Delivering Robotic Document Digitization for a Truly Transformational Experience

A long-standing ambition of organizations worldwide, the truly ‘paperless office’ remains almost as elusive as ever. When the phrase was first coined commercially over 40 years ago, it would have seemed unlikely that in 2019, nearly 80% of content management professionals would admit that more than a quarter of their organizations’ total records are still on paper documents.

It has taken major developments in robotic and automation technology to enable organizations to break the impasse and effectively digitize documents in the volume needed, while also delivering impact and insight in the process.

For Ripcord, which positions itself as the first robotic digitization company,an announcement that it had reached an agreement with Coca-Cola Bottling Sales and Servicealongside another with financial services company, MUFG of Japan, adds to momentum built in recent years.

The announcements confirm that enterprises globally are looking for integrated digitization solutions to achieve digital transformation. In a recent survey, 93% of content management professionals believe extracting Smart data from paper records revolutionizes the value of that data for the business, with seventy percent saying the way to achieve this is with digitized records.

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Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Sales and Services (CCBSS)

Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Sales and Services (CCBSS), which supports the fulfillment for The Coca-Cola Company customers, has selected Ripcord to digitize the document lifecycle for 72 bottlers across the US, Canada and Mexico. Ripcord will work with CCBSS to automate document capture of key fulfillment and logistics records using robotics and AI, enabling further robotics process automation and digitally transformation the organization. Ripcord will be responsible for digitizing 25 million proof of delivery documents per year.

According to The Hackett Group research, procurement organizations can achieve a cost reduction of 45% or higher with a complete digital transformation.

“The technology Ripcord is delivering will help drive increased operational efficiencies, support our efforts to provide exceptional customer service, add innovative value and contribute to financial risk mitigation for our bottling partners,” said Suzana Keller, chief procurement officer of CCBSS.

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MUFG Bank 

MUFG Bank, the largest bank in Japan, has enlisted Ripcord’s Robotic services to digitize critical and sensitive documents at a high resolution, and funnel that data into their data platform which can feed into all the bank’s branches. Everything will be automated and digitally transformed.

With a multi-year contract, Ripcord’s technology will digitize MUFG Bank’s documents. MUFG Bank has hundreds of millions of sheets of paper kept in a central location that isn’t readily accessible to branch locations. With MUFG Bank’s decision to use Ripcord technology to digitally transform these documents and processes, it will improve on a legacy system by making the digital documents immediately accessible by all the branches materially reducing time it’s required to retrieve customer information.

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MUFG Bank will utilize Ripcord’s robots and artificial intelligence platform in Japan to enhance its data, making it more efficient and powerful while fully integrated within their big data platform.

Organizations throughout Japan are looking for ways to digitize content and gain greater efficiencies in their business processes. This partnership will provide us with a strategic foothold to expand further into the country as a whole.”

Technology updates

Ripcord has also previewed an updated version of its Canopy content services platform. The version will include a new user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) that includes advanced features for easier access, better presentation and enhanced discovery of content and data types. Canopy’s new features include:

Geo-location Map View: allows users to search by geographical regions and discover content associated with specific assets, branches or locations. Map View will be especially beneficial in the oil and gas industry for field researchers, or in use cases where content and employees are widely distributed across branches, such as banks or enterprises with multiple offices.

Taxonomy View: allows users to define a custom hierarchy to view content, enabling multiple views of their data. Taxonomy removes the difficulty of managing content in a folder structure for enriched vantage points, such as viewing data by location, department, hire dates, etc.

Large Format Viewer: allows easy zooming and panning of drawings, blueprints, or maps and is ideal for engineering, utilities and energy sectors.

The research from ARMA InfoCon 2019 also illustrates the need for better search and deeper insights which the Canopy update will provide. Nearly two-thirds of all organizations (60%) surveyed report that paper records slow down business processes, and a third (31%) say data is difficult to access form paper records. Having the ability to easily extract SMART data from paper records would add a lot of important value to their businesses.

We’re seeing an increasing need for content and storage vendors to evolve in order to keep pace with the demands of digital transformation. The industry is setting the pace for innovation in the space by addressing paper-centric and digitally-native content and processes with its smart robotics digitization and smart content management and AI.

With hardware robots that use computer vision, sensors and robotic machinery to process records into digital images, and software bots that use AI and machine learning to extract and classify metadata, it is more than just digitizing paper-based records.

It’s enriching data and driving business processes to achieve optimal decision making and solutions.