Kodak Alaris Revolutionising India’s Information Management Industry

Vivek Naidu, VicePresident, Information Management (India Cluster), Kodak Alaris India Pvt. Ltd

Successes that are happening one after another are definitely creating a platform for the technology vendors to participate, ensuring the proofs of technology are spread across the country, says Vivek Naidu, VicePresident, Information Management (India Cluster), Kodak Alaris India Pvt. Ltd., in a conversation with Arpit Gupta of Elets News Network (ENN).

Give us an overview of Kodak Alaris Information Management, India.

Kodak Alaris is at the forefront of global revolution around Information Management (IM) and the future of digital transformation in India is extremely promising from the stand point of data adoption. Enterprises today deal with information in various forms and sizes. Traditionally, it used to be paper-based information, but in last 10-12 years, we’ve seen the influx of fax and email and now the social media.

Moreover, the amount of data that has been generated in the past two years itself is more than what mankind has generated in all the years. The inability to harness this data leads to complexity and loss in productivity. This presents companies with a humongous challenge to tap into the value of their data through efficient digitalisation. The question is not whether the shift to digital needs to be made, but more importantly, where do companies begin? The answer is simple: digital transformation starts with information capture – the challenge Kodak Alaris solves better than anyone. IM encompasses all channels of information, which can be of value for an enterprise to have an impact on business outcomes.

Kodak Alaris deals with this discipline with an aim of providing simplicity and ease-of-use, enabling enterprises to capture information from all forms and channels. Since there is an ingress of information from channels other than paper, we’ve diversified our outlook— digitising it, becoming the subset of Information Management.

As far as end-to-end capture of information is concerned, every piece of information has to be secured. How secure are your products and solutions?

The first parameter that all technology vendors must follow to ensure security of information is to provide services as per global standards. Every piece of information we obtain whether on paper or via social media channels must comply with global standards.

For instance, when creating images from papers in a specific format (Eg. pdf, tiff—which are fully secured and adhere to global standards), does not allow the user to edit any part of an image thereby preventing any form of distortion of the digital copy. Kodak Alaris conforms to all the global standards on inter-operability as well other security protocols.

Elaborate on initiatives introduced by Kodak Alaris in 2017.

We introduced IN2 Ecosystem with an aim to provide simplicity and ease-ofuse to the end-customer. It is primarily an ecosystem of partners which include l Independent Software Vendors (ISV) l Business Process Outsource (BPO) l System Integrator (SI) Typically, when customers embark on the digitisation journey, they look for a holistic set of solutions from their partners who can provide technical competence of integrating all the pieces of solutions as well as provides the benefit of ease of doing business.

Based on our experience, we have created a network of partners who can provide software packages to customers in areas like healthcare, payment banks, manufacturing etc. We have stitched together a network of partners who specialise in different areas.

Depending on the priorities of customers, we deploy a particular set of partners to engage with them. It is a win-win situation for partners, customers as well as Kodak Alaris. We achieved great success through the IN2 Ecosystem platform. In 2018, we are creating verticalised solutions for industry domains whose focus primarily is distributed scanning environment (organisations that have multi–location footprint or have a larger geographical coverage).

Also Read: Kodak Alaris expands Remote Solutions with New Monitoring as a Service Offerings

The focus is on vertical applications to capture distributed yet Indian market for scanning products is growing, and in order to capture the market segment, we are focussing on partnerships with ISVs with verticalised solution. In terms of innovation, Kodak Alaris launched a new category of scanners in 2017 called S2000 series with unique features such as Embedded Image Processing, Active Feed Technology and Controlled Output Scanning.

The S2000 series includes two USBconnected models – Alaris S2050 and S2070 and two network/wireless models – Alaris S2060w and S2080w which deliver rated speeds between 50 Pages per Minute (PPM) and 80 ppm. Infact, our focus on the Digital India programme has increased all the more.

The government sector in particular is transforming from a paper-based economy to adopting digital technologies like the e-office project which brings in digitisation at the core of every business operation. With a vision of creating a ‘transparent electronic marketplace’ the government is investing on various IT products which presents a big opportunity for scanners and information management.

What challenges and opportunities do you see underlying for the Information Management Industry?

The first key challenge is the size and scale of the task of digitisation in ‘Digital India’. We have been working closely with the Government on this front and in one the digitising projects we undertook, land record documents dated back to the year 1850 have been digitized. Imagine, the volume of digitisation required for the papers starting since 1850. Secondly, adoption takes time, especially in a developing country like India.

Thirdly, more investment is required.  Digitisation of papers is just one part of the whole value chain. The more important part is how this can be deployed for the benefit of the citizens. Although the Government has rolled-out an innovative and tech-savvy idea around deployment of G2C (Government to Citizen) services, implementing it across the entire spectrum will require huge investments. The digitisation of Regional Transport Office (RTO), for instance, has brought a lot of transparency in operation.

The challenge is of scale, adoption and seeking investment, however the opportunity for technology vendors lies in the intent of the government to usher digitisation. We also see opportunity in the fact that, successes that are happening one after another are definitely creating a platform for the technology vendors to participate, ensuring the fruits of technology are spread across the country. The Government is promoting ease-of-doing business across all States/UTs.

Which are the States you’re looking to expand your company’s wing?

We’ve been significant number of partners in States like Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, to name a few. Our focus however is to participate and enable all the mission-mode projects which by definition itself is covering the length and breadth of the country. At present, we’re participating in the digital PR project in Kerala. Prior to this, we participated in a project for the High Courts of Punjab and Haryana.

Given the intensity of these projects, one cannot reach completion in a single financial year, hence we target an investment cycle of three to four financial years for a particular State and then the cycle moves to the next state. We have a very secular approach to expand our coverage, and our focus is to participate in all the 29 States and the UTs. However, keeping in mind the business reality and prioritisation, at any given point about seven to eight States remain in focus for 2-3 financial years and then the cycle moves forward.

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