September 13, 2023 • 24 mins
Say goodbye to Sharpies and manual note conversion. From converting physical notes to digital notes to AI-driven redaction in sensitive documents, Xerox Workflow Central is on the case.
Shelby Skrhak speaks with Rebecca Wells, global enterprise marketing at Xerox Corporation, about:
To join the discussion, follow us on Twitter @IngramMicroUSA #B2BTechTalk
Listen to this episode and more like it by subscribing to B2B Tech Talk on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Spreaker.
Shelby Skrhak speaks with Rebecca Wells, global enterprise marketing at Xerox Corporation, about:
- Defining the Xerox Workflow Central platform
- The value of automatically transforming handwriting to text
- Redaction capabilities of the Xerox Workflow Central
To join the discussion, follow us on Twitter @IngramMicroUSA #B2BTechTalk
Listen to this episode and more like it by subscribing to B2B Tech Talk on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Spreaker.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
You're listening to B to B TechTalk with ingram Micro, a place to
learn about how to grow your businessand stay ahead of technological advances before they
become mainstream. This episode is sponsoredby ingram Micro's Expantage, the next Level
way to transform your business's potential andreshape how customers see you through advanced transactional
data. Let's get into it.Welcome to B to B Tech Talk with
(00:32):
Ingram Micro. I'm your host,Shelby skirt Hawk, and our guest today
is Rebecca Wells, app sales Enablementmanager for Xerox Corporation. Rebecca, Welcome,
Hey Shelby, thanks so much forhaving me. Thank you well.
Today we are talking about reimagining workfor a more flexible world with Xerox Workflow
(00:53):
Central platform. So, first off, Rebecca, what is the Xerox Workflow
Central platform. It's a great questionto start with, so I'd be happy
to answer. So, workflow Centralat Xerox, we've been developing what we
call applications that sit on our devicesfor about nine years at this point,
and Workflow Central is really kind ofan extension of all of that work.
(01:15):
It's a cloud based platform that's hostedby Microsoft Azure that features a multitude of
different document conversion tools really all aroundtransforming documents, making them easily accessible,
more productive for the individual the user. And what's really nice about this solution
is that it's accessible from both ourXerox devices, but also on a PC,
(01:38):
on a tablet, a mobile device, pretty much any device a client
maybe wanting to access these tools from. So it's really ideal for this on
the go or hybrid work environment thatwe now see, especially post pandemic.
Yeah, well, to clarify then, so the apps, they do sit
on the devices, but you canact them at other places. It's not
(02:00):
just on the Xerox device. Arethese apps that are kind of very tailored
and specific to processes that only aXerox does or are these for more broader
applications, great question, It's reallybroad, right. So the apps and
software that we focus on at Xeroxare really designed around solving challenges for our
(02:22):
clients, and one of the waysthat we can do that is by finding
once manual document processes or data processesconversion processes and being able to apply automation
to them so that they're no longermanual day to day workflows. So optimizing
the way that our clients work.And yeah, you hit the nail on
(02:43):
the head with Workflow Central. Youknow, it's kind of about taking a
lot of those applications that we didhave on our devices focused on hard copy
documents, if you will, thepaper based document I'm tathering all of that
technology and just making it accessible fordigital documents as well as wherever that individual
happens to be, not necessarily walkingup to the Xerox MFP every time.
(03:07):
Got it. And you mentioned thatthis was launched kind of, you know,
right as our world was shifting andwe found a lot of new challenges
that we are needing to face kindof on a more remote access. So
I guess I do want to getinto the specific workflows that we're talking about,
(03:27):
because that's the thing is that,you know a lot of these are
manual processes that we've we've had todo in hybrid work probably we had to
do them at the office too,but you know, I understand that.
So the Workflow Central, it's gotseven document conversion workflows and it's sweet and
I kind of I want to goover a few of those for our listeners.
(03:49):
So if you don't want to Rebecca, I'm going to do it a
little bit in in a context ofa journalist and a podcast host. You
know, that's me who deals withwords all days long. And so,
for example, for these podcasts,always conduct a prep call right before,
you know, before we record,so that way I can understand more of
the technical content better as well askind of set the scene so we you
(04:10):
know, we've got a good rapportthere. But I hate to be typing
clacking away in somebody's ear when youknow, when we're discussing all this,
So I'll take handwritten notes that thenlater I'm going to use those notes to
form questions. So I understand Xeroxhas a workflow of handwriting to text.
