RJS Adds Document Capture, Packaging Offerings to WebDocs

April 8, 2008 Alex Woodie

While the world might be moving in the direction of paperless-ness, the reality remains that paper-based documents still play a big part in business. RJS Software Systems, a Minnesota company that helps AS/400, iSeries, i5, System i, and i-based Power Systems server users move toward electronic documents, unveiled two new products at the COMMON conference last week, including document scanning and packet printing offerings, that will help companies integrate paper-based documents into their increasingly electronic-based document processes.

The two new paper-oriented offerings RJS Software unveiled last week work with WebDocs, its flagship electronic document management and workflow processing solution that runs on the IBM i operating system (formerly i5/OS and OS/400) and which RJS is retrofitting to run soon under Windows.

Taskmaster is the name of the new document scanning offering that works with WebDocs. Taskmaster, which is developed by New York City-based Datacap (with whom RJS has an OEM relationship), is a Windows-based product that automates many of the tasks associated with document scanning and data capture, particularly in environments that handle a lot of documents, such as accounts payable, shipping, medical claims, and tax return processing.

Taskmaster attaches to a scanner on one end (RJS sells Fujitsu and Canon scanners) and a document repository like WebDocs on the other. In between, the software’s optical character recognition (OCR) engine digitizes structured content, or captures an image of unstructured data. The software, which features a Web browser interface, also includes “hundreds” of script-based rules to validate and automatically classify documents that it processes. It also creates indexes, enabling documents to be easily found from within WebDocs at a later time.

“Our customers are looking to streamline their accounts payable and other labor-intensive data input processes,” says Jerry Olson, vice president of sales and marketing for RJS. “Datacap and WebDocs are a great way to automate the data entry process, improve employee productivity, and provide immediate return on investment.”

RJS’ WebDocs also works with a Kofax document scanning engine, but RJS figured some companies may prefer to use Taskmaster, which is extremely fast, says Richard Schoen, president and CEO of RJS. Pricing for Taskmaster starts at about $20,000.

The other new way paper-based process RJS is incorporating paper-based processes into WebDocs is through a new add-on for packet printing. This product, which RJS did not name, is used to electronically assemble packets of documents that contain variable data, thereby eliminating the need to manually assemble the document packets.

RJS sees the new add-on for packet printing (which is also sometimes called rendition billing or document assembly) will be useful for organizations with paper-intensive businesses, such as those in finance, insurance, and human resources, the company says. The pages are gathered and assembled in the correct order, and presented as a single PDF document that can be printed or e-mailed.

For An example provided by RJS is, say an insurance company sellings a new policy, RJS says. The packet printing add-on would pull the required documents from WebDocs and automatically assemble all of the policy pages required for the policyholder’s statement into a single PDF document, which could then be printed and e-mailed to the policy holder and stored electronically. Other uses could be found in assembling a manufacturing shop order, or creating a rendition billing routine to print invoices and orders with all the associated backup documents, such as proof of deliveries, order acknowledgements, and other signed documents, the company says.

“We feel this is a very unique offering in the document management industry,” Olson says. “Our new packet printing software will dramatically reduce labor and improve production processes and customer service for any business that assembles and distributes packets of document information.”