Kofax Technology Streamlines Information Capture for Portugal's Largest Telecommunications Firm

Kofax (LSE:DCM), the world's largest information capture vendor,today announced the successful results of an installation of itsAscent Capture(R), VirtualReScan(R) (VRS) and Ascent Xtrata(R)technology at Portugal Telecom Communications (PT Communications). Theoverall solution for PT Communications optimizes the processing ofthousands of customer-related documents, including multi-pagecontracts and related legal documents that are handled daily, andhelps the firm meet regulatory compliance requirements mandated by thePortuguese government.

PT Comunicacoes (PT Communications), a wholly owned subsidiary ofPortugal Telecom Group, has the largest telecommunicationsinfrastructure in Portugal and manages more than 4 million privatetelephone connections. Kofax Ascent Capture, VRS and Ascent Xtratawere implemented as part of an information capture system designed tospeed the processing of more than 40,000 customer contracts and legaldocuments that PT Communications' employees handle daily. In addition,the information capture system was established by the firm to helpprepare and maintain accurate financial records for regular auditsperformed by the Telecom Regulatory Agency, the governing federaltelecommunications organization in Portugal.

"PT Comunicacoes' need to process a high volume of documentsaccurately within a strict timeframe demonstrates how organizationsare leveraging information capture to enable more efficientbusiness-critical processes," said Anthony Macciola, vice president ofproduct marketing at Kofax. "Through our technology, largeorganizations -- especially those in paper-intensive industries suchas telecommunications -- are able to streamline their businessprocesses, increase operational efficiency, and grow their level ofcustomer service."

Prior to the Kofax information capture system, no automatedvalidation of documents existed and manual processing techniques werecausing a backlog of unprocessed data. With Kofax technology, theefficiency of document processing has been greatly improved to thepoint that the average three- or four-minute document processing timenow only takes 15 to 20 seconds per document.

"Prior to implementing an information capture system, it wouldhave taken 170 staff to process our current throughput of 40,000documents per day, due to input errors that would have to be manuallyrectified," said Carlos Amorim, knowledge management consultant atPT-SI. "Kofax technology has enabled us to complete the same task withonly 25 people, while nearly doubling our document processingcapacity. We expect that we will see a significant return on ourinvestment within the first year alone."

In addition to implementing a system that would reduce the amountof staff personnel required to process large amounts of data, PTCommunications needed a sophisticated means of delivering data to adatabase that would enable stored documents to be reviewed at a latertime, then re-classified or re-routed should the need arise. To helpimplement a versatile information capture system capable of suchrequirements, PT Communications contacted Portugal Telecom SystemsIntegration (PT-SI), a Kofax Certified Solution Provider (CSP) andadvanced solution integrator of both telecommunications andinformation technology solutions. After a thorough pilot projectinvolving two other competitors' capture solutions, PT-SI chose toimplement Kofax's Ascent Capture platform, VRS and Ascent Xtrata,along with three Bell+Howell Copyscan 8100 Spectrum scanners, based ontheir ability to handle different types of unstructured documents andprocess large volumes of documents.

"PT Communications receives thousands of documents per day, bothin paper and digital format, so we designed and built a robustinformation capture system that could process documents regardless ofthe format or condition in which they were received," said Amorim."The indexing and validation capabilities of the Ascent platform, VRSand Ascent Xtrata enhanced processing accuracy, seamlessly integratedinto PT Communications' system, and improved the overall efficiency oftheir operations."

About PT Communications, PT-SI and the Portugal Telecom Group

PT Communications and PT-SI are wholly owned subsidiaries of thePortugal Telecom Group (NYSE:PT), a global telecommunications operatorand Portugal's leading telecommunications group, covering all segmentsof the telecom sector: fixed, mobile, multimedia, data and corporatesolutions. Portugal Telecom's services are available in Portugal,Brazil and in growing international markets. The internationalpresence of Portugal Telecom spreads to countries like Morocco, GuineaBissau, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Timor, Angola, Kenya, China and SaoTome and Principe. Portugal Telecom is the company with the mostnumber of transactions in Euronext Lisbon, and it is also quoted onthe New York Stock Exchange. The PT Group assumes its socialresponsibility before the community by its constant support whichmanages the various institutions, motivating its employees through acorporate voluntary policy. The company creates innovative solutionswhich try to facilitate life for customers with special needs, and italso takes part in education, the environment, cultural and sportactivities.

About Kofax

Kofax, a division of DICOM Group plc (LSE:DCM.L), is the world'sleading provider of information capture software, according toresearch by Harvey Spencer Associates. Kofax products enable theautomation of business processes by collecting paper documents, formsand e-documents from throughout organizations, transforming them intoretrievable information, and delivering it all into line-of-businessapplications, databases and archives. The company's Ascent platform isthe most popular information capture application worldwide, and itsVRS (VirtualReScan) products is the de facto standard for scanningproductivity. Kofax products are widely used in finance, government,insurance, healthcare, and a broad range of companies and agenciesthat must capture critical business information from paper andelectronic documents and forms.

Kofax, Ascent, Ascent Capture and VirtualReScan are registeredtrademarks of Kofax Image Products Inc. All other trademarks andregistered trademarks belong to their respective owners.