Automating Business Processes with Email

Trigger Business Processes with Information Captured from Email and Attachments

As the use of email becomes increasingly common, organizations with a lot of inbound customer communication are experiencing a 70% increase in email traffic from their customers every year. The ability to respond and act quickly to such communications is key to a positive customer service experience.

Capturing email and other documents as soon as they enter the organization, turning them into actionable digital information, and routing that information to workflows, processes and applications is the key to automating document driven business processes and achieving operational excellence and sustainable cost reductions.

Kofax offers outstanding capabilities for capturing email and attachments, including:

• Conversion of email body information and all printable attachments to images;
• Availability of attachments in binary form as well as images;
• Support for nested messages;
• Extraction of relevant information from both the email body and the attachment;
• Classification and routing of captured information to workflows and processes ;
• Archiving of emails and attachments automatically in a secure and auditable way; and
• Automated notification via email, SMS, etc.

This array of capabilities enables organizations to trigger business processes upon receipt of an email message without any manual interaction or even printing. The benefits include:

• Higher processing efficiency,
• Reduced costs,
• Higher data accuracy,
• Faster response rates, and
• Improved customer service.

Benefits of Using Kofax Email Capture

With Kofax, enterprises benefit from a unified platform to capture all data and documents – not only from emails, but also from fax, paper and electronic formats – and to communicate and exchange information.

Unified Messaging

With an integrated Unified Messaging solution business information is available via different media such as email, fax, telex, phone, SMS or MMS. Individuals can access this information via different devices while in the office, on the road or anywhere their business takes them.

As a result, accessing information from various sources such as a computer, fax, or cell phone and searching for the appropriate communications channel is quicker and it can be smoothly integrated into an employee's normal work environment – e.g. in their MS Outlook or Lotus Notes mailbox.

The unified system ensures that business critical information is delivered to your company's employees efficiently and quickly. You will profit from considerably lower administration costs, motivated staff and a weekly workload reduction in the area of 30 -120 minutes per employee (Source: Intel study). Furthermore, double broadcasts are avoided, telephone costs reduced (VoIP), response times shortened and communications can be tracked.

Features:

• All messages and data available at a glance
• All messages can be accessed while away from the office
• No additional learning required - familiar Email Client user interface for e-mail, fax, Voice, SMS
• Centralized, single server approach integrates all communications
• Branch boxes for companies with several locations make unified messaging available wherever it is needed.
• High level of availability and the fault-tolerant configuration guarantee that information from the widest range of different communications channels can be called up reliably at any time
• Archive with integrated full text search that stores all messages independent of the media and format.
• All relevant communication events are tracked according to SOX, HIPAA, Basel II and the US Patriot Act.
• Administrator monitoring options cover the availability and utilization of the systems as well as of all sent and received messages
• Voice Mail systems with personalized recorded messages
• Users can define how voice messages should be forwarded
• Comfortable dialing directly from the address directory

Production Messaging

The integration of communication media like fax and email into business processes improves business workflow, reduces operational cost and helps to comply with legal requirements. With the Kofax Communication Server incoming messages are compressed, stored and forwarded quickly to the right business process independent of media or format type. Messages can no longer get lost or delayed.

Outgoing messages can be sent to any recipient and any system, individually or as a mass mailing via different media types like fax, email, SMS or voice. Automatically generated calls are useful to escalate critical events like a system shutdown or any other kind of alerting.

Whether it is a matter of creating and sending messages directly from a business application or from established groupware applications (desktop faxing) such as Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange— our solutions cover all functions demanded by business and integrates seamlessly into your IT system.

With the Kofax Communication Server customers take full benefit of a market leading product (Src: Computer-Based Fax Markets, 2006-2011, by Davidson Consulting, 25.2% share of production fax market)

Features:

• Reliable message transfer, escalation of problems
• Transactional safety
• Centralized, single server approach integrates all communications channels in a homogeneous system
• Branch boxes (Fax and Voice interface to PSTN) connected by IP protocol allow companies with several locations to make elements of our solution available wherever they are needed with all features and functions at even the most distant locations as if it were situated at the headquarters
• The ability to archive in compliance with regulations and laws is a given (SOX, HIPAA, Basel II and the Patriot Act). Our archiving system automatically stores all incoming and outgoing messages and makes them available using the search function whenever they are needed. Integration into all major ECM systems is supported
• Several open interfaces (WEB, API, SMTP and FILE)
• Connection to a variety of business applications (IBM's WebSphere MQ or ActiveX)
• High level of availability and the fault-tolerant configuration guarantee that information from the widest range of different communications channels can be called up reliably and completely around the clock
• Administrator monitoring options cover the availability and utilization of the systems as well as of all sent and received messages
• Least Cost Routing

Short Message Service (SMS)

Short Message Service (SMS) has become a vital means of communication among employees, partners and customers. Kofax provides two SMS solutions:

• For companies sending a high volume of SMS messages (production messaging), the Kofax Communication Server transmits messages to the provider via an IP connection.
• For companies sending a low volume of SMS messages (less than 1000 messages per month), Kofax provides an easy-to-install GSM box that connects to the Kofax Communication Server via LAN. It is suitable for all frequencies (900, 1800, 1900 and, upon request, 850 MHz) and world regions, and works with standard SIM cards.

