IBM Datacap Reviews

Our use case was related to processing documents that were coming in for the purpose of trade finance. We would scan in the documentation that came from our customers, and we would train the Datacap system to basically recognize certain keywords, pull out the information from the document, and forward this important data to another system. 

I'm no longer working directly with that customer. My relationship at that point was that we were specialized consultants in the ECM field, and that particular company was our customer. So, we had a vendor-customer relationship with them.

We used its advanced optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities to extract information from the documents to save the time of our knowledge workers. They didn't have to do the tasks manually.

It is highly extensible, which we found to be most valuable. It is a very extensible solution because it is based on configurable rule sets. We were able to amend and adjust the solution and very easily add custom code and custom components. It does require some programming experience, but we found that not to be an issue. We liked its extensibility. 

We also liked the fact that the solution was quite scalable. We could just add more service to our solution if we needed more processing power. 

We also found it to be quite a reliable solution. We didn't have any serious errors, crashes, or unnecessary downtime. We found it to be a relatively stable product with a lot of history and a lot of support from IBM.

One of the things that we wished for was to have an easier way to carry out the customizations. Currently, if you want to customize data, you need to have a developer with C# knowledge. If IBM could implement a no-code or low-code platform for Datacap, it would be easier to adjust it without needing a developer, which was always the most difficult part.

The first line of support from IBM can also be improved. When we reached out to IBM to explain the problem that we had, we always had to go through a lot of hurdles. It was really not easy to get to the specialists that we needed. Dealing with the first-line support from IBM was always a very difficult thing. We had more experience, and we knew a lot more about the product than their first-line support did, and that's a really bad sign. 

So, the support and being able to extend it only by code are the main areas of improvement.

I started working with Datacap in 2019, and I've worked with it all the way until the end of last year. So, it has been two to three years.

It is reliable, and its performance is also really good. Its reliability was good, and we didn't encounter many software bugs. We did encounter a few, and we reported them to IBM. They then made the resolution a part of their next fixes, which is just life in the software industry, but overall, we had a very positive experience with performance and reliability.

Its scalability was good. In terms of scalability, if you want to make your solution even faster, it is quite easy to just add a new rule runner server, which basically is the server that does the hard processing. So, if you ever notice that you have a large amount of documents and your processing time is increasing, you can always just set up and deploy an additional server.

In terms of its users, at the customer side, we had approximately 15 to 20 users in total, and their roles were compliance officers. Most of them were working in compliance, and they were working on sanctions checking. The idea was if we found anything suspicious on the document, such as goods coming or going to Russia in this current period, we should be able to flag that out. It was more of compliance activity. It was initially targeted for about 5 to 10 users, and then some other business units inside the organization also wanted to do the same thing and use it. So, its growth inside the organization was twice more than what we expected, but we also catered for that in the infrastructure. After that, they didn't add more users.

Their documentation is relatively extensive. If you're deploying the solution, you find pretty much everything you need. 

The only hiccup was really with the first-line support. Every time you contact IBM support, you have to go through the first-line support. You can't just jump forward and go to the higher-level support. Their first-level support was a very big area of improvement. Their support is based in India, and we were working in a different time zone. We were also working in a different language. We were working in the German language and the Dutch language, and we needed support in those languages, but we were unable to get support in those languages. Their support is only in English, which is not ideal from a customer perspective. It seems that IBM was struggling a lot to find capable support engineers in the Europe region, and they basically outsourced the entire first-line support to India. Everybody in the world has to contact India, which is a problem, and we, as a customer, did not like that at all. We had bad experiences with that.

We were using a competitor product called Kofax. We tried out Datacap because IBM came to us with the promise that they've got the Trade Finance Accelerator plugin. This plugin was specifically for our use case because we needed to do compliance checks and sanctions checks. That was something that Kofax did not have. So, we basically gave it a try. We wanted to see if we can revolve our business process around Datacap instead of Kofax. This plugin was very attractive for our management, and that's how they got in.

