In January of 2012, Kofax introduced Kofax Mobile Capture. This came approximately a month after Kofax announced a minority investment ($500K) in MobiFlex Inc, a mobile app specialist. Kofax Mobile Capture through the use of apps will allow customers to use the cameras from smart phones and tablets to capture the image of a document. This image is then sent to Kofax Mobile Services where the image quality is significantly enhanced and the data extracted and captured before continuing into the appropriate workflow or system. Key to this offering is the ability to perfect the image. Smart phones and tablet images are limited by the device and the user. Image enhancement software corrects errors in lighting, registration, alignment and other areas, improving the ability of the downstream software to extract and validate the data.
The app will support Apple iPhones and iPad devices and Android phones and tablet computers. The implications of this sort of capability in the world of accounts payables can be very significant, depending on the capability to accurately capture the appropriate data from an invoice. This type of capability would certainly benefit companies that work with multiple (independent) contractors or have large field operations by providing instant capture capabilities to employees wherever they are, thereby simplifying the process of transforming data from paper into a more usable format.
I am excited for this new technology and am looking forward to watching it evolve.