
