Mike Morper
We see ‘consumerization’ of IT as one of the biggest trends impacting the way organizations and their workers will interact. This new wave, from knowledge workers wanting more user friendly experiences with businesses processes inside the firewall to expecting that their personal devices should connect to enterprise networks, will trigger opportunities for collaboration, streamlining of business processes and the way organizations protect their assets.
A recent Gartner report notes, “the rapid acceptance of media tablets, is just one indication of the structural changes in the way people communicate, both within the enterprise, and with customers and suppliers.” Similarly, a recent survey by Dimensional Research showed that workers are expecting that their personal devices will connect to corporate networks. In fact, the survey, with 750 front-line IT professionals, indicated that 87 percent of their employees are using smart devices for work-related purposes.
While the ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) to work phenomenon will liberate workers from their desks, IT managers behind the scenes are being challenged to manage these devices, protect corporate data, and ensure regulatory compliance. Historically this involved securing and locking down on-premise devices, servers and applications. Now the same type of security capabilities must apply to IT resources that are outside the firewall and are not directly operated by IT departments.
Consumerization of IT is also a drive to personalize the knowledge workers experience and we see this as another important trend. Workers are expecting personalized, real-time business processes. And they want access to information across the organization and quicker ways to repeat repetitive tasks. Basically they want “…an app for that…” whether inside or outside the firewall.
NSi has taken steps to help that along inside the enterprise. For example, our recently released AutoStore 6.0 features major updates to overcome challenges with digitizing and distributing paper and electronic documents via multifunction devices. An innovative dashboard with visually intuitive icons personalized to the user’s need streamlines the process and provides an app-like experience. With NSi’s new Smarticket, workers are able to personalize scanning workflows with bar-coded cover sheets that correspond to a specific process like invoice processing, accounts receivable, loan documentation or shipping records. Scan the Smarticket cover sheet, followed by the corresponding documents and the information is automatically routed to one or more recipients, quickly, simply and securely, taking the pain out of repetitive tasks.
Moving beyond the MFP, AutoStore 6.0 introduced WebCapture an interface for capturing electronic documents from a Web browser. There’s no software to install on individual PCs. It leverages the power of AutoStore by extending to the desktop the same document workflows used to capture paper documents on an MFP or scanner from within the Web browser. Any file on the workstation can be introduced into workflows – all from within the browser.
We see these moves as a major step toward personalization of the knowledge worker’s experience in the enterprise, while maintaining the security infrastructure of the organization, and the beginning of more opportunities to leverage the Consumerization of IT to bring some of these same capabilities to the mobile environment.