Tell me about that, correct.And I love the additional context added in
(04:31):
that scenario because I think, youknow, how we can all recognize where
we find value as in our dayto day right, how could I take
the handwriting to text and actually implementit into what I'm doing? And I
think the handwriting to text, inaddition to the context you just gave,
it's something that can be seen asa productivity tool in so many other industries
job roles, but in that specificsituation, the handwriting to text. What
(04:56):
that would allow you to do is, let's say you have those handwritten notes
on pieces of loose leaf. Youwould be able to if you have as
your OXMFP, walk up to yourr XMFP, put those handwritten notes in
the document feeder, and scan thatthrough workflow Central using the handwriting to text
workflow. That would then allow youto email yourself or upload to a cloud
(05:21):
repository, whatever output option you prefer, or maybe it's a reprint, so
you're printing out a document that's goingto be an automatically retyped version of those
handwritten notes. So what I'm doingis I'm eliminating the manual process of retyping
handwritten notes, which actually happens quiteoften. And even if you don't have
(05:45):
the Xerox MFP, you can evenon your mobile phone, Shelby. You
could take those handwritten notes down andthen take a picture with your cell phone,
upload that jpeg image through workflow Centralon your phone, and have that
image be transferred into or converted intoa retyped word doc for you. So
it happens all the time. Andwhat we see is that actually two thirds
(06:09):
of handwritten notes are eventually at somepoint going to be retyped in order to
digitize them. So it's very common. Yeah, okay, So continuing in
some of these different workflows, soI understand that there is a convert to
audio or a summarize. I'm imaginingthis in the context of, so what
if I've got tons and tons ofnotes and I need to be able to
(06:30):
boil down all of those things forsome interview questions. So how I mean,
I guess it sounds self explanatory.So I'm able to convert the text
that I've got and it's basically goingto play it for me so I can
listen to it on the go,right, Yeah, absolutely, So I
have a couple recommendations in this casefor how you can more easily or more
(06:53):
productively consume information. And again,this is something that happens spans across pretty
much any industry in job role wherewe're all dealing with a lot of information
that we have to consume, wehave to action. So making the document
or making the data within those documentsmore consumable is definitely a goal of Workflow
(07:14):
Central, and we can accomplish itin a couple different ways. So the
one that you mentioned I'm the firstone being able to summarize information. So
think of like back to grade schoolwhen we had the Coles Notes version of
everything, and you know, youhad to read a novel, but you
would go and get the Coals Notesto get a really good understanding or a
summarized version of that full document orthat full paper book, whatever it happens
(07:38):
to be the summarized feature and workflowCentral is going to do a very similar
thing. It's going to create anexecutive summary for you. So I take
that document, I upload it throughworkflow Central, whether it be again a
hard copy document or a digital document, and I can actually then choose how
much I want to summarize my originaldocument length using AI to do that workflow,
(08:01):
so anywhere from five to ninety percent. So you've got this great little
executive summary now that's going to hitall of the key points, and you
can go back to it and useit as a productivity tool to not necessarily
have to read, you know,the full length of that original document.
And then even taking it a stepfurther talking about how I can make content
even more accessible. We also havethe convert Audio workflow and what that's going
(08:26):
to do is allow you to listento information instead of having to read it.
And I think about this from productivitystandpoint. Let's say you're driving to
work in the morning, Shelby,and instead of having to get there early
to prepare for your next podcast andsit and read all of your questions,
what if you could have an MPthree file playing in your car that's prepping
you for that podcast instead nextra fifteenminutes in the morning. Put back into
(08:52):
your day, right. Well,so looking at more of these these applications.
So I'm looking at the vert PDFsand the merge functions here. So
I was writing about a big milliondollars home for sale and the description and
the home's features were in a PDFdocument that was you know, uploaded to
(09:13):
the to the MLS, to thelisting service, and then it was photocopy.
It was like a photocopy of aPDF. Like, Okay, that's
that's a little cumbersome. I can'tdo anything with this digitally. So how
can workflow Central help with that?Absolutely so, And I love that you
mentioned the different types of documents andeven you know, the scanned version of
(09:35):
the original document, which we seea lot and workflow Central because of how
powerful our OCR is behind the scenes, it's actually going to pick up those
documents as well, so it doesn'thave to be the first clean version of
that document. Even if you've gota scanned version. This is going to
work. So what I would recommendin this case, We've got two workflows
(09:58):
in this case as while. Thefirst one is what we call or convert
to Microsoft Office. So what that'sgoing to do is allow you to take
an uneditable and I say uneditable specificallyinstead of PDF, because it can be
again a JPEG image which is uneditable, it can be a hardcopy document,
or it can be that PDF.I can convert those documents back into a
(10:20):
workable, editable Microsoft Office file format, so word, PowerPoint or Excel.
In addition to that, right thenI've got that easy editing back and able
to make the changes that I needto my document. But on top of
that, you could also use themerge workflow, and that's going to take
different document types and it's going tomerge them together into one file. So
(10:43):
at the end of the day youhave a completely editable and merge together document
instead of a bunch of separate uneditablefiles sitting in different places. So it
really cleans up that document for you, I think, and makes it a
lot more more actionable. Definitely.Oh let's see what else. So workflow
Central can translate. That's got thatfunction, which I guess is pretty self
(11:07):
explanatory. But it also has redact, so sensitive information that's contained within documents
can be struck through or are markedout. And this is you know,
the redaction tool is interesting because youthink, okay, well, redaction is
just crossing through some stuff. Butwe know that, you know, in
truly sensitive documents, you know,the old you know, black highlight or
(11:31):
the black you know sharpie doesn't worknecessarily. And there's been instances where documents,
sensitive documents have been uploaded to mayberepositories of you know, open open
records requests, that sort of thing, and that stuff can be undone by
some some pretty clever people online.So tell us about how the redact function
(11:52):
of workflow Central really works and kindof I imagine does it the right way?
