Emerging Technologies

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• December 2007 Issue
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There are four types of technology:

• Technology we use now
• Technology we have discarded
• Technology that is about to emerge
• Technology far away

We live in the present and plan for our futures. Discarded technology makes for good war stories and can brighten any conversation. Who among us can tell stories about using Corel’s WordPerfect or Software Arts’ VisiCalc, for example? The now technologies help us do what is necessary — tax returns, financial planning, research, etc. The third type of technology implies simply that technology will forever change … for the better, for the worse, for the confusion, for the simplicity and for the complex lives we all live. Technology far away is the stuff where dreams come true (and not necessarily within our lifetime). The technologies mentioned in this article are some of the emerging technologies on the near-term horizon that will impact us both personally and professionally.

The emerging technologies in this article fall into the following categories:

• Scan & Organize/Scan & Populate
• Virtualization
• iPhone, iTouch, iDon’tKnow!!
• Social Networking Sites
• Microsoft Home Server
• SANs (storage options)
• Virtual Servers & Storage — “Bring in the Clouds”
• Wireless Technologies
• Exchange Unified Messaging

Scan & Organize/Scan & Populate
The digitizing of everything is well underway. Music, video, images and audio are logical elements of digital storage files for easy retrieval to listen and watch. Documents of all sizes and shapes contain information that is necessary for processing and analysis. Examples of paper-based data containers include tax information for all kinds of returns, financial transactions used for strategic planning, documentation about internal controls for audit assessments and correspondence with customers, vendors and staff.

This technology includes the scanning, indexing, archiving and retrieving of as many different types of data as needed by the enterprise. The information in paper documents can be combined with application files that are generated from multiple processing systems. Several vendors provide support tools for this process.

Scan & organize tools

• BOCDIP, now CCH Scan
• GoFileRoom TaxFlow
• Doc.It DM – Forms Recognition

Scan & fill tools

• 1040SCAN from SurePrep
• Intuit Source Doc Auto-Entry
• Thomson Tax & Accounting to launch pilot for UltraTax
• CCH to launch two products this year
  • Scan & Fill for TaxWise and ATX
  • ProSystem fx product being developed with EMC Captiva
• Workflow integration
  • XCM Automated Workflow

While scanning has been around since the early days of facsimile transmission in the 1940s, the difference today is the capability to convert the image of a document into specific data elements such as name, address, financial amounts, categories, et al. The components of creating a scan and populate application include the following processes:

Enhanced scan quality (VRS or similar technology) — de-speckle, de-skew, rotate, eliminate blank pages, remove colored backgrounds, etc.

• Forms recognition
  • How many W-2 formats are there?
  • Brokerage statement
• OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
• ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition)

Things to keep in mind as you implement scanning as a means to gather, organize and archive information into digital retrievable data includes the following:

• “Scan & Populate” is a SUPERSET of “Scan & Organize.”
• Very wide differences in capabilities of competing products.
• Complex returns (many supporting documents) benefit significantly from “Scan & Organize.”
• Simpler returns may actually benefit MORE from “Scan & Populate.”
• Process — firms MUST be willing to adapt workflow to take advantage of technology.
• Timing — more sophisticated products are processed remotely.