Kodak solving business problems

Situation The Belgian Ministry of Finance, accumulating and processing over four-million VAT documents of differing types and formats annually, required a sophisticated document capture, storage and access solution.

Objective Implement a fast, advanced, integrated solution for scanning, recognition and processing of all VAT forms submitted by Belgian companies to the ministry.

Solution A completely integrated combination of products from Kodak and IRIS, a value-added reseller of Kodak document imaging products, including Kodak i800 scanners and a variety of hardware and software from IRIS.

When the Belgian Ministry of Finance – known as SPF Finance – needed a solution for the scanning, recognition, and processing of data from millions of VAT forms each year, they turned to Image Recognition Integrated Systems (IRIS). When IRIS selected scanners and software for the capture of these documents, they selected Kodak document imaging products.

SPF Finance wanted a completely integrated system, which IRIS delivered, featuring a starting point of Kodak i800 Series Scanners and Kodak Capture Software. It needed to be a robust, fast solution, based on the high volume of VAT forms processed each year, including monthly or quarterly VAT returns (hand-printed or typed), the quarterly intra-community statement, and the annual customer list.

“We’re dealing with about four million documents of different types and layouts to be processed per year, and the processing time is critical,” says Christian Gillet, Business Project Manager of the SPF Finance.

After extensive study and research, IRIS developed and implemented an extensive, fully featured solution. Scanning is performed via several Kodak i800 scanners, using Kodak Capture Software. IRIS FastLink is used to integrate Kodak Capture Software and Formiris Pro – a high-end form reading solution. IRIS FlexForm technology recognises the less-structured forms with variable layouts. IRIS has also installed its own scalable document management system, DocCenter, with Searchirisweb to share and provide access to the scanned information (data and image) to all involved employees and units.

The i800 Scanners, featuring Perfect Page with iThresholding, are ideal for handling the vast array of documents and varied workflow. “The Ministry has already processed more than 1.6 million documents in less than six months,” says Pierre De Muelenaere, CEO of IRIS. “The iThresholding does a beautiful job of creating high-quality images from low- and high-contrast documents.”

iThresholding automatically adjusts both bi-tonal brightness and contrast for each document. It then analyses the entire grayscale image to optimise the conversion to bi-tonal. Documents, like handwritten forms and faint copies, often become more legible in scans than the originals are to the human eye. The feature also reduces “noise” and extraneous marks, helping to create smaller file sizes.

The complete IRIS solution features other innovative, productive advantages including direct scan into the image database. Documents are directly scanned into Formiris Pro’s database, thanks to the IRIS FastLink module that synchronises the operations of several scanning stations.

Several forms used by the SPF Finance are of extremely variable layouts and are printed at multiple places. IRIS FlexForm technology allows for exceptional recognition of these forms, that wouldn’t be possible with traditional form recognition technology. Elsewhere sophisticated correction and validation tools assist in easily locating and correcting all recognition mistakes, and in finding all typing mistakes and inconsistencies. Other benefits include:

• Automatic mailing generation: When VAT forms are not correctly completed, the operator generates letters (demand of clarification or ‘query’), personalised to and in the language of the citizen, with precise messages – all done with just one or two clicks of a mouse. • Automatic audit trail: Complete tracking is kept for all modifications brought to the data of VAT forms by the operators, without any user intervention. • Uninterruptible production: Formiris Pro’s robust architecture helps to assure the ministry against any loss or interruption of the form-reading production (more than 40,000 forms per day), even in the case of a major disaster in one of the three sites.

“IRIS has installed many large sites for form recognition,” says De Muelenaere. “The system installed at SPF Finance is very advanced and demonstrates how Kodak and IRIS solutions can be fully integrated to deliver the highest performance. This architecture delivers the processing power and the advanced functionality needed by many other large customers – such as government agencies; banks; and large accounts which need to process forms, exam sheets, surveys, checks, invoices, and so forth.”

The complete network solution of the SPF Finance is located at three different sites – Namur, Gent and Brussels – and one central archive in Brussels. Each input site is equipped with high performance Kodak Scanners (scanning in black-and-white or in colour, depending on requirements) and is equipped with scanning, correction and validation stations that run form reading and recognition software. Each site also features a local storage server permitting the standalone retention of the images, documents and indices, for approximately 10 days.

“Thanks to this solution, we have reduced the encoding work of our employees to a minimum for VAT forms and have simplified the administrative work by centralizing the information,” says Gillet.

Unique ‘scan and share’ solution unveiled

Kodak recently launched a unique, cost-effective and easy-to-use solution that will enable offices across the globe to scan and share documents digitally within any network environment. Available for under €3,000, the pioneering Kodak Scan Station 100 combines high quality scanning of paper documents with intuitive operation. This enables people to share them via email, save them to a network folder, send them to a network printer or copier or store them on a portable USB drive. All from one easy to install ‘one touch operation’ device that needs no dedicated computer or additional software.

The Kodak Scan Station 100 targets a wide range of large, small and medium-sized organisations or paper-intensive businesses including insurance, healthcare, financial, accounting and legal companies. It’s an exceptional multi-purpose scanning device that represents the latest evolution of Kodak’s document imaging innovation on the desktop.

Many copier-based multifunctional peripherals can prove a real challenge to the average user but this new scan station can improve office productivity by keeping a straightforward office function truly simple. No training is required for the Scan Station 100 – and the touch screen and innovative built-in technology enables users to scan paper documents quickly and share them electronically with their colleagues.

The device simply connects to existing network infrastructure and features intuitive and interactive operation, including image preview of scanned images prior to sharing – from the touch screen. And colour, black and white or greyscale documents can be easily converted to JPEG, TIFF, PDF and searchable PDF formats.

The Scan Station 100 is geared to work with existing networked printers with lower per-page costs and features a 10/100 Base-T Ethernet connection. The device can scan a wide variety of paper documents up to DIN A4 in length – as well as smaller and thicker items like driving licences and plastic cards.

According to Mark Nicholson of InfoSource, a leading industry analyst: “To be successful in today’s competitive business environment scanners need to deliver walk-up simplicity whilst offering enhanced document communications. And with the launch of the Scan Station 100, Kodak has addressed these requirements directly by introducing a fully featured network scanner offering one-touch operation”. The new KODAK Scan Station 100 ships with dedicated Kodak Help Desk Support and customers can easily extend their twelve months warranty to a 36 months on–site service coverage with next business day response*, including travel, labour and spare parts.

Kodak Scan Station 100 wins best of show at FOSE

A panel of top editors from Government Computer News(GCN) selected the new Kodak Scan Station 100 as one of two Best of FOSE Award Winners at the trade show for government agencies in Washington D.C. March 7-9. GCN is a leading source of information for the government technology community.

The editors, in choosing the finalists and best of show, considered innovation, value, functionality and applicability to the government’s computing requirements in evaluating over 200 products at the show. Judges were particularly impressed with the Scan Station 100’s colour touch screen and ease of use, along with its ability to integrate with existing network infrastructure – no host computer, additional software, or training needed.

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