2012 – The Year of Distributed Capture

It seems like we just finished saying goodbye to 2010 and ringing in 2011 as the New Year, but summer is already coming to a close and businesses, included Panini, are in the midst of developing their 2012 business plan. From a sales perspective, a major component of the plan relies on my prediction of market activity for the coming year. Since everyone seems interested in predictions for the coming year, I thought I would share my observations on the market for distributed capture technologies.

The market for teller and branch image capture has seen steady growth in adoption over the past several years as the return on investment driven by transportation savings, operational efficiencies and increased customer satisfaction make the decision to implement very compelling for financial institutions. While many banks have already implemented some form of teller or branch capture technology, the overall market for these solutions should remain strong with new deployments planned in the financial industry in 2012.

Additionally, many institutions that initially deployed back counter branch capture solutions are considering the implementation of full teller image capture to secure the incremental benefits that approach offers. In a back counter system, one or two scanners, such as the Panini Vision X, are located in each branch and shared by all tellers, which results in significant transportation savings, but has the risk of creating downstream day two issues. With teller image capture, each teller station uses a scanner integrated with the bank’s teller system resulting in a balanced transaction, and virtually no downstream operational issues, while also improving teller productivity and customer satisfaction. Institutions are recognizing the increased capital investment required for a teller image capture solution is more than off-set with the incremental benefits. The transition to teller capture will continue to see an increase in momentum during 2012 and create a solid market for distributed capture technology.

The other major segment of the distributed capture technology market is remote deposit capture - where businesses utilize scanners such as the Panini Vision X, I:Deal or wI:Deal to image capture and remotely deposit checks (and other payment-related documents) they receive with their financial institution. This market is loosely broken out into two categories - enterprise business and small/medium business.

Enterprise business users, typically firms with revenues above $50 million per year, were early adopters of remote deposit technologies as banks’ treasury management sales organizations actively (and successfully) promoted the solution to their clients. Several years ago, this was a high growth market, but over the last year, the demand for distributed capture in this market has stabilized, and it appears it will remain at the current level for 2012.

On the other hand, the market in the small/medium business sector appears poised for a major breakout in 2012. Several factors are coming together to create a “perfect storm” for the adoption of remote deposit capture in this market segment. Potential users are more aware of the benefits that remote deposit offers thanks to advertising and general market “buzz”. The availability of reliable, lower priced scanners, like the Panini I:Deal, have removed cost as a barrier to entry. Further, banks have recognized the potential of this market and are orchestrating aggressive sales campaigns using many channels to capture new users. Based on everything I am seeing in this market, it should result in strong demand for distributed capture technology in the coming year.

So there you have it – my predictions for distributed capture in 2012. I realize it may not have the sizzle of guessing how many kids Brad and Angelina will adopt, or if the world will end in 2012 as the Mayan’s predicted, but it will still be interesting to see how accurate I am.