ABBYY Does Meetings Right – San Diego in the Fall

As a mid-westerner in November, you have to know that a business trip to California is very welcomed during this time of year. The opportunity to get away to one of the most beautiful parts of the country to one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited, was delightful to say the least. The city of San Diego had cool temperatures in the evening; low 50’s, and the daytime was nice and sunny for the majority of the trip with highs in the mid 70’s.

The scenery was absolutely stunning. To me, the city was something from a movie with its gorgeous mountainous backdrop, houses, shopping, corporate offices, and restaurants for miles and miles in the distance. Funny enough, we had dinner one evening at Kansas City BBQ, and later learned that there was a movie scene filmed at the restaurant for a movie you’ve surely seen; Top Gun. Another exciting sight for me was that the hotel was on the marina and at all times of the day, you could look out and see large ships, including the U.S. Coast Guard passing by while seagulls seemed to guide them down the bay.

I ventured out a couple mornings for morning walks as I rose much earlier than I would have liked due to my body being set on Eastern time. On the walks, I saw not only the cute little Seaport Village, but also yachts, the USS Midway Navy Aircraft Carrier, and a few monuments that were so unique and unlike any that I have seen before. You’ll see in the photo recap below the Unconditional Surrender statue and the National Salute to Bob Hope monument that were particularly eye-catching.

If you haven’t visited the city of San Diego, add it to your bucket list.

Nicki’s Conference Takeaways

The Keynote by Sandy Kemsley was fantastic and resonated most with me. She nailed home why digital transformation is a must in business today and how software like ABBYY FlexiCapture and other intelligent capture products help to make digital transformation possible. I’ve shared her SlideShare presentation below.

In her presentation, she gave a few examples of companies and industries using intelligent capture to make business decisions rapidly and with great levels of insight while exposing organizational data transparency. One was the online insurance agency Lemonade. They are revolutionizing the way insurance policies are initiated, the way customers are billed, the way claims are processed, and in this transformation, they are making an impact in the world with their Giveback policy. When a customer has money remaining in their “bank” of funds they’ve paid into their policy, Lemonads takes what is left at the end of the year after customer claims have been processed and operating expenses, etc are accounted for, and they make a donation to the organization of the customer’s choice. It’s not just digital transformation, it is social impact.

Another example that really caught my attention were the two restaurant/food delivery apps she spoke of that are riding the wave of digital transformation. She mentioned Foodora and one other that is slipping my memory. The two restaurant delivery services she mentioned seemed to take on a very similar concept to one we have one here in Indy called ClusterTruck. ClusterTruck has really made a great impact with hungry, busy, downtown Indy lunchers. You order your food online, or via the app, and the services show you the full process of your order using digital application that updates as the food order has 1. been received, 2. begins cooking, 3. is on its way to you, and 4. has been delivered. In most cases, ClusterTruck has food curbside delivered via bike or car at the Optiform office in under 20 minutes with no delivery charge.

Services like these are changing the meaning of convenience. The use of data does not only empower the customer and make them feel like they are in control of their purchases, but it also provides an amazing amount of insight into purchases, quality of service, and satisfaction to the business owner. B2C organizations rely on word of mouth to thrive and the technology that is available right now changes the game for these early adopters. These are the businesses that will be around because they have adapted to the technology demand and have given the people what they want.

Aaron’s Conference Takeaways

Aaron Schafer, our Sales and Solutions Engineer, attended the conference with a mindset of absorbing all the amazing technology and training sessions ABBYY presented. When you work with Optiform on an ABBYY FlexiCapture, FlexiCapture for Invoices, or Recognition Server implementation, Aaron will be your guy. He is extremely knowledgeable about ABBYY products and it showed when he passed his re-certification tests with flying colors. In case you didn’t know, ABBYY requires that their re-sellers maintain current software certifications to ensure that you are getting the proper support from their Certified Solutions Partners. We have not only one, but two ABBYY certified staff on board. Wayne Michael is our other ABBYY guy!

I asked Aaron to share with me what he got out of the conference and here is what he had to say:

Technical Tips:

When you go to a Technology Summit, you are guaranteed to come back with a few aha’s. Here are Aaron’s.

• Exporting a trained FlexiLayout variant in FlexiCapture for Invoices to fine-tune:
  You can save yourself some time and improve the detection of invoice fields by exporting a trained FlexiLayout and importing it back into the training batch.
• Automatically sending an email to admin when a license expires:
  FlexiCapture now has a setting within the administrative panel that allows you to set up an automated email to notify an ABBYY administrator that your license is about to expire. This is a very helpful feature when you think about organizations that are processing hundreds of thousands of documents annually. Knowing that you are reaching your limit helps you to plan accordingly.
• Image Snippets:
  ABBYY is all about productivity. You can now display snippets of an area of the image where the field is detected below the entry field on the validation screen. This comes in handy for users to be able to quickly verify OCR or ICR results as they work through a document.

Connections:

I asked Aaron who he met and made an impact on him. While we both met SO many super intelligent and helpful people, these were the two that stood out most to him.

• Andrew Zyuzin (Lead Project Manager) – Andrew was in San Diego all the way from the Russian offices of ABBYY! He and Aaron were able to converse about the FlexiCapture for Invoices demo that Aaron put on the Optiform site, and began discussing some new concepts are under development. The face to face interaction that came out of this conference is such a great addition to the day-to-day email, instant messaging, and phone communication.  I can’t wait to hear what is up next in the innovation department.
• Pierre van der Westhuizen (Director Integration Services) – he gave one of Aaron’s favorite presentations surrounding best practices and providing tips for designing a high-performance system. The SlideShare link is below. Check it out!

Best Practices:

• Using environment variables for connection strings – Ask Aaron more about this. You can click to send him an email and let him know of your interest.
• Tips for designing a high-performance system Link to SlideShare

A photo recap

Sandy Kemsley – BPM Expert

Daneen Storc on why invoice automation is key to an efficient Accounts Payable department

It’s a little hard to see, but this slide demonstrates the percentage of companies that have digitized and automated invoice processing: Enterprise – 50%, Midsize – 40%, and SMB – 30%.

The ABBYY software portfolio and a matrix displaying where each lies.

A look at the business monitoring tool for ABBYY FlexiCapture

The conference was not only informative, but the application of what was learned coupled with pre-existing knowledge through study and testing was confirmed by the re-certification exams at the conference. Aaron passed with flying colors, of course!

The Marriott San Diego Marina was so beautiful!

The view from Nicki’s window on the final morning of the conference

On a morning walk, Nicki found this Tribute to Bob Hope

The Unconditional Surrender statue was another treat that Nicki found on her morning walk

The USS Midway Aircraft Carrier

The sun sets so beautifully over the water

The final dinner was held at Moonshine Flats; a really fun establishment that had not only great food, but nearly every social game you can imagine – Jenga, Cornhole, Shuffleboard, Foozball, Billiards, and more.

One of my favorite things was seeing the Christmas tree next to the palm tree.