Absolutely? And I love of theuse of a real life scenario.
So let me give you a realclient use case that we have when it
comes to redaction. I love someof the things that you mentioned when it
comes to the redaction feature that wehave in Workflow Central. What kind of
(12:15):
stands us apart a little bit isthe fact that this is a true AI
automated redaction solutions. So you're nothaving to go through the document and decide
what you want to redact, eitherby sharping out or using some other softwares
that you can to digitally blackout words. This is actually going to use AI
to scan through the document and redactall of the information, all of the
(12:39):
PII data points Personal identifiable information datapoints that need to be redacted at the
documents, So it eliminates the possibilityfor human error. And then in addition
to that, it's done in seconds, so I'm saving time. So in
this particular case, what we wereable to do, and it was actually
for a mayor's office. So whenwe redaction, I think the first thing
(13:01):
comes to mind is legal, Right, we got to go after legal and
they're redacting. But think about redactionor data security from almost a horizontal approach.
Everybody cares about data security. Soin this case, it was a
mayor's office, and I was workingwith the clerk of this mayor's office,
and one of the things that shewas responsible for was anytime a public access
(13:24):
record request came in, she wouldhave to fulfill those requests, and depending
on the time of year, ifthere was an election coming up, sometimes
she would have hundreds of these ata time to fulfill. So what she
was having to do is go andsource that document, make a copy,
and then sit there and manually witha sharpie redact out the information before she
(13:46):
was then having to rescan to digitizethe document and email it out to the
person that requested it. So areally broken and manual process. And I
kid you not. She also hada brace on her and I asked her,
Oh cool, I'm not kidding.I asked her jokingly, you know,
do you have carpal titles? Shesaid yes, I absolutely do.
(14:07):
Oh her and I became best friends, if you can imagine. So we
installed the workflow Central. She wasable to completely digitally redact documents. An
automated process saved her huge amount oftime And hopefully I haven't caught up with
her in a little bit, butmaybe she's not wearing that brace anymore.
So there's certainly places for redaction inpretty much any customer environment. Yeah that's
(14:33):
interesting because, yeah, you don'trealize how much time gets spent in that
and you know, especially like okay, well for a manual task, well
maybe I can, I can delegatethat to an intern. But an intern,
you know, may know, okay, well I need to redact any
any name that's in there, maybea social security number, but you know,
when you're getting down to date ofbirth and sensitive files, the gender
(14:56):
of a person. I'm thinking moreof in criminal cases, you know,
we want to keep that under wrapsin criminal situations. That's interesting how much
time that takes? So h well, okay, So I we've gone over
a lot of these these tactical functionsof workflow Central, and I imagine there's
there's lots of these scenarios or anecdotesthat you hear from from resellers and customers
(15:20):
and and uh and I love thatthat your your customer turn friend is of
saving some time and her and herjob there. I wonder if just do
any other anecdotes come to mind,or or any scenarios that you've really heard
that workflow central is really helpful toolthat's more than just a kind of an
add on. It's it's creating productivity. Absolutely. You know, I'll tell
(15:45):
you about one that is actually welldocumented. You can find videos on YouTube
of this particular customer Buena Park SchoolDistrict, which is a school district out
of California that is supported by oneof our partners, q Docs, and
they are one of our partners thatis making huge progress with their customers their
(16:07):
clients with Workflow Central as well asall of our applications. But in this
particular situation, the partner was actuallyable to go in have a conversation with
the client on translation and it turnedout that this client had a requirement that
they had to send home information toparents of students within their school board in
(16:30):
whatever their native language happened to be. So what we see a lot in
education, especially with children coming intothe school system and families coming into the
public school system that may not haveEnglish as their first language. What we
see is that the student is gettingthe English language exposure by being at school
and being around the teachers and otherchildren, but a lot of the times
(16:51):
the parents at home are not gettingthat same exposure. So one of the
ways we can really wrap our armsaround those parents and include them in their
child's education is by being able tocommunicate with them in whatever language they happen
to speak. So that's what thisparticular school district was doing, and it
was not a cheap thing to do. It was a fairly expensive process.
(17:15):
But what they were able to dois go in and instead of having the
human translation, they were able tosell the customer Workflow Central, which allowed
them to now automatically translate to andfrom all of those languages that they needed.
But in addition to that, onceWorkflow Central got into that education environment,
they started to pick up on allof the other value that they could
(17:38):
realize from the other workflows. So, for example, the convert to audio
being used as a teaching it forstudents that may have reading comprehension issues.
