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SCANNERS
As key enablers of digitisation,
scanner manufacturers are agents
of their own destruction. 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.
In this respect, 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.
It is fitting therefore that the man
responsible for implementing the
company’s new marketing strategy,
Siddhartha (Sid) Bhattacharya, VP
of Global Marketing for the Kodak
Alaris Information Management
division, should have spent 14 years
with Xerox, where he helped launch
the company’s ConnectKey MFPs
and solutions platform.
Currently, well over 80% of Kodak
Alaris revenue comes from scanner
hardware, including services relating
to break-fix and maintenance.
However, just like Xerox, it is
attempting to make the transition
from a hardware business to more of
a software and services-led company.
To facilitate this evolution,
it has developed a new
marketing approach, 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, which 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.
Data chaos
Sid Bhattacharya says that
the exponential growth of both
structured and unstructured data,
what he calls ‘data chaos’, has
forced Kodak to focus 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 eco-system,”
he said.
The Alaris IN2 Ecosystem is built
upon three of the company’s key
strengths:
1
Science
– its decades of R&D
and IP in capture, recognition,
extraction and integration;
2
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 Picks (23) than any
other scanner manufacturer; and
3
Partnerships
– the development
and delivery of new services through
technology partners and system
integrators.
“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 eco-system,
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.
Getting it right
Bhattacharya adds that, taken
together, the three elements of the
eco-system – Science, Technology
and Partners – deliver three end-user
benefits:
The Right Fit:
“We are able to offer
information capture that is seamless
to customer businesses. We have
trusted partners to deliver the right
solution; we have best-in-class
scanners, ranging from desktop
to high value production models;
and we are able to work in the
customer’s environment to optimise
their overall investment,” he said.
The Right Experience:
“This is about
ease of use, the user experience,
everything we offer in terms of easy
management and set-up and the fact
that we can bring in a set of services
that allows remote monitoring and
inspection to make sure that our
scanners are up and running and to
handle preventative maintenance, as
and when required.”
The Right Results:
“Through the
eco-system we expect to be able to
offer our customers a higher ROI
and a lower cost and, at the same
time, the highest quality of captured
data. If that initial capture is not of
the highest quality and reliability,
anything that happens to the data in
the rest of the workflow is going to
be sub-par. Our imaging excellence
and optimised scanning allows more
accurate information capture and
minimal rework.”
Product announcements
Bhattacharya says the fruits of
this new approach are evident in
the company’s latest products,
which enhance information capture
by bringing productivity features
previously only available on high-
end scanners to lower-end desktop
devices.
Kodak Capture Pro
(supplied with
scanners in a light version with
an upgrade path to standard and
network versions) now features
Kodak Alaris is attempting to make the transition from a hardware company
to a software and services-led business.
PrintIT
finds out how from Siddhartha
(Sid) Bhattacharya, VP of Global Marketing for the Kodak Alaris Information
Management division
The right stuff
The starting
point for the
ecosystem
is the bigger
narrative
around data
chaos
Siddhartha (Sid)
Bhattacharya,
VP of Global
Marketing,
Kodak Alaris
Information
Management
division
