This episode of Bots & Thoughts focuses exclusively on Enterprise Content Management and Intelligent Capture solutions. Our host, Jimmy Hewitt, is joined by a new guest, Jim Picardi, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at enChoice, an award-winning Content and Capture services provider. When it comes to the successful adoption of Content and Capture, look no further than Jim and his team at enChoice. The two discuss the ins and outs of successful Content and Capture adoption and provide their expertise throughout the discussion. Content and Capture are essential elements of the Digital Business Automation journey, so you don’t want to miss this episode!

Watch Episode 10 interview now!

Follow along with the episode now!

Guest Background: Jim Pacardi, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at enChoice

Enchoice

Help companies design, implement, and support their digital transformation initiatives

Leverage experience and technologies like Capture, Enterprise Content Management (ECM), & Business Process Management (BPM)

Company has 30 years of experience. Most employees have an average tenure of over 15 years in the industry

100+ employees

100% focused on the core business of Capture, Content, and process management

Began as a FileNet company in 1990s.

Customers were looking for a business partner to help them implement a total solution for new technology

Digitization of documents and implementation of electronic workflow processes

Experience and level of quality of the employees at enChoice separates them from others in the industry

Jim Picardi

Been in Content management business for 30 years
Started with FileNet as one of the first salespeople in the Boston area
Then held roles in FileNet and IBM sales leadership
Worked for Kofax as a regional vice president for several years
Came to enChoice 9 years ago
Made a career out of the content management business

Digital Business Automation at enChoice:

Capture of information:

The ability to ingest content and metadata is tough to do and is/was a largely manual effort that is now being smoothed by Digital Business Automation
Digital Business Automation allows companies to streamline the front end of a process by ingesting information automatically with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other capabilities that are very important because it takes a lot of the manual effort out of the process

Growth area:

the technologies work very well today and there are a lot of standard platforms that do very well, but most customers are not taking advantage of that yet, so it is a significant growth area for the industry
Most clients are in one of two current states:
- 1. Company has implemented a solution and are trying to take it to the next level
- 2. Company has never implemented any kind of solution

enChoice’s goal:

take companies from wherever they are today to the next level
Example: If it’s a first-generation system that they’re looking at, then they identify what their processes are today and envision of what could happen with digital transformation
Common Challenge: A lot of companies are not getting the most out of the capabilities that are possible…
2 Examples:
- 1. Companies are using a document capture solution, but they are not using any artificial intelligence or machine learning
  - They have documents come into the company that still must be separated and indexed manually where they could be taking advantage of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and all the other technologies that are available to classify or recognize what kind of document it is and then extract information from it
  - Think about the manpower required to do this when you are receiving hundreds of thousands of documents a day that people must split and index
- 2. Companies are using a content management system, but they haven’t implemented process management to capture content at the front of the process and streamline that process from beginning to end

Common Use Cases: there are hundreds of current and potential use cases, but some examples include…

Any industry: accounts payable/invoice processing
Insurance: claims processing
Banking: mortgage underwriting/mortgage servicing
Government: case management

Jim Pacardi’s favorite use case:

Company Info: Company specialized in student loan servicing
- Revenue: $16 Million
- 300 employees
Challenge: Inundated with paper and process
Solution: Spent >$1 million on implementing a content management and process management system
Outcome:
- Received a strong ROI
- Transformed their business
- Completely changed their processes to all electronic processes
- Gave them all access immediately to files
- Allowed them to grow their business without increasing the number of employees in the company
Lesson: irrespective of how big your company is or what your business is, if you have the right leadership at the company and you have the right focus on what the business problem is, then you can transform your business
- If there is waste in your organization, there is gain
- Technology is very approachable from price point, ease of use, and time to value perspectives for customers of all sizes

Digital Business Automation Trends in Jim Pacardi’s Tenure:

Constants:

The intent of systems has always been the same…
- “How do we increase productivity?”
- “How do I provide better customer service?”
- “How do I deal with all the regulations and governance inundation that I have to follow for my organization?”
- “How do I do everything I need to while driving down costs?”