If I can't physically read the documentas well, it's been proven that I
can listen and read at the sametime and it'll enhance my reading comprehension.
We also have redaction being used forthose student records. Right sensitive information being
(18:03):
shared or stored on students should alwaysbe security top of mind and potentially redacting
out some of that information. Theteachers using the handwriting to text, so
you know, filling out a whiteboardthroughout a class full of notes and then
instead of having to sit there andretype and recreate those teaching aids to send
out to their students. They're ableto just capture an image, take a
(18:26):
picture with their mobile phone of thewhiteboard, and have that go through handwriting
to text and now they've got aretyped word doc that they can send out
to their students. And we knowwith teachers, every single moment of productivity
that we can offer and time thatwe can put back in their hands is
very precious. So I could goon and on, but it's what we
see a lot in these cases whereWorkflow Central gets into an environment for one
(18:51):
or two of the immediate values thatthey can see in the workflows, But
because we all have such different jobfunctions, because we're all dealing with different
types of data and could find differentworkflows beneficial to us, it kind of
gets in and then all of asudden, all seven of our workflows are
being used and are realizing value forthe customer. I appreciate the full insight.
(19:14):
I hope listeners didn't feel like Iwas just I was just spending time
trying to figure out how to domy job better. Hopefully, you know
you're able to identify some of yourown workflows in there, so reaching out
as far as understanding workflow Central fora reseller that's listening, you know,
how how do they go about,you know, including this type of workflow
(19:36):
for themselves or their customers. Certainly, and Shelby, if I've made your
life easier, if I've made easiermy day, that's a that's a win
in my books, and I'm happyto do it for anybody else that's listening
on this call today as well.So how you can get in touch,
Reach out to your Ingram rep.They can put you in contact with Xerox.
If you're not already as Xerox partner, you can become as Xerox partner,
(20:00):
get access to all of the differentofferings that we have at Xerox,
one of them obviously being the appsin the workflow central space. And then
I support all of our North Americanand Latin American partners, So at some
point you'll probably be in communication withme, and I would love to get
to know all of you and howwe can support your business and your clients.
(20:21):
Awesome. Getting to our final questionwe always ask our guests, and
that's where do you see technology goingin the next year? So it can
be within this space or just somethingelse that you're learning out about. But
where are we going to be thistime twenty twenty four? I GA,
So I will probably give you ananswer that I'm assuming you've heard once or
twice before. But it really isjust such an interesting space, both in
(20:44):
a professional sense but also in ourpersonal lives of I can't wait to see
where artificial intelligence, robotic process automation. I can't wait to see where that's
going to continue to drive our industryforward. Right I think about at Xerox,
we are a legacy company that hasalways been at the forefront of technology,
(21:06):
at the forefront of innovation. Thinkabout all the patents we have under
our name. Think about you know, the personal computer as an example,
is something that we are at theforefront of development. So I just feel
really lucky to work for a companythat has always been there and will continue
to be a part of leading thecharge for whatever is new in our space.
And right now it seems to bethat AI, that RPA that's going
(21:30):
to continue to drive efficiencies for notonly us, but also our clients.
And then of course, you knowthe chat gbts and all the ways that
we can see it in our personallives. Can't wait to see how it's
going to simplify my day to day. Yeah, RPA robotic process and automation.
So basically, how can we continueto automate you know, manual process
and kind of like what we've beentalking about today. Yeah, well it
(21:52):
is interesting. I mean that's thething. You know, people start to
be like, oh, yeah,I know, what's going to be the
same thing that everybody says. Butseriously, I love AI answers because I
want to know, specifically within aspecific industry, what the AI implications are.
You know, you can say AIin general, but you know,
I don't know exactly how powerful AIneeds to be in order to not only
(22:15):
pick up the PDF example I wastalking about, and now I think about
it, it was a scanned documentthat was photocopied and then it was made
into a PDF and then it waswould be a picture of it. It
was it was so backwards. Butyou know that requires a really really powerful
of CR to be able to pickthat up. So that's not just your
(22:36):
everyday you know, old school OCRthat didn't make a whole lot of sense.
This is pretty powerful stuff. Absolutely, you know, I go back
to our marketing campaign right now.If you've seen us in the airports,
if you've seen us on billboards,we have this we make Work Work campaign
right now. And one of thethings that we talk about is, you
know, you may not know everythingwe do at CRX, but if we
(22:57):
didn't do it, you would startonly notice. So it's all of those
back end processes that we can automatethrough AI that's going to allow our clients
to do what they do best andnot have to worry about the process intensive
back end back end processes. Sowe'll take care of all of that.
Yeah, or Rebecca, it's beena pleasure of talking to you. Thank
(23:18):
you so much for joining me.Thank you so much for having me.
I'm was excited to be here.And like I said, if I've helped
you or anybody on this podcast simplifytheir day, that's a win. Love
it well and thank you listeners fortuning in and subscribing to B to B
Tech Talk with Ingram Micro. Ifyou liked this episode or have a question,
please join the discussion on Twitter withthe hashtag B to B Tech Talk.