When it came to deploying the actual Datacap solution itself, we carried out an on-premises deployment. I was responsible for the technical deployment. We deployed it on our own virtual servers on our own virtualized infrastructure. We deployed several servers and set up a clustered configuration for the data. We also set up a clustered configuration for the front end for data, which is a product called IBM Content Navigator. So, we had a cluster setup for the front and the back end. Rolling it out from the start to the finish took us about a month. 

After that was completed, we reached out to IBM to give us a sample application for trade finance, and this is where they gave us a special plugin module called the Trade Finance Accelerator for IBM Datacap. That's where we spent most of our time. We were just deploying changes to the Trade Finance Accelerator module. So, that's where we spent the bulk of our time after the infrastructure and the core software were built.

I was responsible for the technical deployment. For the initial deployment without the coding part, we needed about three people in total. We had a lead technical consultant, which was me, and then we had two additional people to pick up other small activities, deployment run books, etc. It took a month in total to deploy it from zero.

It was actually a lot more expensive than our previous solution Kofax, but at the same time, because we saved so much development effort with the Trade Finance Accelerator plugin, we thought that we could offset those development costs with the additional licensing costs. That was the idea, and a second step from there was to say that we're going to do the cloud migration sometime soon. So, this user value unit and processor value unit licensing will fall away, and it will become a lot cheaper. That was the idea. So, we saved a bit of money with the development costs. We were going to go to the cloud anyway. Therefore, we didn't really mind the extra costs in the interim.

We were using the User Value Unit licensing, which means we get charged per active user of the system, and if I'm not mistaken, we also had it for the rule runner service. They had a PVU license model, which is a processor value unit. For each process that we have in our system, we pay a certain amount of money. We found the pricing to be quite steep. It was really an expensive solution in comparison to Kofax, which had a different licensing model and was actually cheaper overall because they charge per page and not per user and per process. 

I've got a few ideas there. When running such a project, a key success factor is to get the IBM consulting division in on your project. They call them global consulting services, and they need to be there from the beginning because when they are on the project, they will always help within IBM to assist with any question. So, as long as you have IBM consulting on board in the initial phases of your project, you'll have a very successful rollout and implementation. There are obviously consulting costs, but you must have them on board to be successful. 

It is also very important to maintain this contact. There is another department of IBM called the IBM Lab Services. You should keep in touch with them as well because they're the ones who are more interested in the long-term usage of the product in terms of how the customers use it and how they can improve. If one keeps contact with them, which I did in my role, I was able to always have direct access to specialists and key decision-makers, who are actually changing the product and updating the product landscape. 

So, I would advise other customers to have a very close working relationship with IBM when implementing the product. Don't be a lone wolf, and don't try and implement it on your own without the necessary support from IBM because then the project will fail. That's just the reality of the situation. You need a bit of guidance, and you need IBM to hold your hands during the first part of the project. As long as you keep that in mind, it can be a very successful project.

I would rate it a seven out of 10. I wouldn't go all the way up to eight or nine because the long-term support was one of the worst things that we had to deal with.

I have worked on many projects at this company. The first project was primarily web services. They have a separate service, so we need to validate the account number. Datacap is a scanning tool. If a person enters their account number, that will be validated by a separate server, and we use web services to validate that. Once validated, it'll connect to another server to fetch that account number based on the customer's name. We do all the validations via web services. 

We are slowly moving into the cloud, but they are still using some mainframe technology. We plan to move all applications into the cloud in 2022. First, we'll do all our development on-premises then move to the cloud. IBM has its container environment called CP4BA, so we'll use that to migrate our development applications.

Datacap's main advantage for the user is the validation part and its ability to implement any kind of page. Say, for example, we have a scenario where a financial company is processing many loan documents. When they scan a page through our application, it'll automatically detect based on the page identification. Datacap matches the text according to the application settings, and it works quickly.

I like Datacap's integration with FileNet because financial companies use that export. The second part is web services integration, which is effortless to implement. 

We don't have any issues with web services integration or any email format, whether it's tape images, PDF, or even Excel, so we can implement those in our applications. Recently, we've been using XML files to validate the account number through web service. We can edit and implement those XML files in our application.

IBM could improve Datacap's navigator. The company implemented Taskmaster starting in version 8.0. We're using the Taskmaster web interface, and our main issue is the navigators, especially in the new CP4BA environment. The application is slow, so we face issues with the navigator and the new plugin. 

