Your CFO will love it. Because he can empower every desktop without buying more production document scanners and hiring extra trained operators. Even your IT staff will appreciate it. Because they can deploy, administer, and support Ascent Ricochet globally from a single administrator's remote desktop.

Empowers Content Experts

No one knows more about a document than the people who created it or who work closely with the information it contains. Thus, they are the best qualified to index it for later retrieval and processing. Ascent Ricochet empowers these content experts to initiate this workflow faster and more accurately than ever before.

No Delays, No Lost Documents, No Additional Investment

No longer must companies ship documents to a central location for scanning, indexing and workflow insertion. That can add days to transaction processing, compromise security of sensitive information and even cause the loss of more than one out of every four documents.

Some companies have installed distributed document capture operations to address these issues. Distributed capture can shorten the transaction processing cycle by days, improve security and dramatically reduce document losses. But traditional distributed capture requires investment in scanners, capture software and specially trained personnel for each office where capture will occur. This can still be an effective choice when a substantial volume of documents must be captured at each office.

However, when volumes are small but captured documents must still enter a designated workflow, Ascent Ricochet may be the best choice. It enables the knowledge worker to initiate this workflow using their desktop Web browser and the nearest digital copier or multifunction peripheral (MFP). And Ricochet amplifies the benefits of distributed capture: Workflow can be triggered in minutes versus hours (or days for centrally scanned documents), and pre-indexing by the content expert - rather than a scanning specialist - results in more accurate classification of mission-critical documents.

Take financial services. A branch officer helps a customer complete the forms required to apply for a loan. The branch officer is the content expert for that loan package and is best-qualified to enter a few key index values and launch the remainder of the loan origination workflow. Extend that capability across the enterprise and that institution can approve and close loans faster than a competitor.

As Simple as Surfing the Web. As Familiar as Using a Copier.

On the user side, Ascent Ricochet is a  Java application that presents itself to the user through a familiar Web browser interface. Installation is a simple, one-time download. A desktop icon launches it.

Using it is just as easy. Simply walk your document to the nearest networked copier, select your name from the list in the copier display, place the document in the feeder and press a single button. When you return to your desk, launch Ascent Ricochet and it will display icons of the document pages you just scanned. Then select a document package type from the pull-down list and fill in the associated index fields that appear. Zoom the icons to confirm image quality, rotate them or select some or all for inclusion in your document package. Need to attach an e-doc -- say a spreadsheet -- to your package? No problem. Ascent Ricochet supports electronic attachments.

Click send and that's it. The user doesn't need to know anything about the terminology or procedures of production document capture. Instead, technology behind the scenes recognizes the document type, automatically creates additional indexing information and releases the document to the proper workflow within the organization. Within minutes, any authorized person may access or modify the document.

No Software Installation Or Upgrade Hassles

Organizations can enjoy these benefits without the cost and hassle of desktop software installations from CD, without hardware licensing keys and without purchasing additional products for the designated offices. Administrators simply supply a Web address where users can go to download the product. Once downloaded, each remote location can use its existing digital copier or MFP as the input device for their organization's document workflow needs.