Portford Solutions Group
Recoding the Way DM Works

The document management market is changing—it has become more commoditized. Modern day CIOs have to deal with the increasing demands for automation, document management solutions, and tackle issues pertaining to integration with business applications and technology that is more intuitive. “Customers are looking for document centric solutions rather than generic document technology,” says industry expert and EVP of Technology, Bruce Bolton, Portford Solutions Group.

Whilst other companies in a commoditized market such as document management sell document management technology, Portford Solutions are selling solutions that combine technology and services. “Portford’s focus on building document centric solutions and approach to help customers continually improve and has helped us to always have a touch point with customers. This approach definitely seems to resonate with customers,” delineates the other veteran, Nick Bolton, Executive Vice President-Consulting, Portford Solutions.

Nick and Bruce Bolton, to provide document management consulting services founded Portford in 2000. It was only in 2003 that the founders designed DocuNECT, which provided their consulting group the quintessential spark for many different types of document management implementations.

DocuNECT manages the complete lifecycle of any type of document—from creation to archive. With powerful data extraction technology, DocuNECT mines and validates data and presents documents and data via intuitive dashboards. The product places emphasis on compliance and records the complete chain of custody as the document traverses. Today, the platform underpins two business solutions in the FinTech—VeriComply, a platform for assembling trusted assets—and MedTech— MedDevTrack, a medical device tracking solution—industries.

In an era, where Cloud is playing a big role in document management industry, Portford provides its solutions both on-premise and in the cloud supported by Microsoft Azure. The DocuNECT web application is also designed to work on different devices.

The firm is a full range service provider with implementation services and post-production support services. “To complement DocuNECT’s technology implementation and services, we developed a methodology called Idea to Implementation (i2), which covers all aspects of implementation and services around DocuNECT,” informs Bruce.

Portford’s focus on building document centric solutions and approach to help customers continually improve and has helped us to always have a touch point with customers

In addition to the firm’s support services, the founders developed a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) group that uses DocuNECT to provide technology enabled services to customers, such as document conversion and data extraction and review for large projects. “In addition, we have a strategy in place to provide technology (via DocuNECT) enabled services to help customers outsource complete document specific business processes,” says Nick.

It is interesting to note that as the DocuNECT platform matured, the two gentlemen saw a shift in their consulting work. Rather than large initial implementation projects they noticed that their customers wanted to engage them in continuous smaller projects as they evolved their system. In the words of Nick, “DocuNECT fostered a model of continuous improvement and enhancement.”

Portford’s approach to quality and security is demonstrated by the adoption of the DocuNECT MedDevTrack solution as a worldwide standard for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies on the world. The firm has also collaborated with Canon USA Scanner division and Canon USA ISV to provide high-quality scanner hardware that complements the DocuNECT technology. The DocuNECT solution is also made available for Canon resellers.

Paraphrasing Bruce, the market will continue to demand less generic document technologies to focused solution that address specific industry problems. Portford is prepared and will continue to develop document centric solutions built on the DocuNECT platform with a strategic focus on self-service and provisioning of systems.