There are also some bugs in the features they added in 9.1.7, and the fixes they applied are still not working, so IBM still hasn't rectified some issues. The navigator plugin makes the application a little heavier. That needs to be improved.

The financial team I'm working with always compares their old application with our new one. They have been using that application for the last 15 to 20 years, and they're not happy with the UI. They think the layout isn't user-friendly. From a user perspective, I would like all the buttons to be easily labeled.

I've been working on Datacap for the last 11 years, and I haven't seen any massive changes aside from the navigator plugin and the mobile application. However, IBM needs to make many small changes to keep this scanning solution up to date.

We have page requirements where some values must be copied on each page. For example, say I need to scan a bunch of documents, and the name will be a field on every page. We don't have a default functionality in Datacap to copy the field value on the first page to all the pages. That feature would make the documents easy to prepare.

I've been working on IBM tools for the last 11 years. Mostly, I work on the enterprise management tool for FileNet called Enterprise Content Management. In terms of scanning solutions, I worked on Datacap and GoFax. One of my current clients is a financial services company from the United States, so I'm working in the financial sector using IBM tools. I mainly handle the IBM Datacap part.

Datacap's navigator is a little heavy. We have two configurations: one on the Taskmaster web interface and another on the navigator site. I feel the Taskmaster web configurations are more straightforward than the navigator. Sometimes the changes are not refreshed, it's slow, or it requires a user-ready password to log in. Many configurations are necessary, but Taskmaster web is a simple, easy, lightweight application where you can make all the changes.

You can have a stable environment with different roles on a server and many Taskmaster servers, so Datacap is scalable.  

IBM's Problem Management Report team isn't that effective. Sometimes we don't know stuff, or the end-users ask for more information about whether something is possible or not. We expect a high level of information from the PMR team, and I feel they don't have it. They're not helpful at all in some cases.

They take a lot of time for new things, too. For example, if I ask for a change, they have to check with the support team to see if it is required. It can take two to three weeks to escalate to a higher PMR level.

There are two ways to deploy Datacap. If you have multiple servers, we can use the Datacap deployment server, a new service IBM provides. You can also deploy it the traditional way, where we zip the file, add it to the main server, map it with our application manager, and update the XML file where all the application names are listed. 

Once we successfully authenticate with the database—Oracle, Access DB, etc.—we connect with the Datacap studio to test that the application is working fine. We later map the application inside the Datacap navigator. 

After that, we add a repository with Datacap that includes all the details using the LDAP authentication or a normal username and ID, and we create a new desktop. If there's an existing desktop, we export and import the desktop on the same server, add the repository inside the desktop's menu, configure all the menus. Finally, we can start with our application.

I work with an onsite architect, but I'm the only developer here, so I'm primarily handling the deployment process.

I rate IBM Datacap seven out of 10. This tool can be easily integrated with the Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or IBM cloud. In addition, they have a mobile app you can use from iPhone or Android to scan your documents and upload them to your repository without any user intervention. This is all straightforward from a user perspective. Also, there is less need for customization from a technical point of view. It has all these out-of-the-box actions that can be used in your applications to make them more mature.

We support clients who make use of IBM Datacap as an imaging solution where they scan forms and capture information in the system. Our clients have significantly improved efficiencies when opening accounts for end users. This solution has also helped in eliminating the manual process of getting documents signed and approved. 

The feedback from our clients that this solution has increased their efficiency and their turnaround time on opening any account for end users, thus attracting more customers.

The best features of this solution include auto-indexing. Using optical character recognition, it recognizes what is contained in a scanned document and indexes the information. There is no need for manual intervention.

Recognition between certain numbers and letters could be improved. Sometimes this solution misreads five with an "S" for Singapore.

I have used this solution for six years. 

The latest version of Datacap is very stable. Older versions of the solution used to get stuck but the overall stability and performance of the solution has been improved with version 9.1.7. 

This is a scalable solution. We are able to add additional Rulerunner servers if our business users or user base increases. We are able to have multiple nodes for the front-end and for the Content Navigator. We have total of 3,000 users across the United States of America.