(23:41):
Until next time, I'm Shelby scareHawk. You've been listening to B
to B tech Talk by ingram Micro. This episode was sponsored by ingram Micro
Exvantage. B to B tech Talkis a joint production between sweet Fish Media
and ingram Micro. To listen tothis episode and many others, visit ingram
micro dot com.
You're listening to B to B TechTalk with ingram Micro, a place to
learn about how to grow your businessand stay ahead of technological advances before they
become mainstream. This episode is sponsoredby ingram Micro's Expantage, the next Level
way to transform your business's potential andreshape how customers see you through advanced transactional
data. Let's get into it.Welcome to B to B Tech Talk with
(00:32):
Ingram Micro. I'm your host,Shelby skirt Hawk, and our guest today
is Rebecca Wells, app sales Enablementmanager for Xerox Corporation. Rebecca, Welcome,
Hey Shelby, thanks so much forhaving me. Thank you well.
Today we are talking about reimagining workfor a more flexible world with Xerox Workflow
(00:53):
Central platform. So, first off, Rebecca, what is the Xerox Workflow
Central platform. It's a great questionto start with, so I'd be happy
to answer. So, workflow Centralat Xerox, we've been developing what we
call applications that sit on our devicesfor about nine years at this point,
and Workflow Central is really kind ofan extension of all of that work.
(01:15):
It's a cloud based platform that's hostedby Microsoft Azure that features a multitude of
different document conversion tools really all aroundtransforming documents, making them easily accessible,
more productive for the individual the user. And what's really nice about this solution
is that it's accessible from both ourXerox devices, but also on a PC,
(01:38):
on a tablet, a mobile device, pretty much any device a client
maybe wanting to access these tools from. So it's really ideal for this on
the go or hybrid work environment thatwe now see, especially post pandemic.
Yeah, well, to clarify then, so the apps, they do sit
on the devices, but you canact them at other places. It's not
(02:00):
just on the Xerox device. Arethese apps that are kind of very tailored
and specific to processes that only aXerox does or are these for more broader
applications, great question, It's reallybroad, right. So the apps and
software that we focus on at Xeroxare really designed around solving challenges for our
(02:22):
clients, and one of the waysthat we can do that is by finding
once manual document processes or data processesconversion processes and being able to apply automation
to them so that they're no longermanual day to day workflows. So optimizing
the way that our clients work.And yeah, you hit the nail on
(02:43):
the head with Workflow Central. Youknow, it's kind of about taking a
lot of those applications that we didhave on our devices focused on hard copy
documents, if you will, thepaper based document I'm tathering all of that
technology and just making it accessible fordigital documents as well as wherever that individual
happens to be, not necessarily walkingup to the Xerox MFP every time.
(03:07):
Got it. And you mentioned thatthis was launched kind of, you know,
right as our world was shifting andwe found a lot of new challenges
that we are needing to face kindof on a more remote access. So
I guess I do want to getinto the specific workflows that we're talking about,
(03:27):
because that's the thing is that,you know a lot of these are
manual processes that we've we've had todo in hybrid work probably we had to
do them at the office too,but you know, I understand that.
So the Workflow Central, it's gotseven document conversion workflows and it's sweet and
I kind of I want to goover a few of those for our listeners.
(03:49):
So if you don't want to Rebecca, I'm going to do it a
little bit in in a context ofa journalist and a podcast host. You
know, that's me who deals withwords all days long. And so,
for example, for these podcasts,always conduct a prep call right before,
you know, before we record,so that way I can understand more of
the technical content better as well askind of set the scene so we you
(04:10):
know, we've got a good rapportthere. But I hate to be typing
clacking away in somebody's ear when youknow, when we're discussing all this,
So I'll take handwritten notes that thenlater I'm going to use those notes to
form questions. So I understand Xeroxhas a workflow of handwriting to text.
