By , Director, Solutions Engineering Center, KMBS

At a media event this summer, Konica Minolta executives unveiled our “Blueprint for the Future,” which focuses on delivering more value to the customer. While the Blueprint emphasizes our transformation from a hardware company to a solutions and services company, it also highlights a fundamental change in the company’s DNA from being an expert on the product to an expert on the customer. In order for our customers to see us as experts, we continuously need to listen to and understand their business challenges and needs.

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Konica Minolta’s customer-first approach is exemplified by the way that our product development team incorporates customer feedback into new product releases. Last week, we released a new version of our automated workflow software application, Dispatcher Phoenix 4.2. All the new features are a direct result of customer feedback.

Splitting Files on Size

Screen Shot 2013-11-19 at 5.46.15 PMFor example, our Legal customers told us how state and federal court requirements limit the maximum file size that can be submitted electronically, so we added this functionality to Dispatcher Phoenix 4.2. Now, law firms can ensure that any “scan to email” requests will be automatically split into files of an allowed size according to judicial requirements. This feature will also help our customers in other industries who need to comply with email server limitations.

Routing Files based on Metadata

Other enhancements in Dispatcher Phoenix 4.2 focus on improving ease of use, making even the most complex workflows simple and intuitive to set up. For instance, we enhanced the Metadata Routing process to simplify how to set up rules and conditions when routing files based on defined content. Now, any information found as metadata can be captured in order to route files – without having to use regular expressions. A popular use case cited by our customers involved renaming files if, and only if, a new name was entered at the MFP at scan time. In Release 4.2, this workflow and other similar use cases can be easily set up.

In addition, when routing files, you can now use a Pattern Matching Tool to look for patterns instead of having to identify specific data content to search for. This means that it’s not necessary to know the exact data that you’re searching for – just its pattern. As an example, one customer needed to route all files that contained telephone numbers with area codes into a separate folder. With the Pattern Matching Tool, this process is easy! Just choose a predefined Area Code pattern of (XXX-) and Dispatcher Phoenix will find the files that have telephone numbers with area codes and route them accordingly.

Enhancing the User Interface

By listening to our customers, we were able to enhance many aspects of Dispatcher Phoenix’s user interface, including:

  • Our redesigned Customer Feedback window, which now allows users to drag and drop input/output files from the main application screen and submit multiple workflows.
  • The Log Viewer, which was updated to reduce the number of places our users have to look for information about their workflows.

Dispatcher Phoenix 4.2 also includes enhanced Active Directory integration, Workflow Builder improvements, and a redesigned Workflow Scheduler.

Planning for the Future

Our product development strategy is focused on delivering features and functionality that will add more value to our customers by improving efficiencies, productivity and streamlining business processes. By incorporating customer feedback into product releases, we are able to provide products that meet our customers’ needs today and in the future.

You’ll be pleased to learn that Dispatcher Phoenix’s feature set continues to grow. New processes will be launched this fall, which will add even more power to your document workflows. Stay tuned for more information on Dispatcher Phoenix’s exciting new features.

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