Changes:

The means to achieve the intent of the business has changed
The technology has improved
- Example:
  - Moving to the cloud
  - Software as a service
  - Hosted solution
More alternatives available for the complexities of implementing and supporting solutions
- There are a lot more options for customers in terms of outsourcing an entire operation
  - On-prem is no longer the only option
Artificial intelligence is making it much easier to ingest content

EnChoice Accelerators, Plug-ins, Software, and More:

The company’s tagline is rooted in acceleration and time to value
They developed accelerators on top of Digital Business Automation solutions that are allowing customers to experience faster time to value and make the software even easier to use
- Acquired the company Magic Lamp Software, who spent years making accelerators for the entire intelligent capture space to allow companies to more easily ingest documents and content off those documents and manage that whole process
Cut the time it takes companies to get in tools into production and start taking advantage of the system
- Time to Value: incredibly important component of any system

Future trends:

Market: Everyone is trying to drive down the cost of the systems
Legacy systems: With the aging workforce, a lot of companies have lost their support structure with legacy systems
- There is a move to offload support and administrative aspects of legacy systems
- Companies want to drive down costs while also depending on third parties for support
  - A lot of companies move to cloud, software as a service, and/or hosted solutions
Competition: Companies are being forced to implement new technology (or seek help in supporting what they already have in place) through competitive factors
- Example: Pandemic forced industries/companies to take huge leaps forward in a matter of months and if the companies/industries cannot adjust accordingly, then they will not survive

Takeaways

Digital Business Automation takes a lot of the manual effort out of ingesting content and metadata

Artificial intelligence is making this process even easier

A lot of companies are not getting the most out of the capabilities that are possible: oftentimes…

Companies are using a document capture solution, but they are not using any artificial intelligence or machine learning OR

Companies are using a content management system, but they haven’t implemented process management to capture content at the front of the process and streamline that process from beginning to end
It does not matter the size of your company; anyone can benefit from Digital Business Automation
- If there is waste in your organization, there is gain
- If you have the right leadership at the company and you have the right focus on what the business problem is, then you can transform your business regardless of how large your company is
Using the great, new technologies is making the business journey a lot easier than it used to be, but the objectives are very similar to what they used to be

Jim Pacardi Final Advice:

To have a project, you need two things:

Executive sponsorship: if you look at the most successful projects, you have an executive team that is completely bought into transforming their business
- Typically, this is a Line of Business Executive
- Projects will go nowhere without the support of an executive sponsorship
- Ask yourself: “Do I have an executive who is driving this initiative?”
Return on Investment: you have to be able to justify the business with an ROI (unless the project is surrounding a non-ROI strategic initiative)
- You need a well-ironed-out, logical business case for your new project to stand on first
- It is typical that you are competing against other projects for who has the best ROI
- Ask yourself: “Do I have a good business case for this initiative?”

Note: highlight best practices and set the right expectations when transforming your business

Decision-making and implementing Digital Business Automation can be complex within a company…
Decisions are made with committees, or a bunch of different constituents, who all have a job to do and are all looking at it from a different perspective
- You’re changing the way an organization has been doing business
It is all about cultural change, which is very understated and something that organizations are now forced to think about
You are sometimes completely changing people’s roles and how they process work or completely changing the complexion of the company and how it works
Transforming your business is not always easy, it is complex, but it is doable
Have the right people in place on both sides of the transformation

Common barriers for ECM solution adoption:

Executive sponsorship
Resources: time, money, etc.
- Time: Many people often want to weigh in
- Money: Determining the right place to start amidst competing problems
  - There can often be limited resources

Salient’s proprietary tool, Automation Compass, can look at the return on investment for a variety of different projects and identify the winners

“Stick to your knitting” as a company. enChoice has never “gone off course”

Success of a business:

The company is 100% focused on the digital transformation and implementing transformative solutions for their customers
Build out your portfolio, while still remaining focused on your goal and not deviating from your path
- enChoice has made 6 acquisitions
- Focus on your Net Promoter Score
  - enChoice does 80% of their business with existing customers
  - enChoice NPS: 9.4/10
  - been tracking NPS since 2003

Watch Episode 10 Interview with Jim Picardi Now

Are There More Episodes?

YES! Bots & Thoughts is officially on all podcast streaming platforms. Check it out now!

https://www.salientprocess.fm/

We would love to hear from you. This podcast is for you, and if you have something that you want to hear, we would love to know. This form is also a place for you to ask questions or get in touch with our Salient Process team.