T

he dynamics of today'€™s technology allow for smart data solutions that provide quick, hassle-free customer- organization interaction.

Optical character recognition (OCR) software is not new. It gained popularity along with the rising popularity of flatbed scanners. Today'€™s OCR software has developed in leaps and bounds.

Intelligent Word Recognition (IWR) is the latest OCR technology. IWR is the recognition of unconstrained handwritten words; thus, IWR recognizes entire handwritten words or phrases instead of character-by-character, like OCR.

Those who have ever filled out a form to open a bank or securities account are familiar with the ensuing headache that accompanies the process. They are required to input lots of information sometimes repeated on different pages. Today, many securities companies or banks provide a channel on their websites for prospective clients to fill out forms. This helps a little, for they still need to enter data into each column.

Another caveat is the need to manually sign each page. This requires clients to print the forms'€”sometimes dozens of pages'€”and sign or initial each page. The same goes with many of today'€™s consumer-business interactions. From booking a flight or filling out insurance applications, to entering patient data onto a hospital'€™s website, consumers expect a quick and hassle-free process.

Kofax is just one firm that provides a smart process application for customer interaction. The company leads in the global smart process application, holding 15 percent of the market share.

Kofax develops software and systems to generate real-time, information-intensive communications from customers. The software also allows essential connection to the customers'€™ system of large-scale record, not easily adapted to more contemporary technology.

One of Kofax'€™s clients in the country is the Central Statistics Agency (BPS). The agency has been working with Kofax since 2010, using the company'€™s system and software to process the result of its census. In 2009, Kofax helped the BPS process as many as 600 million forms, converting the results of questionnaires to manageable data.

'€œWe needed the guarantee of accuracy and speed for the process and Kofax at the time was able to provide us with those,'€ said Dudy Saefudin Sulaiman, Statistics Methodology and Information Division deputy of the BPS. '€œWe sent out up to 700,000 people to conduct the census and we processed all the data sent to us.'€

With Multichannel Capture technology and a smart process application, the Kofax system enables users to easily enter analog data and convert it into digital data recognized by a computer system.

Errol Mascarenhas, senior vice president for software and solution sales for Kofax in the Asia Pacific, said various documents came to an organization through various channels and that the organization had big systems of records that received and processed the documents.

'€œKofax has the important role of transforming the first mile of customer interaction to reduce data entry costs and to improve customers'€™ experience,'€ he said. Kofax data capture technology can process information coming in from various channels, like mobile devices, email and scanned documents. The information is processed with Kofax'€™s data integration and analytics engine, and is organized based on its type.

Alson Ong, vice president for solution for Kofax Asia Pacific and Japan, demonstrated the ease and comfort consumers could experience by interacting with an organization using data capture solution. With his smartphone, he snapped a picture of his own check containing personal data that was filled out by hand. The application on his smartphone immediately connected to the organization and processed the check. He deliberately took the picture slightly askew as the software so the software could automatically straighten the image.

Dudy praised the technology, saying that it had really helped reduce the BPS'€™ workload. He cited an example of the result of the last agricultural census that was asked to be conducted by president Yudhoyono as the president needed the result for his state address in August of last year. The BPS was able to finish the job in less than six months using ICT.

Kofax sales manager for Indonesia, Shaukat Ali, said Kofax clients in Indonesia comprised government agencies, banks and retail companies.

Data capture and analytic systems provided by Kofax and other companies, such as Readsoft and OPEX, is good for the new government. Indonesia'€™s new president, Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo, has voiced his intention to accelerate the implementation of e-government at the national level. This requires the quick processing of permits and other bureaucratic prerequisites that are often said to hamper business.

Ong said the system had encryption technology as all companies working in this industry were well aware of the sensitive data customers sent to organizations. As for guaranteed quick response by the system, Ong and Ali shared the same opinion that good network infrastructure was important to ensure seamless and real-time data delivery. Yet, Ali said that undelivered data would be easily stored in the system awaiting available connection.  (Gandi Faisal)