The technical support from IBM is good. I would rate it an eight out of ten. 
There is sometimes a delay in getting support from the IBM team and we receive inadequate answers. If it is registered as a critical issue, we receive a response from IBM after one day which can cause our clients to lose business. 

Positive

If only one person was working on the deployment of this solution, it would take one to two weeks. 

The first step in setting up this solution is to install all the prerequisite software from IBM. Once installed, we run the installer on Rulerunner servers and on Taskmaster servers. We then install the IBM Content Navigator for use in the front-end followed by creating the default desktops of IBM Datacap.  The final step is to customize the solution using any plugins or any widgets based on our client's requirements.

IBM could offer more competitive pricing. This would allow them to attain more users. Some of our clients are considering moving to a different solution called Encapture which is similar but offers more competitive pricing. 

This solution is mostly used by financial organizations. I would recommend this product to all financial organizations who are looking to improve and eliminate their paper process and improve workflows. It could assist in reducing overall SLAs of manual processes.

This solution requires maintenance including the updating of patches, which have been released by IBM. Once a month, we complete a recycle of the complete Datacap setup and system maintenance. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

Its main use case was to turn papers into electronic documents and extract data from the document.

The administration of the application following an error is most valuable. We are able to know easily when something is stuck in the system.

There should be an increase in the capacity of the workflows. Datacap is a little limited in this aspect. So, you cannot really implement all the possibilities. 

I started using it about 8 to 10 years ago, but I have not been using it all the time.

It is scalable.

I would rate them a four out of five.

Its deployment is quite fast. It's easy to set up, but it can grow quite easily. It can grow quite complex. You have a lot of options and possibilities.

It was done in-house.

For the development teams, it's not the easiest solution in terms of understanding how it works and how to develop things around it, but once you get the knowledge of it, it's quite fast. So, there is a steep learning curve at the beginning.

To read through the paper documents and get them to how you want, Datacap is not the best tool in terms of configuration. Datacap aims for bulk operation. It has a lot of possibilities and capabilities, but there are some products that are more focused and narrow in scope and are better. IBM has a couple of them as well. That's why I would rate it a seven out of ten. It's broad and you can do a lot of things, but on the downside, you are losing the abilities of a specific and narrow solution.

IBM Datacap is used for capturing documents. Here's a use case: invoices come into an organization and the organization wants to get details from the invoices. They want to know where it came from, the date of the invoice, and the value of the invoice. They also want to know if there's a purchase order number on it, and if there are any line items on the invoice.

IBM Datacap will extract the information from those invoices, then pass the information into their line of business environment. It's a capture and extraction toolkit.

We implement and support solutions built on Datacap for our customers.

What could be improved in IBM Datacap from a technical perspective is having all configuration interfaces together in one place, rather than having several different configuration interfaces. For example: there is an interface for configuring background tasks, then a different interface for configuring how the application actually works, then there's a third interface for configuring user access. It would be nice to have everything in one place instead of needing to use different interfaces.

In the next release of IBM Datacap, I'd like the ability to leverage cloud-based OCR technologies or cloud-based OCR engines, such as Google Vision. There's the ability to be able to build things yourself, so as a partner, we could build those integrations, but it is possible that we would build something only to find later that it has been built by someone else. 

As a business, we were the first Datacap partner in Europe, and that was before the acquisition by IBM. I started with Open Connections originally in 2008 and have been working with IBM Datacap since 2008.

Solutions built on IBM Datacap tend to be very stable and this is maintained by regular updates from IBM. 

IBM Datacap was designed to be very scalable, e.g. you could have one server running background tasks, and individual threads can be configured for this purpose. Threads can be added as operational needs dictate, scaling "vertically". If the business needs dictate, additional servers can be added. Examples of background tasks are document ingesting from a mailbox, data extraction from documents or export of documents and data to the line-of-business system. 

In the past, technical support left a lot to be desired, but  IBM has listened and responded and our recent experience has been very favourable. On a scale of one to five, with five being the highest and one being the lowest, I'm scoring support a four out of five.

Positive

The complexity of initial setup depends very much on the architecture and use case for individual customers. A simple use case (for example, data extraction from a fixed form) can see a solution up and running in a few days, but more complex use cases with several document types and unstructured data can take longer to implement.