Tell me about that, correct.And I love the additional context added in
(04:31):
that scenario because I think, youknow, how we can all recognize where
we find value as in our dayto day right, how could I take
the handwriting to text and actually implementit into what I'm doing? And I
think the handwriting to text, inaddition to the context you just gave,
it's something that can be seen asa productivity tool in so many other industries
job roles, but in that specificsituation, the handwriting to text. What
(04:56):
that would allow you to do is, let's say you have those handwritten notes
on pieces of loose leaf. Youwould be able to if you have as
your OXMFP, walk up to yourr XMFP, put those handwritten notes in
the document feeder, and scan thatthrough workflow Central using the handwriting to text
workflow. That would then allow youto email yourself or upload to a cloud
(05:21):
repository, whatever output option you prefer, or maybe it's a reprint, so
you're printing out a document that's goingto be an automatically retyped version of those
handwritten notes. So what I'm doingis I'm eliminating the manual process of retyping
handwritten notes, which actually happens quiteoften. And even if you don't have
(05:45):
the Xerox MFP, you can evenon your mobile phone, Shelby. You
could take those handwritten notes down andthen take a picture with your cell phone,
upload that jpeg image through workflow Centralon your phone, and have that
image be transferred into or converted intoa retyped word doc for you. So
it happens all the time. Andwhat we see is that actually two thirds
(06:09):
of handwritten notes are eventually at somepoint going to be retyped in order to
digitize them. So it's very common. Yeah, okay, So continuing in
some of these different workflows, soI understand that there is a convert to
audio or a summarize. I'm imaginingthis in the context of, so what
if I've got tons and tons ofnotes and I need to be able to
(06:30):
boil down all of those things forsome interview questions. So how I mean,
I guess it sounds self explanatory.So I'm able to convert the text
that I've got and it's basically goingto play it for me so I can
listen to it on the go,right, Yeah, absolutely, So I
have a couple recommendations in this casefor how you can more easily or more
(06:53):
productively consume information. And again,this is something that happens spans across pretty
much any industry in job role wherewe're all dealing with a lot of information
that we have to consume, wehave to action. So making the document
or making the data within those documentsmore consumable is definitely a goal of Workflow
(07:14):
Central, and we can accomplish itin a couple different ways. So the
one that you mentioned I'm the firstone being able to summarize information. So
think of like back to grade schoolwhen we had the Coles Notes version of
everything, and you know, youhad to read a novel, but you
would go and get the Coals Notesto get a really good understanding or a
summarized version of that full document orthat full paper book, whatever it happens
(07:38):
to be the summarized feature and workflowCentral is going to do a very similar
thing. It's going to create anexecutive summary for you. So I take
that document, I upload it throughworkflow Central, whether it be again a
hard copy document or a digital document, and I can actually then choose how
much I want to summarize my originaldocument length using AI to do that workflow,
(08:01):
so anywhere from five to ninety percent. So you've got this great little
executive summary now that's going to hitall of the key points, and you
can go back to it and useit as a productivity tool to not necessarily
have to read, you know,the full length of that original document.
And then even taking it a stepfurther talking about how I can make content
even more accessible. We also havethe convert Audio workflow and what that's going
(08:26):
to do is allow you to listento information instead of having to read it.
And I think about this from productivitystandpoint. Let's say you're driving to
work in the morning, Shelby,and instead of having to get there early
to prepare for your next podcast andsit and read all of your questions,
what if you could have an MPthree file playing in your car that's prepping
you for that podcast instead nextra fifteenminutes in the morning. Put back into
(08:52):
your day, right. Well,so looking at more of these these applications.
So I'm looking at the vert PDFsand the merge functions here. So
I was writing about a big milliondollars home for sale and the description and
the home's features were in a PDFdocument that was you know, uploaded to
(09:13):
the to the MLS, to thelisting service, and then it was photocopy.
It was like a photocopy of aPDF. Like, Okay, that's
that's a little cumbersome. I can'tdo anything with this digitally. So how
can workflow Central help with that?Absolutely so, And I love that you
mentioned the different types of documents andeven you know, the scanned version of
(09:35):
the original document, which we seea lot and workflow Central because of how
powerful our OCR is behind the scenes, it's actually going to pick up those
documents as well, so it doesn'thave to be the first clean version of
that document. Even if you've gota scanned version. This is going to
work. So what I would recommendin this case, We've got two workflows
(09:58):
in this case as while. Thefirst one is what we call or convert
to Microsoft Office. So what that'sgoing to do is allow you to take
an uneditable and I say uneditable specificallyinstead of PDF, because it can be
again a JPEG image which is uneditable, it can be a hardcopy document,
or it can be that PDF.I can convert those documents back into a
(10:20):
workable, editable Microsoft Office file format, so word, PowerPoint or Excel.
In addition to that, right thenI've got that easy editing back and able
to make the changes that I needto my document. But on top of
that, you could also use themerge workflow, and that's going to take
different document types and it's going tomerge them together into one file. So
(10:43):
at the end of the day youhave a completely editable and merge together document
instead of a bunch of separate uneditablefiles sitting in different places. So it
really cleans up that document for you, I think, and makes it a
lot more more actionable. Definitely.Oh let's see what else. So workflow
Central can translate. That's got thatfunction, which I guess is pretty self
(11:07):
explanatory. But it also has redact, so sensitive information that's contained within documents
can be struck through or are markedout. And this is you know,
the redaction tool is interesting because youthink, okay, well, redaction is
just crossing through some stuff. Butwe know that, you know, in
truly sensitive documents, you know,the old you know, black highlight or
(11:31):
the black you know sharpie doesn't worknecessarily. And there's been instances where documents,
sensitive documents have been uploaded to mayberepositories of you know, open open
records requests, that sort of thing, and that stuff can be undone by
some some pretty clever people online.So tell us about how the redact function
(11:52):
of workflow Central really works and kindof I imagine does it the right way?