With an SMS solution based on the Kofax Communication Server, a company can support a variety of valuable services via SMS broadcasting or individual SMS, including:

Easy Usage

The Kofax Communication Server can be integrated into virtually any standard e-mail environment or application without adding new applications to the user's desktop. The user can send SMS messages from their mail client such as Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. The addressing automatically designates the provider, and non-delivery notifications can be delivered back to the user's inbox. The Kofax SMS solution supports all languages via Unicode.

Secure Communication

SMS is secure against viruses and external access, and all message traffic is recorded and traceable. In addition, fault-tolerance can be attained through the use of several SMS boxes and providers.

High Functionality

An outgoing SMS message of more than 160 characters is automatically split into several messages, and then reassembled on the recipient's mobile phone. Incoming SMS messages are forwarded directly to the user's email inbox.

ERP Integration

The ERP system is the core of many companies. These solutions for the support of internal company procedures offer an extensive portfolio of applications and functions. It is often difficult to also integrate systems for internal business processes efficiently into communication with external customers, partners or suppliers.

The seamless integration of all communications channels used in and around the company into the ERP is thus one of the important tasks involved in the optimization of the communications infrastructure of a company. Only when all information - faxes, SMS, emails or voice messages — can be automatically integrated into the ERP system, processed and transmitted to users or other systems can an ERP system achieve its full effectiveness.

With years of experience in the integration of communication solutions into ERP environments (SAP, ORACLE, Siebel and PeopleSoft) and as a complementary Software Partner of SAP we integrate all communications services into the ERP system and into globally leading systems like SAP R/2 and R/3.

Features:

• Integration into any common ERP environment
• Sending and receiving messages via all media types (fax, email, SMS etc.)
• All messages are automatically documented and archived
• Cost savings through automated processing of incoming and outgoing information

xSP - Service Providers

Service providers define their competitiveness by the quality of their services. In a highly competitive market, only the xSPs with the best infrastructure survive.

Communication and performance requirements as well as billing procedures are getting increasingly complex in service providing, and communication management is becoming correspondingly more demanding. In order to offer the very best service tools that allow smooth communication across all interfaces, formats and boundaries are needed. Reporting, monitoring and the development of customized communication services and service products place the highest demands on your own communications infrastructure.

Features:

• Scalability - open interfaces to all commonly used business applications: SAP, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus, Novell, etc.
• High level of reliability and security

Compliance

Companies need to document and control all inbound and outbound messaging to meet regulatory directives such as Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA and Basel II.

These directives govern the transmission and management of information and require strict monitoring, recording and traceability of all processes. MFPs are a potential security gap in the archiving process as documents leaving the company via MFPs often are not archived. By connecting MFPs to the Kofax Communication Server via a LAN, all incoming and outgoing documents are indexed and archived centrally and all processes are recorded. This helps to support corporate initiatives to meet compliance requirements.

Most compliance directives require that individuals who author or access documents must be able to be identified and the company must be able to manage different levels of authorization. The Kofax Communication Server makes it easy for administrators to access and control security settings and features. Easy connection to most repository systems supports the archiving of all relevant documents and other information.

Features:

• Support of remote locations
• Reduction of the analog lines required for fax machines
• Integration of all communication media over a central system to monitor processes
• Connectivity to a wide variety of ECM systems

Consolidation

Companies are looking for ways to leverage existing infrastructure and centralize processes and management. These are primarily consolidation and cost reduction initiatives. In the course of the consolidation and centralization of their existing infrastructures, many companies are replacing the multitude of printers, copy machines, scanners and fax machines they have been using with multifunctional devices. With the Kofax Communication Server, these devices can be consolidated into a common communications infrastructure. The existing IP infrastructure can be leveraged to provide additional value and the Kofax Communication Server can archive all transactions into the customers ECM system of choice.

In addition, all communication costs are monitored transparently. They are gathered and passed on to clearing systems where they can then be allocated to persons or departments.

