Two leaders in their respective fields, SGA Integrators and ICL South Africa, have teamed up to strengthen the delivery of US-based Identitech`s FYI enterprise-wide document management and workflow solution to South Africa`s corporate and government sectors.
The partnership, which sees SGA remain as the sole distributor of the product in South Africa, has been enhanced by ICL SA taking a portion of the responsibility for the marketing and sales of the solution. ICL will sell the solution into its extensive client base in the enterprise environment, as well as to the broader corporate environment.
According to SGA managing director, Rob Gillespie, the product - which received six major US business awards during 1997 - is essentially a business tool ideally suited to environments with a high document flow. As an open solution, it also works across all platforms even across legacy systems such as SAP or Peoplesoft for example.
FYI provides rapid integration of imaging, document management, workflow, and electronic forms functionality, and promises to deliver to businesses, increased profitability and improved customer service.
"FYI`s combined document management and workflow architecture is an ideal solution for global information - or knowledge - management.
"It is designed as a toolkit and not a canned product, and is the most flexible and seamless tool on the market today. THIS explains why it is the `guts` of so many successful private solutions in the marketplace," he says.
Gillespie supports the above by highlighting the fact that Doculabs, widely-regarded as the watchdog of the document management and workflow industry, gave the ISO9000 and Y2K-compliant FYI the highest rating for flexibility and scalability in its May 1998 report.
The report also placed Identitech as the company with the best chance of survival in its given industry sector.
With FYI, a solution used in environments as diverse as Citibank and the Kennedy Space Centre, all departments are able to share information and processes can interconnect users regardless of the location or the type of data they need to use. Whilst the ultimate aim of the solution is to reduce - and eventually eradicate - paper flow, pointers to paper-based or microfilm documents can even be indexed with the FYI system.
Security is another impressive feature of FYI, with its unique architecture allowing corporations to easily manage and route information across an enterprise in a secured environment. As Gillespie explains, "you only see what is applicable to you - in essence, on a need-to-know basis."
FYI, through its NetFYI module, is also web-based, enabling users to access FYI from any computer anywhere in the world, using only a world wide web browser.
Gillespie adds that with NetFYI, a user can perform document management and workflow over the Internet or an intranet, using all of the most popular web browsers. It also supports FYI`s current and most popular functions, including document organisation and storage, document check-in and check-out, search and retrieve, and workflow.
FYI modules include, among others:
- Floworks, a workflow solution that streamlines business procedures and gives you better control over the cost and quality of work within your organisation;
- MassScan, a batch scanning operation to achieve the highest possible scanning rates from each scanner, including bar-coding, forms recognition and OCR functionality;
- QA import, which allows users to attach descriptive indexing to scanned images as they are added to FYI, typically when linked with MassScan in a high-speed, high-volume environment.
- C.O.L.D. seamlessly integrated with PDF output.
- Records Management automates and manages both electronic and non-electronic documents for access, retention and disposition.
- Electronic Forms, which are seamless to the document management and workflow, catering for ODBC links, VB scripting, and producing a PDF form for web distribution.
"ICL SA`s well-established marketing, sales and support force is broadly represented across the country. Its exposure to clients in the government and financial sectors, and its investment in training of support personnel and systems are invaluable. Together with FYI`s all-in-one toolkit, SGA`s technical knowledge, and Identitech`s worldwide support structure, local customers can look with confidence to the FYI solution," concludes Gillespie.
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