CloudCapture BPO

The following is a transcription from Episode 12 of The Orange Chair Podcast, “What is CloudCapture and How Does it Work? Part 1.”

In this episode, we sit down with Zach Hance, Account Executive at KeyMark, who outlines CloudCapture™, and some use cases for this specific type of BPO service. Also, don’t forget to join us next time for our follow-up discussion where we dive a little deeper.

To listen to the full episode, or any other episode, you may do so by selecting your preferred podcast listening method on The Orange Chair Podcast page.

Introduction

Alex Frazier (18s): Hi, everyone. Welcome back to The Orange Chair Podcast. Today in the orange chair we have Zach Hance with us. So Zach, tell us, who are you and what do you do for KeyMark?

Zach Hance (1m 1s): Sure. Again, my name is Zach Hance. I’m an Account Executive. I do direct selling for KeyMark in the commercial industry and for insurance as well. I started my role at KeyMark about eight years ago as a solutions architect.

My role as a solutions architect was to assist the sales Account Executives and understanding our client and customer project scope, developing custom demonstrations, and ultimately acting as a liaison between the sales and professional services teams, when a client decided to move forward with a project with KeyMark.

I focused on all the various automation tools that we have in our solution set to automate processes at our client sites.

Then, at the beginning of this year, I moved up to a sales Account Executive.

Alex Frazier (1m 55s): Gotcha. That’s great. What’s a fun fact about yourself?

Zach Hance (1m 59s): I do have a kind of a unique fact about myself. I was born on New Year’s in 1989, and I was actually the first child born in Greenwood, South Carolina that year. Traditionally the first child born in the New Year of a County we’ll get a large gift pack that includes diapers, milk, all kinds of things to help the new mother and father out with the child. But since I was originally from Lawrence County, they decided that being born out of County, I did not count as the first child born in 1989 in Greenwood.

So someone out there is living somewhat of a lie thinking that they were the first baby born in Greenwood in 1989. And here’s hoping that they end up listening to this podcast and find out the truth.

Alex Frazier (2m 50s): So they got your gift?

Zach Hance (2m 52s): Oh yeah.

What is BPO?

Alex Frazier (2m 54s): Well, great. Today we’re going to talk about our CloudCapture™ service. This is sometimes referred to as BPO, which is a very broad term. So can you describe or define BPO in terms of our CloudCapture™ service at KeyMark?

Zach Hance (3m 9s): Sure. So BPO, for those that don’t know, is obviously an acronym that stands for Business Processing Outsourcing. BPO really is a method of subcontracting or outsourcing various business related operations to a third party vendor, such as KeyMark.

That means, in our case, clients can contract with us for processes such as digitizing a backfilled paper records. So again, we’re turning those into electronic images and potentially classifying those documents, using software and lifting off data from those documents to help with indexing those. Other examples are clients can set up processes to send us already electronic files automatically, and they need our software and our staff to classify those into a particular document type. And again, lift information off of the documents to help with downstream processing or indexing.

A final example is an ongoing service to process documents. So, again, you’re outsourcing your business process, and a very big one for us is invoice processing. For a quick high level view of that: a client can scan their invoices or set up processes where we receive their electronic invoices automatically. All of that receipt to KeyMark is absolutely secure. We then OCR (OCR is an acronym that stands for Optical Character Recognition) the document for the invoice data that is needed off of that document. We also provide the labor should any of those documents and data need to be reviewed.

At the end of that process, we securely pass back the image and the data in a format that the client needs for downstream processing.

In summary, BPO at KeyMark is the back file of paper files to a digital imaging, processing digital images that may need some manual intervention and then ongoing services to provide items such as an invoice data capture.

Industry-Specific Examples

Alex Frazier (5m 13s): So in what industries do you see this type of service being a benefit? Can you give us a specific example?

Zach Hance (5m 20s): Yeah. So virtually any industry, if we keep with the tune of AP, lets talk through that again. Our biggest focus lately has been invoice processing and that’s simply because virtually every business out there has an AP or finance department, right? You sell a product, you have to buy goods from vendors, you’re going to be paying invoices as part of your normal business. So we focused a lot in the invoice processing since that’s a very quick need for our clients. And that solution is really as simple as just providing a very light scanning interface that either a client headquarters or individual locations, if your AP department is separated and then showing that staff basically how to just scan invoices from paper, that’s really all the client has to do.

I mentioned has setting up processes to ingest electronic files. So, the IT department will set that up and go from there. It’s just ongoing. We get those invoices again securely. We provide the software that reads the data off the invoices. If we need to look up information into your ERP, such as confirming a PO number or validating vendor information, we do that as well. We also provide the staff again to review any necessary pieces of data. And that is securely passed back to the client, the image and the data in the format that is needed. So think of this like a black box, your team scans the paper and we set up mechanisms to ingest the already electronic files that you receive.

And then within a matter of hours, you’re receiving the images and the data in the format that you need to support your downstream processes. And again, all of that is validated by our human staff as well.

One-Type-Fits-All vs. Custom Service

Alex Frazier (7m 4s): So is this a one-type-fits-all type of service? Can there be custom pieces to this? Say a client has something that’s unique for instance, is this just an invoice processing service or can it be any type of paper-heavy process?

Zach Hance (7m 19s): That is a great question. The short answer to that it is both. It is a one-type-fits-all service, but there can also be custom pieces. So a lot of the solutions that we have running in our CloudCapture™ is a one-type-fits-all like the invoice processing. We take it a point when we develop solutions to develop those in mind as a repeatable solution.