Features:

• Reduced usage of paper. Distribute faxes to others using enterprise-wide applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, and others
• Time savings through increased process speed
• Completely scalable solution for workgroups and corporations
• Enterprise reliability
• Support of remote locations
• Unique high secure line server concept
• Our fault resistant distributed server concept
• Reduction of hardware and maintenance
• Integration of all communication media over a central system that monitor costs

Straight-Through Processing of Fax Orders for Funds Administration

Success in the securities industry depends on real-time transaction processing. But today, only 50% of transactions are handled completely electronically. The remaining 50% are still confirmed via fax.

Fax is a secure and reliable medium, but faxed orders require manual processing, which slows down the order-handling process and causes extra management risk. Each fax must be printed, sent manually to the right person and then typed into a back-office application before it can be processed. This manual process is slow, costly, error-prone and not compliant. Slow processing also increases the risk that an order will miss the "cut-off time" – the deadline for the current exchange rate of the fund.

And because the volume of trading orders is growing 50% per year, investment banks must continually hire new people to keep up with the manual processing.

The processes that suffer most from manual processing are order handling and confirmation, matching of orders with contracts and confirmation with orders, clearing and settlement, reporting and tax calculation, archiving and funds management information.

In addition, clients who send trade orders via fax do not receive confirmation that their orders have been received, which means that errors or lost orders are not discovered until it's too late. And since fax message traffic is generally not archived, the original message cannot be retrieved to correct the error.

Any of these problems can start to damage a bank's or trader's reputation considerably.

Demands:

Investment banks typically want to

• Reduce processing cost
• Increase security and reduce errors
• Eliminate manual processing
• Speed up processing
• Increase the service to their customers
• Fulfil archiving and compliance requirements
• Have a highly reliable fax-handling system

Straight-Through Fax Processing for Funds Administration

Kofax is unique in its ability to meet these demands by automating the fax-handling and confirmation process — from the receipt of a fax all the way to confirmation of the trade order — through the company's combination of products for the communication, capture and extraction of information.

Kofax products can automatically

• receive trade documents via fax,
• classify the messages (SWIFT* message type MT 502, MT 509, MT 515, etc.),
• extract and validate the key information (such as the ISIN number),
• convert the required data and release it to SWIFT (ISO 15022, ISO 20022 or any other XML format), and
• send confirmation of the trade order (MT 502, MT 509, MT 515, etc.).

This unique set of capabilities gives investment banks a fast, secure way to process faxed funds orders.

Business Benefits

• The order process becomes more transparent as a full audit trail is available to fulfil compliance needs.
• Processing costs are minimized because manual efforts are significantly reduced.
• Customer service improves because of faster processing time and better communication with clients.

* SWIFT is an industry-owned co-operative, supplying secure, standardised messaging services and interface software to nearly 8,100 financial institutions in 207 countries and territories. SWIFT members include banks, broker-dealers and investment managers.

MFP Integration

Many companies are replacing multitudes of individual printers, copiers, scanners and fax machines with multifunction products (MFPs). However, MFPs create compliance, cost and administration problems when they are deployed as standalone devices outside the company's central communication strategy.

Kofax enables companies to realize all the benefits of integrating MFPs into their existing IT infrastructure and networks via the Kofax Communication Server.

Consolidation

• Enables fax capability for all network-enabled MFPs.
• Eliminates individual fax machines and MFP-integrated fax boards.
• Makes individual telephone lines for each MFP unnecessary.

• Supports IP telephony environments (Fax over IP)

• Permits sending from MFPs with user's fax extension or e-mail address.
• Sends delivery notifications and replies directly to the user's e-mail client.
• Enables cost-center allocation of transmission charges.
• Enables centralized communication management in distributed environments.
• Frees up office space by reducing the number of devices.

Compliance

• Allows user authorization at the MFP.
• Enables an authorization workflow for outgoing faxes.
• Provides logging and tracing of all electronic document transfers from MFPs.
• Enables centralized monitoring and management of all traffic.
• Allows central indexing and continuous archiving (including searchable PDF) of all incoming and outgoing messages.
• Maintains confidentiality by forwarding documents to the user's inbox instead of leaving them visible at a public fax machine.

Enhanced Security

• Enables fail-safe operation based on unique Kofax Communication Server tandem architecture
• Provides secure and confirmed delivery options.
• Provides security options such as SSL encryption and originator IP address validation.

Image optimization with Kofax VRS technology

• Maximizes the image quality of electronic documents, even when starting with a colored background, low contrast or text highlighted with markers.
• Delivers optimal images to document and data capture processes for improved OCR accuracy.
• Provides enhanced image quality for outbound fax applications.

Cost reduction

• Reduces costs significantly by eliminating internal fax cards in MFPs and individual phone lines.