Absolutely? And I love of theuse of a real life scenario.
So let me give you a realclient use case that we have when it
comes to redaction. I love someof the things that you mentioned when it
comes to the redaction feature that wehave in Workflow Central. What kind of
(12:15):
stands us apart a little bit isthe fact that this is a true AI
automated redaction solutions. So you're nothaving to go through the document and decide
what you want to redact, eitherby sharping out or using some other softwares
that you can to digitally blackout words. This is actually going to use AI
to scan through the document and redactall of the information, all of the
(12:39):
PII data points Personal identifiable information datapoints that need to be redacted at the
documents, So it eliminates the possibilityfor human error. And then in addition
to that, it's done in seconds, so I'm saving time. So in
this particular case, what we wereable to do, and it was actually
for a mayor's office. So whenwe redaction, I think the first thing
(13:01):
comes to mind is legal, Right, we got to go after legal and
they're redacting. But think about redactionor data security from almost a horizontal approach.
Everybody cares about data security. Soin this case, it was a
mayor's office, and I was workingwith the clerk of this mayor's office,
and one of the things that shewas responsible for was anytime a public access
(13:24):
record request came in, she wouldhave to fulfill those requests, and depending
on the time of year, ifthere was an election coming up, sometimes
she would have hundreds of these ata time to fulfill. So what she
was having to do is go andsource that document, make a copy,
and then sit there and manually witha sharpie redact out the information before she
(13:46):
was then having to rescan to digitizethe document and email it out to the
person that requested it. So areally broken and manual process. And I
kid you not. She also hada brace on her and I asked her,
Oh cool, I'm not kidding.I asked her jokingly, you know,
do you have carpal titles? Shesaid yes, I absolutely do.
(14:07):
Oh her and I became best friends, if you can imagine. So we
installed the workflow Central. She wasable to completely digitally redact documents. An
automated process saved her huge amount oftime And hopefully I haven't caught up with
her in a little bit, butmaybe she's not wearing that brace anymore.
So there's certainly places for redaction inpretty much any customer environment. Yeah that's
(14:33):
interesting because, yeah, you don'trealize how much time gets spent in that
and you know, especially like okay, well for a manual task, well
maybe I can, I can delegatethat to an intern. But an intern,
you know, may know, okay, well I need to redact any
any name that's in there, maybea social security number, but you know,
when you're getting down to date ofbirth and sensitive files, the gender
(14:56):
of a person. I'm thinking moreof in criminal cases, you know,
we want to keep that under wrapsin criminal situations. That's interesting how much
time that takes? So h well, okay, So I we've gone over
a lot of these these tactical functionsof workflow Central, and I imagine there's
there's lots of these scenarios or anecdotesthat you hear from from resellers and customers
(15:20):
and and uh and I love thatthat your your customer turn friend is of
saving some time and her and herjob there. I wonder if just do
any other anecdotes come to mind,or or any scenarios that you've really heard
that workflow central is really helpful toolthat's more than just a kind of an
add on. It's it's creating productivity. Absolutely. You know, I'll tell
(15:45):
you about one that is actually welldocumented. You can find videos on YouTube
of this particular customer Buena Park SchoolDistrict, which is a school district out
of California that is supported by oneof our partners, q Docs, and
they are one of our partners thatis making huge progress with their customers their
(16:07):
clients with Workflow Central as well asall of our applications. But in this
particular situation, the partner was actuallyable to go in have a conversation with
the client on translation and it turnedout that this client had a requirement that
they had to send home information toparents of students within their school board in
(16:30):
whatever their native language happened to be. So what we see a lot in
education, especially with children coming intothe school system and families coming into the
public school system that may not haveEnglish as their first language. What we
see is that the student is gettingthe English language exposure by being at school
and being around the teachers and otherchildren, but a lot of the times
(16:51):
the parents at home are not gettingthat same exposure. So one of the
ways we can really wrap our armsaround those parents and include them in their
child's education is by being able tocommunicate with them in whatever language they happen
to speak. So that's what thisparticular school district was doing, and it
was not a cheap thing to do. It was a fairly expensive process.
(17:15):
But what they were able to dois go in and instead of having the
human translation, they were able tosell the customer Workflow Central, which allowed
them to now automatically translate to andfrom all of those languages that they needed.
But in addition to that, onceWorkflow Central got into that education environment,
they started to pick up on allof the other value that they could
(17:38):
realize from the other workflows. So, for example, the convert to audio
being used as a teaching it forstudents that may have reading comprehension issues.
If I can't physically read the documentas well, it's been proven that I
can listen and read at the sametime and it'll enhance my reading comprehension.
