ACOM Unveils EZCapture Front-End for Content Management System

January 13, 2009 Alex Woodie

ACOM Solutions last week unveiled EZCapture, a new Windows-based application that indexes and feeds documents into ACOM’s document management solution, called EZContentManager. The new offering, like ACOM’s other products, are being aimed at i-based Power Systems (AS/400) shops looking for a low-cost method to get a better handle on their business documents.

EZContent Manager was launched by ACOM back in 2005 to fill what the company saw as a void in the market for affordable and easy to use content management systems. The SQL Server-based product, which starts at $10,000, provides index, archiving, and search capabilities, and a Web-based document viewer.

With EZCapture, ACOM is providing a way to automate the connection between EZContentManager and a scanner. The software pre-processes scanned documents before they’re uploaded to the content repository. It uses template-based matching to automatically retrieve key index data from documents, such as customer name or number.

This template feature enables the software to automatically recognize the differences between documents. For example, it can tell if a batch of scanned documents are invoices from different companies or a mix of unrelated documents such as purchase orders, production orders, shipping notices, and inventory receipts, ACOM says. Based on this determination, it automatically applies the proper rules to each document, groups them, confirms that the correct data has been captured, and indexes and stores them in EZContentManager (or any other ODBC-compliant content management system).

“EZCapture fits into almost any company’s operations seamlessly, enabling them to begin capturing and storing documents by the thousands almost immediately,” says Jim Scott, senior vice president of marketing and product management for ACOM. “It automatically converts inbound paper documents to intelligent e-documents that can be managed, accessed, and distributed quickly and inexpensively.”

EZCapture works with practically any scanner, including flatbed scanners, multi-function devices, and handheld scanners. It can process TIFF and PDF file formats (including searchable PDFs), and can read most barcodes. The product supports user-defined indexing fields, and can hook into other databases via ODBC to perform index field extraction and validation. Greater fine tuning can be had by using the product’s filters, online document separation features, and masks for refining data, the company says.

EZCapture is available now. Pricing begins at $1,495. For more information, visit www.acom.com.