ImageSource Q&A with CIO Ryan Keller

What do you think the most significant change has been going from a system integrator to a software manufacturer? 

The biggest change has been our ability to respond to issues and enhancements to the products we deliver and support our customer partners. As a system integrator, we were always waiting on the manufacturer to resolve issues or acknowledge feature requests in their software. It was rare for the issues to be resolved in a timely manner. As the software manufacturer, we have complete control to prioritize requests, address issues, or provide product enhancements promptly to meet our customer partner needs.

What trends are you seeing that would apply to a large portion of ImageSource’s customer partners or that organizations should be paying attention to?

The shift to hosted, SaaS-based solutions and/or Managed Services would apply to a large portion of ImageSource’s customer partners. We are seeing more and more customers struggle to keep up with managing their data centers and hiring/retaining technical expertise, and these roles/skillsets are typically not core to their business. With a hosted solution and or Managed Services, we alleviate that burden from the customer partner, keeping their ILINX systems operational and current to maximize the benefit of the system and maintain focus on their core business.

Another trend is a shift towards creating more accessibility and visibility in our customer partners’ business processes. Examples of this are:

• Creating role-specific reports, analytics, and dashboards for users, managers, executives, and their customers to have visibility to actionable information in a digestible format for business processes
• Leveraging self-service portals to provide direct access for users, customers, or constituents to relevant documents, electronic forms, workflows, and information

How have your services teams adapted and changed over the last two years?

The Professional Services teams have adapted and changed over the last two years to a remote workforce. The way the teams interact with customers and colleagues became a focal point to ensure that the same high level of service was provided. We focused on making remote collaboration and communication tools available, procedures around remote work/meetings. We emphasized the value and use of our communication plan with our customer partners for projects. The teams have done a great job adapting to this, and we communicate, collaborate, and provide better service now than ever before. 

What has been one of the most exciting solutions that one of your teams has implemented recently?

One of the most exciting solutions that one of our teams recently implemented was for a global financial/business services customer partner. They receive 50k pieces of mail a day, and a portion of it is time-sensitive. The solution we implemented digitizes the mail, automatically extracts data from the documents, and determines the routing direction based on keywords and phrases in these mostly unstructured documents. The sorting and routing automation operates with over a 90+% success rate and has reduced the need for 30 full-time employees that previously did this work manually. The ROI for the solution came quickly for the customer partner.

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Have questions for our CIO, Ryan? You can email him. You can view his profile on LinkedIn.

• managed services
• solution design and implementation
• ImageSource leadership