We also have redaction being used forthose student records. Right sensitive information being
(18:03):
shared or stored on students should alwaysbe security top of mind and potentially redacting
out some of that information. Theteachers using the handwriting to text, so
you know, filling out a whiteboardthroughout a class full of notes and then
instead of having to sit there andretype and recreate those teaching aids to send
out to their students. They're ableto just capture an image, take a
(18:26):
picture with their mobile phone of thewhiteboard, and have that go through handwriting
to text and now they've got aretyped word doc that they can send out
to their students. And we knowwith teachers, every single moment of productivity
that we can offer and time thatwe can put back in their hands is
very precious. So I could goon and on, but it's what we
see a lot in these cases whereWorkflow Central gets into an environment for one
(18:51):
or two of the immediate values thatthey can see in the workflows, But
because we all have such different jobfunctions, because we're all dealing with different
types of data and could find differentworkflows beneficial to us, it kind of
gets in and then all of asudden, all seven of our workflows are
being used and are realizing value forthe customer. I appreciate the full insight.
(19:14):
I hope listeners didn't feel like Iwas just I was just spending time
trying to figure out how to domy job better. Hopefully, you know
you're able to identify some of yourown workflows in there, so reaching out
as far as understanding workflow Central fora reseller that's listening, you know,
how how do they go about,you know, including this type of workflow
(19:36):
for themselves or their customers. Certainly, and Shelby, if I've made your
life easier, if I've made easiermy day, that's a that's a win
in my books, and I'm happyto do it for anybody else that's listening
on this call today as well.So how you can get in touch,
Reach out to your Ingram rep.They can put you in contact with Xerox.
If you're not already as Xerox partner, you can become as Xerox partner,
(20:00):
get access to all of the differentofferings that we have at Xerox,
one of them obviously being the appsin the workflow central space. And then
I support all of our North Americanand Latin American partners, So at some
point you'll probably be in communication withme, and I would love to get
to know all of you and howwe can support your business and your clients.
(20:21):
Awesome. Getting to our final questionwe always ask our guests, and
that's where do you see technology goingin the next year? So it can
be within this space or just somethingelse that you're learning out about. But
where are we going to be thistime twenty twenty four? I GA,
So I will probably give you ananswer that I'm assuming you've heard once or
twice before. But it really isjust such an interesting space, both in
(20:44):
a professional sense but also in ourpersonal lives of I can't wait to see
where artificial intelligence, robotic process automation. I can't wait to see where that's
going to continue to drive our industryforward. Right I think about at Xerox,
we are a legacy company that hasalways been at the forefront of technology,
(21:06):
at the forefront of innovation. Thinkabout all the patents we have under
our name. Think about you know, the personal computer as an example,
is something that we are at theforefront of development. So I just feel
really lucky to work for a companythat has always been there and will continue
to be a part of leading thecharge for whatever is new in our space.
And right now it seems to bethat AI, that RPA that's going
(21:30):
to continue to drive efficiencies for notonly us, but also our clients.
And then of course, you knowthe chat gbts and all the ways that
we can see it in our personallives. Can't wait to see how it's
going to simplify my day to day. Yeah, RPA robotic process and automation.
So basically, how can we continueto automate you know, manual process
and kind of like what we've beentalking about today. Yeah, well it
(21:52):
is interesting. I mean that's thething. You know, people start to
be like, oh, yeah,I know, what's going to be the
same thing that everybody says. Butseriously, I love AI answers because I
want to know, specifically within aspecific industry, what the AI implications are.
You know, you can say AIin general, but you know,
I don't know exactly how powerful AIneeds to be in order to not only
(22:15):
pick up the PDF example I wastalking about, and now I think about
it, it was a scanned documentthat was photocopied and then it was made
into a PDF and then it waswould be a picture of it. It
was it was so backwards. Butyou know that requires a really really powerful
of CR to be able to pickthat up. So that's not just your
(22:36):
everyday you know, old school OCRthat didn't make a whole lot of sense.
This is pretty powerful stuff. Absolutely, you know, I go back
to our marketing campaign right now.If you've seen us in the airports,
if you've seen us on billboards,we have this we make Work Work campaign
right now. And one of thethings that we talk about is, you
know, you may not know everythingwe do at CRX, but if we
(22:57):
didn't do it, you would startonly notice. So it's all of those
back end processes that we can automatethrough AI that's going to allow our clients
to do what they do best andnot have to worry about the process intensive
back end back end processes. Sowe'll take care of all of that.
Yeah, or Rebecca, it's beena pleasure of talking to you. Thank
(23:18):
you so much for joining me.Thank you so much for having me.
I'm was excited to be here.And like I said, if I've helped
you or anybody on this podcast simplifytheir day, that's a win. Love
it well and thank you listeners fortuning in and subscribing to B to B
Tech Talk with Ingram Micro. Ifyou liked this episode or have a question,
please join the discussion on Twitter withthe hashtag B to B Tech Talk.
(23:41):
Until next time, I'm Shelby scareHawk. You've been listening to B
to B tech Talk by ingram Micro. This episode was sponsored by ingram Micro
Exvantage. B to B tech Talkis a joint production between sweet Fish Media
and ingram Micro. To listen tothis episode and many others, visit ingram
micro dot com.
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