In 1996, the electronic imaging market was a $3 billion business, up 15 percent over 1995, according to Giga, a market research firm. State and local governments plunked down $567 million last year for systems and services that digitize, store and retrieve document images electronically and then process their workflow, according to G2 Research Inc.
Since government's use of imaging continues to grow, IT managers and decision makers need to ensure they invest in imaging technologies and strategies that will succeed over the long term. It's not an easy job, given the volatility of information technology, but here's an overview of some marketplace and technology trends and what they could mean for cities, counties and states.
COMMODITIES
In 1995, the imaging industry seemed to go from a high-cost, specialty technology to a low-cost commodity tool when Microsoft announced it would give away a Wang-built imaging viewer to all users of Windows 95. Soon other imaging vendors followed with their versions of low-cost or no-cost viewers, and everyone said imaging would never be the same.
Alas, imaging as a commodity tool on every worker's desktop PC hasn't quite happened. While some individual government workers may have entered the realm of imaging this way by combining Wang's viewer with a low cost scanner and some spare room on their hard drive, for most others it has been business as usual.
Wang's free viewer represents only one step in the imaging process. "Where are the images going to come from and how are you going to store and manage them?" said Michael Muth, a senior consultant with Delphi Consulting Group.
But if imaging hasn't quite turned into a commodity, the move toward commodity tools has opened the eyes of many to imaging as something more than a technology. "People have come to understand that an image is just a data type," explained Muth. "Imaging is not an application, but something you do to an application, which is enable it."
This perception has given new life to some entry-level imaging products and spawned a host of others. All have low entry costs and many rely on embedding technology developed by Microsoft that allows images to be dropped into word processing documents, spreadsheets or e-mail messages.
COMPONENTS
While governments seem at least intrigued by the concept of commodity imaging, they are probably puzzled by another industry trend: component-based imaging. Sometimes referred to as the "build vs. buy" concept, component imaging says that agencies can assemble their system of choice by choosing best-of-breed software components that fit their needs. Component imaging can cost less than turnkey solutions and can provide customers with a customized system, which is especially useful if their requirements are complex.
However, component imaging can add layers of new issues that might not crop up with more traditional, monolithic imaging systems. Despite enticing marketing phrases, including "toolkits," "snap-in" and "easy to customize," that make components sound easy to use, this field of imaging requires careful planning and lots of client/server experience in terms of integration, standards and interoperability.
Users of component-based imaging also have to keep up with any changes to their various components and must know when to swap out an older component and replace it with something newer. Customers really need an astute understanding of imaging components if they want to take advantage of its virtues. "It's really both a blessing and a curse," remarked Muth.
CONSOLIDATION
Vendor consolidation is another industry trend that's likely to continue in 1997, although in a less dramatic way compared to last year. While top-tier imaging vendors such as FileNet and Wang seem to have bitten off all they can chew when it comes to acquisitions, other vendors are continuing to acquire and merge in order to survive.
On one hand, market consolidation has strengthened the remaining players, leaving customers with a nice handful of vendors to work with. "Consolidation should make it safer to buy imaging technology," contends Muth. On the other hand, consolidation has led some vendors to claim they have a broad base of expertise in imaging, when in fact all they have is a lot of products. "They will say yes to any question you ask them," said Muth. To avoid getting stuck with a vendor who may be in over their head on a project, Muth advises government agencies to ask not just what the vendor can do, but how they do it.
TRENDS, THE INTERNET, ETC.
Unlike some markets, such as insurance, where imaging is used mostly for one purpose (processing insurance claims), state and local governments need imaging for a multitude of purposes ranging from managing public records and processing forms -- such as taxes and licenses -- to storing and retrieving mugshot and fingerprint files for law enforcement agencies.
With such diverse needs, agencies need to track a range of technologies to see which are still embryonic and somewhat risky to implement and which have reached prime time. One paramount need in government is the distribution of documents. Early users of imaging were stymied when it came to distributing document images beyond the core group of workers who actually used the system.
For example, for a tax assessor to view a land record required imaging software on the desktop PC and access -- via a local area network -- to the land records' imaging system. If the public wanted to view a scanned document, they had to rely on an agency's willingness and ability to operate a public viewing station.
