Document-Capture Software Revenue To Reach $749M By 2010

As sales of scan-enabled multifunction printers continue to climb, revenue for complementary document-capture software solutions is rising along with it, helping some resellers to differentiate themselves.

Revenue for document-capture software is expected to increase at a 17 percent compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, to reach $749 million by 2010, according to a new report from market-research firm IDC. And document-management solutions ranked among the top five solutions cited by midmarket IT buyers as spending priorities on the 2006 VARBusiness Market Insight Report. Survey respondents said document management--printers and scanners integrated with storage and archiving systems--is an essential component of streamlining business processes, backup, disaster recovery and regulatory compliance.

Loffler Companies, a Minneapolis-based solution provider, says that compliance has been a big driver for sales of its document-capture solutions.

The solution provider has developed several connectors for document-capture application provider eCopy's ShareScan Open Platform, or OP. For example, Loffler's connector for Worldox, a document-management system popular in the legal industry, enables end users to scan information from paper documents directly into the Worldox software repository, where users can access documents from a network-attached PC. Also, Loffler is currently developing a hook to Captaris' Alchemy document-management software and has developed custom connectors for other clients' back-end systems.

"This is allowing us to lock ourselves into our clients and getting us far into their processes so that we become more of a consultant to them and not just a hardware vendor," says Jeff King, director of professional services at Loffler.

In addition to the legal field, health care and financial services are industries ripe for document-capture solutions. n