Automating business processes

Ben Locke, Vice President, Software (MESA) at Kofax on using technology to improve efficiency

By Muhammad Ali Bandial

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Ben Locke, Vice President Software at Kofax
Ben Locke, Vice President Software at Kofax

Published: Thu 25 Nov 2021, 6:13 PM

How does KOFAX define itself as a company?

It’s about understanding business processes end-to-end. When you do that, you realise most processes require documents to be gathered and analysed, information to be exchanged between people and systems, and the ability to understand and control how all these come together to achieve results. Our Intelligent Automation Platform delivers these capabilities, helping organisations transform business processes, reduce manual work and errors, minimise costs, and improve customer engagement. We combine RPA, cognitive capture, process orchestration, mobility, engagement, and analytics to ease implementations and deliver dramatic results.


How can you help organisations remedy the disconnect between the back-end and front-end office to ensure good customer experience?

Kofax worked with organisations to automate manual and repetitive tasks and make greater use of the cloud. Furthermore, as our customers leverage technology to automate and digitise back-office functions – including invoice processing, document intake, and remote exception handling – they’re creating greater efficiencies and delivering a higher level of service to customers. When staff can’t get to the office, intelligent automation makes sure data gets to them. Via the cloud, remote workers have access to all the information they need to keep the business operating normally. Digital assistants are accurate and fast. They handle the mundane and time-consuming tasks, including data collection, systems entry and communication routing – freeing the back-office team to attend to more critical work. And with document digitisation, image capture, e-signatures, and other digital technologies, the information employees need is a key stroke away.


The biggest question right now or the biggest issue is change management, people are afraid technology will take over their jobs in the future Have your clients faced the same issues?

The reason so many employees are happier post-implementation is because manual, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks are taken off their hands. Most organisations then redeploy these workers to higher-value activities that are more interesting and rewarding. And once they realise they can spend more time on strategic work that engages them and benefits the organisation, employees begin to lose their apprehension. Organisations we work with are helping employees understand what’s in it for them, while also addressing their fears head-on. The first step is understanding automation doesn’t mean automate everything. Intelligent automation works best when organisations find the right balance between work machines do and the work people need to handle.

We have witnessed how the pandemic has played a catalyst role in pushing organisations towards their digital adoption journeys. How has Kofax contributed to its customer base during their difficult times?

Kofax is working with customers to automate business processes to support their now highly distributed workforces, while maintaining productivity. We’re also helping customers pivot to a model that’s more agile and resilient so they’re better prepared for whatever the next major disruption may be. The pandemic has demonstrated how deeply organisations can be impacted (staffing, supply chains, distribution, etc.) and how long these challenges can persist. Organisations that have created a flexible digital infrastructure will not only be better equipped to survive the next crisis, they’ll also be in a position to thrive when the crisis passes.

Which three sectors have had the greatest impact with your offerings and why?

Finance and accounting to future proof operations by eliminating manual processes to strengthen controls, accelerate reporting, and empower employees. Clients are digitising procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, and record-to-report processes to eliminate data entry errors and reduce processing times at a fraction of the cost of a human-only workforce. Customer engagement to create frictionless experiences by automating customer interactions – achieving operational efficiency, and automating the most time-consuming operations across onboarding and client management processes. Operations to automate, manage and govern information distribution workflows to maximise workforces, optimise costs and improve efficiencies on a single, unified automation platform. Kofax automates any operational workflow across finance, IT, HR, customer service, and more.

How do you define innovation at Kofax?

Kofax defines innovation as continuously improving the ability of our customers to transform their customer experience and how they operate internally. We do that by investing in the elements of our solutions that have the broadest impact, such as artificial intelligence and low-code development. These are technologies that contribute to transformation success not just at a few points within a process, but across entire workflows.

Could you tell us more about TotalAgility®?

Kofax TotalAgility is the workflow orchestration engine within our intelligent automation platform. It has over 50 low-code, document intelligence, process orchestration, and connected systems capabilities—minimising the need for costly custom coding or multiple solutions from different vendors. Think of TotalAgility as the design and control center of the workflow transformation process. It’s where a graphical model of an entire process is created, including:

•Where documents and other information are imported from

•How information is categorised and used throughout the workflow.

•Where the decision points are and what actions are taken based on these decisions.

•Where automated processes are launched and where humans are in charge.

Low-code capabilities empower citizen developers to rapidly design, automate and transform business-critical workflows while adhering to existing IT governance and protocols. All users, regardless of their technical proficiency, can quickly automate workflows, meeting immediate business needs, and driving rapid ROIs.


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