But those problems should be eliminated in the next few years as the Internet continues to grow and mature. "The Internet is very hot for all sorts of imaging and workflow applications," said Shegda. Most important, she added, is its role as a distributor of document images and information.
The Internet overcomes past limitations that required lots of software, a standard computing platform (either Windows or UNIX) and a LAN connection to view images. Instead, users simply dial into the Internet from any PC, find the right Web page with their browser, and start to view images. For government agencies, the Internet will drive down the cost of viewing document images and open up their accessibility, a prime tenet of government operations.
As exciting as all this is, the Internet remains immature. Any attempt to go beyond document viewing and become interactive can lead to escalations in both cost and complexity. "Browsers don't give you any markup or annotation functionality," observed Muth. "If you want to do more than view the document, then you start talking about plug-ins, adding applets."
Applets are small programs developed using either Sun Microsystem's JAVA or Microsoft's AcitiveX Web-based programming language. According to Muth, the Web was originally designed to be a browse and download environment. "Today, we're trying to push the envelope and make the Web as interactive as possible."
Meanwhile, imaging technology continues to improve across several fronts. Forms processing remains a hot trend as software that can read and edit typed and handwritten characters and numbers improves. That's good news for agencies that use forms, such as tax returns and licence applications, to gather information from the public and businesses.
Storage technology has become smaller in size, cheaper to buy and can hold more data than ever. Several varieties of optical discs (using proprietary standards) have increased the storage capacity of this popular medium. High volume magnetic storage in the form of RAID (redundant array of independent disks) can provide imaging applications with rapid access to high volumes of images, something that optical discs have been unable to do.
But the biggest trend in storage has to be the emergence of CD-ROM discs as a viable, low-cost storage medium. With inexpensive recording hardware now widely available, agencies can purchase storage capacity at a cost of pennies per megabyte. From large land record agencies to small jurisdictions with reams of public records in filing cabinets, a growing number of governments are embracing this cheap, ubiquitous method of storing (and distributing) documents.
BETTER TOOLS
One of the major criticisms of how government agencies use imaging has been their unwillingness to incorporate workflow into their imaging applications. Too often, agencies would invest in imaging not to improve productivity or enhance the distribution and communication of information, but to cut down on space needed for filing cabinets. Workflow, which automates the routing of documents from worker to worker, seemed to be nothing more than an afterthought to storage and retrieval.
That attitude might change now that workflow, never an easy tool to master, has become less costly and more intuitive. By adopting highly popular electronic mail technology as their infrastructure, vendors are introducing workflow software that uses e-mail's messaging and notification features to route important documents. Now knowledge workers can benefit from all the values that workflow provides, without having to rely on a database programmer to make changes. Products, such as Keyfile's Keyflow, FileNet's Ensemble and Lotus' Notes are examples of new generation workflow that users can control.
One of the most appealing and most painful aspects about imaging is its impact on work. Simply put, imaging can radically change how the process of work takes place. By eliminating the need for physical paper, everything from the elimination of unessential tasks to the consolidation of entire departments can occur within the realm of this technology.
The term used for this change is reengineering, or business process reengineering. Properly done, reengineering can lead to significant productivity improvements and cost savings. However, both workers and managers find it threatening because it forces them to think and act outside the boxes around their customary work habits. Because of these and other considerations, reengineering has often failed to achieve its goals.
One problem with reengineering has been the inability of organizations to test reengineering before actually trying it out. Today, however, there are more than 50 different work process modeling packages available, according to Muth. Most require a good grounding in statistics and operations research to operate properly, but that's a vast improvement over the few products from the past that needed lots of program coding to work.
"These tools will allow you to go out and evaluate a lot of different scenarios in a short amount of time," said Muth. "So you can focus most of your time on the processes that seem most promising. They also allow you to try out all of your bright ideas without inflicting them on your users."
*
SOLUTION SUMMARY
SITUATION: States and localities continue to view imaging as a key technology for improving how they govern. However, high costs, poor planning and unclear benefits have stymied its use.
SOLUTION: Recent industry and technology trends will help governments improve their chances for success with imaging.
VENDORS: FileNet, Keyfile, Lotus, Microsoft, Wang, DataPro, G2 Research, Giga, Delphi.
[April Table of Contents]
