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Chief Marketing Officer, Captiva
"Captiva's technology serves thousands of users in insurance, financial services, government, business process outsourcing, direct marketing and other
markets"
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Excerpts
from an exclusive interview with Techieindex
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What is your core area of business, who are your target customers and what are
the vertical markets you cater to?
Our company's award-winning products are used to manage business critical information from paper, faxed and scanned forms and documents, Internet forms and XML data streams into the enterprise in a more accurate, timely and cost-effective manner. These products automate the processing of billions of forms and documents annually, converting their contents into information that is usable in database, document, content and other information management systems. Captiva's technology serves thousands of users in insurance, financial services, government, business process outsourcing, direct marketing and other markets.
2. Captiva Software provides input management solutions that optimize the processing of information across the enterprise. What are the other benefits it provides an organization and could you elaborate on how this solution saves time and money?
The immediate benefits are reduced operational costs, such as reducing the number of data entry personnel required to capture and process customer requests, claims, applications, invoices, etc. Since data quality is also improved, less time is spent on fixing mistakes, responding to complaints from customers, etc. The secondary benefits, which can be substantially higher, are accelerated business processes. For example, if a credit card issuer can reduce credit card account application times from, say 7-8 days to 3-4 days, card holders will get their new credit cards faster and begin spending sooner, allowing the issuer to recognize revenue faster.
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3. Captiva Software Corporation has merged with ActionPoint,Inc. and formed one of the most complete providers of input management software solutions. What is Captiva's take on M & A's, alliances and partnerships? What are the different kind of partnerships you are currently targeting?
Our partnership focus is twofold. First, as our solutions have traditionally targeted high-end, high-volume customers, we're looking to expand our market share "down market" to customers with lower document volumes. We're doing this by 1) introducing streamlined, easier to use solutions (such as our InputAccel Express product) for lower volume environments and 2) distributing these with specific VAR partners. InputAccel Express, for example, is available only through the VAR channel. Headway is our exclusive distributor in Europe.
Second, we're working closely with hardware vendors to provide a complete input management solution to our customers. Our customers desire to purchase complete solutions to their needs from a single vendor that can provide the hardware, software and integration, as opposed to going to three separate vendors for these. Captiva has seen a rise in the number of larger contracts that include software, the integration and/or resell of hardware products, such as high-end scanners, and comprehensive system integration services. Working closely with our hardware providers, we will continue fulfilling our customers' needs for complete, end-to-end solutions.
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4. Captiva Software has announced results for the quarter ended March 31, 2003, wherein revenue has increased to $12.6 million, an increase of 6% on a pro forma basis, compared to the same time last year. During the quarter the company's cash position increased to $8.1 million from $7.5 million in December 31, 2002. How have you managed to sustain a positive growth in this time of economic downslide?
First, our lower operating expenses during the first quarter illustrate one of the expected benefits of the merger effected last year, and should contribute to our earnings growth during the remainder of this year. Second, the merger provided us with a more comprehensive and compelling suite of solutions, which bolsters our competitive advantage and should allow us to drive future revenue and profit growth as customers and partners increasingly place greater emphasis on a vendor's size and financial stability, and its ability to provide a more complete solution to their input management problems. Finally, the value proposition of our products continues to be quite attractive in an era when customers are tasked with "doing more with less," reducing operating costs and providing a solid, measurable returns on their investments.
5. Recently Captiva's Digital Mailroom was named the 'Best New Product' at AIIM 2003. Besides this, Captiva products have won a host of international awards. How do you manage to sustain the streak of innovation at Captiva?
Our innovations are a result of listening to and responding to the requests and desires of our customers. Using Digital Mailroom as an example, in the last two years, we've had many customers request a solution to manage the receipt, analysis, routing and delivery of all their communications, including so-called 'white mail'. In addition, we have a number of current customers already utilizing custom versions of our existing software in their mailroom operations and enjoying the benefits of doing so.
Electronically assimilating structured documents and forms with scanner and software systems has shown proven, rapid return on investment for thousands of companies. Now, progressive firms are looking to expand upon these efficiencies by capturing the content of every incoming document regardless of format, and managing all of their inbound communications into their enterprises. Thus, we've expanded our solution offerings to semi-structured documents, such as invoices, and unstructured documents, such as mail.
We also utilize several forums, such as our user group meetings and our Customer Advisory Council, to heed the desires and requests of our customers to provide solutions to their business needs.
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6. Could you elaborate on Captiva's Digital Mailroom and what its main features and benefits are for Enterprise Organization? Who are the target clients for Captiva Digital Mailroom?
Digital Mailroom is a new, automated classification and routing system for digitized images of inbound mail and electronic communications. It offers a single point of entry for a company's incoming mail, faxes, e-mail and electronic communications streams. The system automatically recognizes and routes digitized images of documents and data to the appropriate department or person for further processing while concurrently providing full auditing and tracking capabilities. This results in reduced operational costs, the elimination of cumbersome paper as it enters the enterprise and faster, more accurate routing of forms, documents and other transactions for accelerated business processes and optimized customer satisfaction. Additional benefits include reduced
ma il processing costs, improved mail security, ensured capture of business-critical information and the quick delivery of time-sensitive data to streamline business practices.
The Digital Mailroom will fundamentally change how information is collected, distributed and utilized across an enterprise. It is designed to substantially reduce the delays, communications bottlenecks, overflowing in-boxes and the perennial 'lost mail' problems that have existed in business for
decades. It is targeted to companies in insurance, financial services, government and other high document volume enterprises.
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7. Since inception, Captiva has come a long way! What are your future plans and what is you focus for the coming year?
We remain cautiously optimistic about 2003, as the economic environment and IT spending remain soft and uncertainties related to world events emerged during the first quarter. Despite these inhibitors, our goal for the year is increase pro forma revenues by 10% to between $53 and $54 million, and we remain cautiously optimistic about sustaining a 15% to 20% annual revenue growth rate in future years when the economic environment and IT spending return to more normalized patterns. This will be accomplished by better penetrating our existing vertical markets, capturing a larger portion of the dollars our customers spend on input management solutions and entering new vertical markets through the introduction of new products and sales and marketing initiatives.
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About
Jim Vickers
Before heading the Captiva Marketing team, Jim was the General Manager for Pixel Translations. Prior to taking on responsibility of General Manager for Pixel Translations, Jim was the Senior VP of Worldwide Sales for ActionPoint. Jim has had a distinguished career as the Senior VP of Sales and Marketing at TR Systems, senior sales and marketing roles at EFI and significant sales responsibility with Canon. His strong background in sales, marketing, channels and OEM activities lend themselves well to his new role as the Pixel Translations General Manager.
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