Kodak Alaris: The Apex Of Enterprise Information Intelligence
Marc Jourlait, CEO As nearly all businesses transition into the realm of digital transformation to reap its myriad of benefits, the move, for most organizations is saddled with paper-based business processes that are raw document or data intensive. This invariably leaves organizations inundated with mounds of information that is rendered unusable beyond its existence on paper. While on the digitization trajectory, organizations have still not journeyed to the full depths of true digital transformation and what it means to manage the information in an enterprise. “They digitize, but they are not fully digital,” posits Marc Jourlait, CEO, Kodak Alaris. “To do so, they must understand what they can do with the data and turn it into information that they can act upon.” Turning this vision into a reality, Kodak Alaris’ enterprise software business unit, AI Foundry, leverages the latest artificial intelligence and user-guided machine learning capabilities to help companies maximize the value of their digital data to improve their overall business outcomes. Making the data actionable so that companies can use it to transform business processes and operations, offer new products and services, provide better customer service, and save costs, while differentiating themselves from their competitors is the ultimate goal for organizations both large and small. Built on a forcible image acquisition and image science heritage, Kodak Alaris helps many financial services, healthcare, and insurance companies transform their business operations in a “truly digital” fashion by converting their data into actionable business intelligence."True digital transformation means actually adding intelligence to data and making it actionable"
Jourlait theorizes that the root of business process inefficiencies today lies in the pool of raw data that has been transformed digitally but serves no purpose for companies from that point on. In fact, most forms that are filled out on a tablet, mobile device or laptop still get sent electronically as a PDF, printed or faxed and ultimately re-keyed into a system of record anyway, making them “unintelligent” documents. In other words, companies might use technology to serve their customers and manage PDFs, scanned or even electronic documents, but they are unable to do anything more with the data to improve their business processes or better manage their enterprise information. “Digital transformation means going beyond just scanning something,” explains Jourlait. “We strongly believe that data is the new currency, and companies must use technology solutions to monetize it and create more value for their customers.”
Turning This New Currency into Actionable Intelligence
By layering AI Foundry’s deep analytical capabilities on top of Kodak Alaris’s business imaging legacy, the company has built a solution that allows organizations to harness the true power of their data with both the hardware and software seamlessly built on top of each other.
On one end, the company’s IN2 Ecosystem, which features some of the world’s best scanner products, provides the capabilities for producing the most readable and usable digital format of a document as possible in the data ingestion process. The image science and acquisition hardware has always been part of Kodak Alaris’s DNA, whether it involves scanning photographs and documents or intelligent optical character recognition. It is the basis for understanding more than just the actual physical characters that are printed, and includes the words, context, fields, and the type of document.
This is where the AI Foundry comes in. “AI Foundry is the continuum of our hardware solutions that truly makes the data intelligent,” asserts Jourlait. Companies know what data they need for various business processes from the myriad of electronic documents they receive every minute of every day. Once a document has been captured electronically, the underlying artificial intelligence and user-guided machine learning capabilities allow the system to classify the document based upon the document type and extract data for specific business processes. The system can be trained to understand when it is reading mortgage applications, W-2s, bank statements or healthcare application forms and extract the appropriate information accordingly. All while ensuring that personal information such as social security numbers remain in a secure format and comply with regulatory requirements. Furthermore, the solution enables companies to understand specific trends, identify patterns, and derive insights from the data for better decision making. The goal is for organizations to figure out how to use this new currency to streamline business processes, create value and customer loyalty and ultimately a better customer experience. Kodak Alaris thinks that companies have a long way to go on this digital transformation journey and that data is at the center of the new and improved enterprise information management strategy.
In a nutshell, by understanding context-sensitive data, AI Foundry provides companies with critical competitive advantage through an invaluable currency of actionable information. This substantially decreases the room for human error, saves significant time and resources by streamlining operations, and increases a company’s ROI. As an example, one of AI Foundry’s target markets is lending; specifically, mortgage origination, servicing and secondary markets. When a bank or mortgage company deploys the AI Foundry solution during the mortgage loan origination process, they reduce human involvement as much as possible and only apply it on an intervention basis. The data is extracted from the documents, automatically populating the system of record. Only when there is a missing document, piece of information or signature missing do loan officers get involved.
Data is the new currency and companies must know how to monetize it and create more value for their customers
This is where the AI Foundry comes in. “AI Foundry is the continuum of our hardware solutions that truly makes the data intelligent,” asserts Jourlait. Companies know what data they need for various business processes from the myriad of electronic documents they receive every minute of every day. Once a document has been captured electronically, the underlying artificial intelligence and user-guided machine learning capabilities allow the system to classify the document based upon the document type and extract data for specific business processes. The system can be trained to understand when it is reading mortgage applications, W-2s, bank statements or healthcare application forms and extract the appropriate information accordingly. All while ensuring that personal information such as social security numbers remain in a secure format and comply with regulatory requirements. Furthermore, the solution enables companies to understand specific trends, identify patterns, and derive insights from the data for better decision making. The goal is for organizations to figure out how to use this new currency to streamline business processes, create value and customer loyalty and ultimately a better customer experience. Kodak Alaris thinks that companies have a long way to go on this digital transformation journey and that data is at the center of the new and improved enterprise information management strategy.
