Economies of scale: Cloud processing
Economies of scale: Cloud processing
Document Capture technology has been available for many years and is a proven method to decrease operational costs and improve business efficiency. However, this technology has traditionally been expensive to purchase, implement and deploy.
In organizations, small or large, Information Technology systems are comprised of similar components: Hardware, software and services. The emergence of Cloud Computing offers a new method to provide workers with technology such as Advanced Data Capture that was traditionally only available to Enterprise organizations due to high cost and technical complexity. Now organizations of all sizes, in many different industries can benefit with the Economies of Scale with Cloud Processing as a service.
Businesses purchase computer hardware as a resource for workers to get their jobs accomplished. As it relates to data capture from paper documents specifically, more than ever these businesses can benefit from advances in technology. For example, most smart phones today are equipped with cameras that are capable as acting as a portable image acquisition device. Or, to capture higher volumes of documents a business might choose to purchase dedicated scanners or use the office copy machine’s scanning functionality. The point-is that there is still a certain amount of equipment that a business needs to function.
The fast-growing popularity of Cloud-based storage also makes Advanced Data Capture as a cloud service extremely logically and quite complimentary. There are billions of users currently using some form of cloud storage whether it be business users of applications such as Salesforce.com, or social networks such as Facebook or hybrid applications such as LinkedIn. Additionally, and especially with the undeniable trend of using mobile devices for business data consumption, it only makes perfect sense to allow these devices to also contribute information easily via advanced data capture. Consuming information on mobile devices is easy but to add a business contact, for example, is difficult and frustrating with small display sizes and awkward virtual software-only keyboards.
One of the most logical services to utilize Cloud Computing is Data Capture. Why? Data Capture is a service and with cloud computing an organization can ‘rent’ this service as a shared resource. Since data capture doesn’t store images or information, then it’s ideal for sharing this resource and, therefore lowering the cost to use this service.
Cloud Capture is appealing for many reasons.
First, it allows small and medium sized businesses the opportunity to finally realize the benefits of Advanced Data Capture by sharing resources. This reduces total ownership costs to the organization because these companies ‘rent’ this data capture service. Secondly, it allows the organizations to quickly start utilizing this technology because they do not have to install, configure or maintain these services. This is all taken care of by the hosting company which allows organizations to focus on their core business instead of being burdened by supporting technology.
Additionally, a Cloud Capture platform is also appealing to Enterprise customers. Why? Within any large organization the business typically has many different departments such as Administrative, Marketing, Sales, Purchasing, Accounting and others. Also, the Information Technology (IT) department typically uses many software applications and services to support the business units. With the emergence of Cloud Computing and with more and more corporations moving applications to ‘the cloud’, one service that makes the most sense is Data Capture. Since Data Capture truly is ‘a service’ and does not store data permanently then capture technology infrastructure is ideal for Cloud Computing. Scalability to add additional capacity or seamlessly incorporate new services are added benefits.