There are several options for the licensing and pricing of IBM Datacap. It's possible to purchase it as part of a wider portfolio of products called CloudPak for Business Automation, or on subscription from IBM, or you can purchase the licenses outright and just pay an annual maintenance fee. 

Pricing is very competitive. 

We have customers on various versions of IBM Datacap. The oldest version that we have customers using is version 8.1, which went out of support in 2018. We have customers on many subsequent versions up to the latest one.

We're an IBM business partner, so we implement and support IBM Datacap solutions for our customers, and sometimes we do it on behalf of IBM. Most of our deployments are on-premises, but more recently, we have seen that customers want to move to the cloud. IBM Datacap is not cloud-native but it can run in the Cloud, whether that be AWS, Azure or a customer's private cloud. 

IBM Datacap has built-in tooling which maintains deployed applications, so there's typically very little housekeeping once a system goes live.

The advice I would give to others looking to implement a solution built on IBM Datacap is, "Datacap will help you to streamline and automate your document driven capture processes, saving time and effort on manual, error-prone tasks.

My rating for IBM Datacap is eight out of ten, but if IBM were to improve the solution by having just one administration interface and add access to cloud-based OCR technology, then I would rate it nine.

Datacap is basically used to ingest the documentation of the clients, either from paper through scanners or through emails. In most scenarios, we either do scanning or consume email folders. It has connectors to read emails.

Its version depends a lot on the client and the project. I've been using version 9.1.6, and some clients have been upgrading to the latest version 9.1.9.

In terms of deployment, IBM has a solution on the cloud, but the solution I deploy is on-prem.

We recently did a Datacap implementation for a client, and we used its functionalities to do a separation of the documents and automatically capture some fields from the documents that the client wanted to extract. Before that, the software they were using wasn't optimized to do that. They were manually doing the separation of the documents and capturing the values of the fields. With Datacap, the process is automated, and they can now just validate if the captured data is correct and if the separation is correct. After it is implemented for some time, it creates a database. So, it separates automatically more over time, and the program in the background validates everything. For most batches, the operators don't waste much time on this process. Previously, they used to waste plenty of time separating the documents manually. After that, they had to write the data from the documents. The data was then sent to another platform, such as FileNet, for further use by another department. 

It is very easy to develop this software. It is low code, and if you can't find the things you need on it, you can develop custom actions with more complex code underneath. They sync well, which is very useful for automating a lot of processes. It is a really valuable feature for the clients because we can ingest information and automate plenty of processes for them. The operators don't have to waste that much time on tasks. With Datacap, they can be automated.

I've faced some bugs or issues. They should do deeper testing of the product before releasing it because some of the bugs that I found were a bit simple. I understand that it is a massive product, and some of the functionalities can get overlooked.

Their platform for reporting bugs and issues works. Sometimes, it takes them too long to solve the issue, but eventually, they do. So far, every issue that I've found in reporting has been resolved, but their support can be improved in terms of resolving the issues faster.

In terms of additional features, I've been following the roadmap they have, and so far, it has been good.

As a developer, I've been using it for over two years.

The software always depends on the infrastructure of the clients because it's very network-based. If you follow all the recommendations that it requires, it is great. It works properly, and the performance is more than okay. If you have limitations in the infrastructure or network, it can be a bit tricky, but you can always find workarounds to solve the issues.

It is very easy to scale the solution for our clients. If you want to upgrade the product on processing, it's easy. You just have to check the license requirements and the cost because the cost increases if you want to increase the servers, specifications, and processing power, but it's very easy to scale the software.

I faced some issues, and sometimes, they take a bit too long to solve them. When you open a ticket for support, they do the initial testing to test the error on their side. After that, they send the error to the development team on their side. Sometimes, this process can take a while. There are several levels of priority when you open a ticket, but they could improve a bit in terms of how fast they work. I had some unpleasant talks with their first line of support.

I started with Datacap right away.

It is now very easy for me. For someone who is starting with the product, they have a manual, and it can be very straightforward if no issue occurs. If there are some issues, it can be a bit complex to solve when you're doing the setup. Because I already have a massive experience with the setup of the environment, it's quite easy. Even when I find errors, I manage to solve them quickly.