In a nutshell, by understanding context-sensitive data, AI Foundry provides companies with critical competitive advantage through an invaluable currency of actionable information. This substantially decreases the room for human error, saves significant time and resources by streamlining operations, and increases a company’s ROI. As an example, one of AI Foundry’s target markets is lending; specifically, mortgage origination, servicing and secondary markets. When a bank or mortgage company deploys the AI Foundry solution during the mortgage loan origination process, they reduce human involvement as much as possible and only apply it on an intervention basis. The data is extracted from the documents, automatically populating the system of record. Only when there is a missing document, piece of information or signature missing do loan officers get involved.
On the other end, customers do not have to wait for the mortgage process to go all the way through only to then find out that they must either come in again or, resubmit missing documents. Instead, during the application process, any incorrect information is flagged so that the information is corrected even before the application is submitted. Doing it right the first time streamlines the entire process and provides a great customer experience. In turn, this increases customer interaction, satisfaction, and loyalty; which allows lenders to differentiate themselves from the competition. In that regard, Jourlait avidly reckons that “true digital transformation, means adding intelligence to data and making it actionable.” It is what AI Foundry ultimately specializes in— combining the best possible technology and data intelligence to solve a specific customer problem and digitally transform their business processes end-to-end.
An Absolute Focus on Value
Being a tech veteran and aficionado at heart with sharp business acumen, Jourlait understands the importance of not just using technology for technology’s sake but utilizing it to solve real business problems. To be able to provide such value to their customers, AI Foundry uses a highly business-centric, hands-on approach. “For us, it all starts with engaging with the customer to understand their business processes and pain points,” explains Jourlait. This implies the absence of a traditional sales approach whose sole purpose is to push off-the-shelf packages into the hands of the business. On the contrary, AI Foundry focuses primarily on the true understanding of the business processes by talking directly to the line of business owners to identify specific pain points and get to the root of their inefficiencies. Initiating any conversations that involve the terms “artificial intelligence” or “machine learning” comes after the fact.
According to Jourlait, “those are merely buzzwords that mean nothing to the line of business owners at face value.” For him and his team, “AI” will always connote “Actionable Intelligence” focused on a business process, which is then added to the raw data that is already in the organization. “Being customer-first and approaching the C-Suite from a business and ROI-centric standpoint are the reason companies are turning to us,” explicates Jourlait. “We start from the customer issue, and then work back to the technology to be able to apply it in all the right places.” On top of customizing solutions to each vertical and their specific pain points, AI Foundry puts special emphasis on the repeatability and scalability of those solutions across different verticals. As such, they can re-purpose and re-use their intellectual property to provide more tailored-to-fit solutions that target highly specific customer pain points.
This puts Kodak Alaris in a small group of companies that are uniquely positioned to offer technology solutions to solve some of today’s most challenging customer problems. Looking ahead to 2018, the company’s CEO lacks no optimism and faith in their growth, as AI Foundry continues to attract prospects from verticals apart from lending, healthcare and insurance. “Our ultimate goal is to not just continue improve our technology but to keep creating solutions that solve real problems for our customers,” concludes Jourlait.
An Absolute Focus on Value
Being a tech veteran and aficionado at heart with sharp business acumen, Jourlait understands the importance of not just using technology for technology’s sake but utilizing it to solve real business problems. To be able to provide such value to their customers, AI Foundry uses a highly business-centric, hands-on approach. “For us, it all starts with engaging with the customer to understand their business processes and pain points,” explains Jourlait. This implies the absence of a traditional sales approach whose sole purpose is to push off-the-shelf packages into the hands of the business. On the contrary, AI Foundry focuses primarily on the true understanding of the business processes by talking directly to the line of business owners to identify specific pain points and get to the root of their inefficiencies. Initiating any conversations that involve the terms “artificial intelligence” or “machine learning” comes after the fact.
According to Jourlait, “those are merely buzzwords that mean nothing to the line of business owners at face value.” For him and his team, “AI” will always connote “Actionable Intelligence” focused on a business process, which is then added to the raw data that is already in the organization. “Being customer-first and approaching the C-Suite from a business and ROI-centric standpoint are the reason companies are turning to us,” explicates Jourlait. “We start from the customer issue, and then work back to the technology to be able to apply it in all the right places.” On top of customizing solutions to each vertical and their specific pain points, AI Foundry puts special emphasis on the repeatability and scalability of those solutions across different verticals. As such, they can re-purpose and re-use their intellectual property to provide more tailored-to-fit solutions that target highly specific customer pain points.
This puts Kodak Alaris in a small group of companies that are uniquely positioned to offer technology solutions to solve some of today’s most challenging customer problems. Looking ahead to 2018, the company’s CEO lacks no optimism and faith in their growth, as AI Foundry continues to attract prospects from verticals apart from lending, healthcare and insurance. “Our ultimate goal is to not just continue improve our technology but to keep creating solutions that solve real problems for our customers,” concludes Jourlait.
Company
Kodak Alaris
Headquarters
Hemel Hempstead, UK & Rochester, NY. Regional offices around the world
Management
Marc Jourlait, CEO
Description
Provides AI, machine learning, information management and scanning solutions to help businesses on their digital transformation journey