However, just because it is repeatable, it doesn’t mean we force you into a particular outcome or a box that may not fit your needs. We mean repeatable in the way that we can grab this invoice solution that we’ve set up time and time again, and very quickly replicate that specifically for a new client and the security needs, the ERP, and the inputs they are going to give us and then we make those very quick tweaks to support making that solution their own solution.

An example of that is maybe there’s a new ERP that we don’t have working with our CloudCapture™ solution at this point. We replicate a solution that we have and then we update the output to support the automated ingestion into the ERP. The power of that is we can very quickly in a matter of weeks-not months-weeks set up a solution to do BPO for our clients by using these repeatable solutions based on their requirements. We can also develop completely custom processes, which I have been a part of a lot of those lately, with CloudCapture™. It is really all just a matter of our clients needs and we go from there.

Limitations of OCR

Alex Frazier (8m 50s): So what are the limitations for this type of service?

Zach Hance (8m 55s): Really, the only limitations of the solutions are the limitations of that OCR, again Optical Character Recognition, software in general. The limit I’m talking about here is the quality of the image and data that we need to get off of the document. There was a common saying in the OCR industry: garbage in is garbage out. Which means if we’re getting a document that is very hard for a human to read, like a fax of the fax or if the ink is smudged, or there was a pen mark through the data, its going to be very hard for OCR to grab that off automatically.

That’s why we still have the human element inside of our CloudCapture™ solution. If the OCR software can’t get it completely right, we still have that human element to quickly look at the image and key that information.

That’s really only the limitation that we see in our solution which is the quality of those documents. We have human validation operators as they’re called in place too, to facilitate getting that data off if we do run into bad quality images.

Alex Frazier (9m 59s): And that OCR piece… that’s towards the beginning of this process, correct?

Zach Hance (10m 4s): Correct.

CloudCapture™ Use Cases

Alex Frazier (10m 6s): Can you walk through how an organization could use CloudCapture™?

Zach Hance (10m 10s): Sure. Lets just go back to the invoice example just because we’ve been talking about it and it’s very easy for everyone to understand the invoice process. So our clients receive invoices traditionally by paper or they are received electronically or they’re faxed or they’re sent via an email attachment or they’re on a portal that you need to go out and grab.

Think of this like documents. We’re not seeing this as only an invoice solution, but this is the example we are going through. So wherever you get those documents, we work with you to set up processes, to ingest the electronic files automatically. And then we set up a very easy scanning interface for your staff to scan the invoices where they received.

Once that’s in place, we’re securely getting that content back to our headquarters where the OCR software is processing those documents automatically. It’s lifting off the data that you need lifted off of the invoices. And it’s also doing look-ups or call-outs to your ERP or other third party systems to validate information.

An example is we grab a PO number off of an invoice. We can do a lookup to make sure that it is actually a valid PO for a client. Another example is getting the vendor information off of the invoice so we can read the vendor name, telephone number or address and compare that against the vendor master to make sure that your master is updated and we have the correct information off of that invoice.

Really, once you get us the content, everything is on us from that OCR process to that human piece where we validate any of that data. After an invoice has gone through the process and if it has to be validated, it is ready to be released. And that’s where we securely release the image and the data in the format that you may need.

An example of that is we released the invoice images to a specific network, or location at the client’s site named a certain way and perhaps we have a data file like a CSV or a HTML that we need to format a certain way so that the ERP can ingest that invoice information automatically.

Outsourcing vs. In-House Solution

Alex Frazier (12m 27s): What makes this solution or this service better than owning and managing something internally for an organization, right? Like so why would a company want to outsource this?

Zach Hance (12m 39s): In this day in time, you know, the least amount of software applications that you need to have as an IT department is better. The biggest benefit of the solution is software-as-a-service, which means there is no upfront cost to acquire the software or hardware. There is no managing the solution as an admin. There is no managing the hardware. There are no upgrades you ever have to worry about. You’re subscribing to a software-as-a-service.

There is only a very minimal one-time set up cost on our end. And then there is a per document charged based on the volumes that are being pushed through. Again, another benefit that we’ve talked about through this podcast today is that we can stand up a CloudCapture™ solution in a matter of weeks versus the potential for months or a traditional premise-based installation based on the complexity of this solution.

So it’s a software-as-a-service, meaning there is no large upfront cost and then the management of the solution, and it’s much quicker to get a solution working in a production capacity other than a traditional premise install.

Wrap Up

Alex Frazier (13m 48s): Well, as our time comes to a close today, do you have any final thoughts? Anything that maybe I didn’t mention or anything that you wanted to elaborate on now?

Zach Hance (13m 58s): I would just say the theme of KeyMark is we’re curious. So if there is a solution or a problem that our clients have, come to us and talk to us and we’ll let you know if it’s a fit. You know, I would say it again, just do not hesitate to reach out to KeyMark regarding those ideas you have. We do love to push that envelope and one of the first things we are going to do is talk to you about the viability of our solutions or your problem. We certainly don’t want to waste your time but we are more than willing to push that envelope and see how our tools in our tool belt like I’ve mentioned at the beginning of this, can help with your needs and specifically CloudCapture™. 

Alex Frazier (14m 38s): Great. Well, thank you Zach so much for being on the podcast today and talking through CloudCapture™ with us. Well, that’s all we have for you guys today. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. The Orange Chair Podcast is brought to you by KeyMark. If you liked this podcast, please leave us a rating, like and subscribe to our podcast channels, wherever you guys are listening to podcasts, and you can even follow us on Instagram and Facebook and we love to hear from you.

This podcast is produced by Greg Aiken, Clay Tuten and me, your host, Alex Frazier. Until next time, bye guys.