New York — April 7, 2003 — Captaris, a provider of unified communications and mobile business solutions, and FileNet, a provider of enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, have formed a joint OEM partnership whereby FileNet will resell Captaris RightFax 8.5.
The partnership formalizes an existing relationship between FileNet and Captaris to provide complementary solutions for data capture and management.
Captaris RightFax software integrates fax, e-mail and Internet technologies to digitize faxed documents for easier use in electronic transaction processing. RightFax provides a way to send and receive documents electronically from desktop, e-mail, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning and other business applications.
FileNet will incorporate the RightFax offering into its FileNet Capture products, which help organizations acquire, index and manage both electronic and paper-based content. With the integrated solution, data is captured from an inbound fax, and the electronic document is then indexed and automatically routed for processing.
The combined offering is intended to help organizations eliminate time consuming, paper-based, manual processing in favor of electronic transaction processing, reducing process time and associated labor and transaction costs. The potential benefits include the elimination of redundancy and errors associated with manual processing, an added layer of security and the elimination of the risk of lost paper documents.
Customers using FileNet ECM and Captaris RightFax technology include Sun Life Financial of Toronto, a 130-year-old international financial services organization. Using the ECM solution, Sun Life is able to capture thousands of fax transmissions a day. The RightFax Connector for FileNet P8 routes inbound faxes to Sun Life's imaging system for distribution, archival or further processing within its FileNet ECM system.
"Maintaining a fluid workflow was very important to us," said John Sweeney, information services specialist and the team lead on the RightFax/FileNet integration at Sun Life. "It was a huge step in accomplishing our goal of becoming a paperless office."
"Acquiring document images through fax integration has become an integral part of the capture process for enterprise content management," said Karen Shegda, research director at Gartner. "Capturing incoming faxes enables their use as scanned images that can be immediately and automatically incorporated into an organization's business processes for streamlined operations."
"FileNet's decision to strengthen its relationship with Captaris reflects a growing demand from customers in paper-intensive industries, such as insurance and financial services, to refine their operations and streamline communications," said Dan Campi, vice president of business development for Captaris. "Together, we will be able to offer our joint customers an integrated offering that can eliminate redundancy and activate content dispersed throughout the organization to improve efficiencies at every level."
"The addition of Captaris RightFax offers the scalability and robust technology that our customers demand, and enables FileNet to offer a tightly integrated and broad-based content capture solution that supports our FileNet P8 ECM architecture," said Michael Harris, senior vice president for product marketing, strategy and corporate communications at FileNet. "This allows companies to standardize on a single content capture solution, reducing training time and costs."
