Sean Lahman: Paper documents still in Xerox's future

• Xerox Corp.'s Safe Courier app was developed with the help of Raja Bala, a principal scientist at the Webster research center.
• Smartphone app helps better manage documents on a large scale.

Xerox Corp. may be out of the copier business, but they're banking on a future where paper documents are still a way of life.

Raja Bala, a principal scientist at the Webster research center, said that while the role of paper hasn't vanished, it certainly has changed.

"We used to think of paper as the permanent record and digital as the ephemeral," Bala said. "Now, digital has become the archival form, and we print out a temporary hard copy when we need it."

Bala, who has earned more than 125 patents, is among those leading the charge to bring Xerox's imaging expertise to bear on the problem of managing volumes of paper in better ways.

"It used to be 'image in, image out,' " Bala explained. Copiers were designed to scan a document, pretty it up, and output a hard copy.

"In the services business, the model is 'image in, information out,' " Bala said. The challenge is to analyze a document, discern relevant data and feed that into a business workflow.

Xerox recently lanched an app for smartphones called Safe Courier, which allows folks to take pictures of documents and transmit them securely. It's not a new concept, but Bala and his colleagues have designed a tool that can be used by large companies as a way to streamline information from customers.

Consider an insurance company, for example, processing claims for an automobile accident. An end-user launches the app and is guided through a list of items they need to submit: a copy of a repair estimate, a photo of the dented fender, and a copy of their driver's license.

Xerox has built a collection of image processing programs over decades, and Bala has helped repackage those tools to run on mobile devices.

For companies that license the technology, it helps ensure that information comes into their existing workflow in the best shape possible by helping with cropping, lighting and other factors. Feedback would be quicker than waiting for a claims adjuster to call to say a photo was unusable.

"The software provides a lot of feedback to the user to help them take a good picture in the first place," Bala said.

It makes it easier for both the companies collecting information and the individuals submitting it. And it could be practical for a range of firms, including financial institutions and college admissions offices.

Let's face it: paper documents aren't going away. If anything, we've increased our capacity to generate pieces of paper, and some documents — like driver's licenses and birth certificates — still live primarily as physical documents.

Bala understands that while the world will never be paperless, we can use technology to make that paper easier to manage.

Lahman's patents column appears in print on Sundays. Follow him on Twitter @SeanLahman, or reach him at (585) 258-2369.