I do the implementation for the clients. In terms of maintenance, in the last few updates, they have been implementing some tools for it to be easier to monitor. It basically depends a lot on the implementation and the functions. It depends on the capability that a client wants, such as if they want something more robust or something with easier alerts when anything aborts or an error occurs. So, it basically depends on how much the client is willing to pay for a more robust solution. In terms of Datacap, you can set up more on the development side to monitor everything. You have a tool page if you don't want to automate monitoring for everything.

It varies, and it depends on the client's requirements and negotiations. Nowadays, Datacap is also included in the IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation. 

Datacap can be very robust. It depends on the solutions that the client is using beforehand. Of course, if you're changing platforms, you're going to have an initial shock because it has different ways of working, but in the long run, it's a good solution to be implemented. It can automate plenty of processes, but you have to be willing to invest in it.

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

I work for a bank in Tunisia and we use Datacap for extracting information. We are partners of IBM and I'm a data and AI technical specialist.

I like the Rulerunner that can run Datacap Studio; Datacap Navigator is also a great feature and both help us develop apps. 

Third-party integration is slow especially through API calls because if you want to integrate between Datacap and BPM, it can only be done in that direction (and not BPM to Datacap). One of our customers needs it the other way and we had to make a development app for that to work. There also needs to be additional support for the Arabic language as the translation doesn't work well. Finally, I'd like to see an interface update in the next release.

I've been using this solution for three years. 

We use the solution continuously and stability is fine as long as the product has been installed with best practices.

We have between 200 and 250 users so the scalability is good. We carry out all our own maintenance, updates and fixes. 

I've contacted support many times, initially when we carried out the implementation and then again when we were in the development phase. They were very helpful and patient. 

If you're doing a custom deployment, it's easy. But if you're wanting a personalized setup then the initial deployment is complex because it requires a lot of research and there are numerous problems. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

We use Datacap for scanning Proof of Delivery and Proof of Pickup from our delivery agents and drivers. We have a defined workflow in Datacap, and we process these documents into our imaging system and PODs or POPs for paying the drivers and agents for deliveries.

Datacap provides remote users with the ability to scan documents using some plugins. Internal customers can scan their documents and define their workflows, like where the document needs to be sent and how it needs to be indexed. That is one thing I like about Datacap. Several documents get scanned during the day, and they come from agents, drivers, internal workers, and customers. 

While we are doing indexing, we tag the document type. It's programmed inside of Datacap to automatically detect the document based on a given template. It auto-indexes that document, which means that it automatically tags the correct document type to the scanned document.

Datacap's workflows are helpful. 

When I scan a document in Datacap that has a watermark or the document is a little distorted, the image output is poor. It either becomes completely black, or there is so much distortion that we cannot read the numbers or the addresses mentioned in the POD. When we scan a document, we expect the output to be at least 95 percent accurate. If IBM could work on that particular thing, I think it would be fantastic.

I've been using Datacap for around 10 years now.

I have seen complaints on the older version, but we haven't had any issues with the new version so far. However, it's only been a week since we did the upgrade. Versions 9.1.4 had performance issues. For example, it used to take an hour to complete a batch job.  

IBM support is good. We open a ticket on the forums, and our questions are answered in a couple of days. So I wouldn't say it's bad.

I wasn't around when Datacap was deployed, but they have done two upgrades since I joined the company. The process was tedious. We needed to upgrade the server and the client. If it automatically upgraded the client when we updated the server, that would be fantastic. 

When we updated the client, we lost all our settings, like the shortcuts and preferences. Those settings go into an XML file or somewhere. The upgraded client should retain that file. It should not be completely deleted. The user has to set it up from scratch, which is frustrating.

I would rate IBM Datacap seven out of 10. If you're implementing Datacap, you need to understand the solution from end to end. In other words, you need to know how the server connects to the client. If you think there is a clear delineation between the server and client, you'd be wrong. 

There is a lot of dependency between these two, and you need to make sure the configuration XMLs are in place before you implement anything. You should also ask the Datacap technical support team about every attribute they're going to touch. Otherwise, it's going to be a nightmare.