Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) Enterprise Services division (the former EDS business acquired in 2008)  is looking to lift its profile in business process outsourcing (BPO) in Australia and New Zealand with a new offering called AutoFlow. Finance and accounting in areas such as accounts payable automation are among the areas being targeted with a new cloud platform utilising Omniflow ECM and workflow technology from India's Newgen Software Technologies. 

The US-hosted cloud platform's capabilities include document scanning and character recognition tools, vendor data maintenance and business process management.

“Today’s chief financial officers are plagued with diminishing resources and the growing complexity of processes and technology,” said Michelle Cox, director, Business Process Outsourcing, HP Enterprise Services, South Pacific. 

“HP AutoFlow builds on our strong history in finance, administration and technology to increase process automation and optimise cost structures, so clients can focus on revenue-generating activities.”

IDM asked why HP has based this offering on the Newgen Software solution instead of technology from its recent acquisition Autonomy.

"AutoFlow is an HP configured solution based on Newgen Software that is employed exclusively for the use of HP BPO employees providing service to our clients within our BPO F&A service offering. HP and Newgen have worked together in other areas of business over the last 8 years but this is a new arrangement specifically for the BPO business and designed specifically around very detailed process workflow requirements specific initially to the Procurement to Pay process and other F&A processes," the company responded.

"HP AutoFlow has been developed, configured and extensively tested specifically for F&A processes over the last year or so to ensure minimal client configuration in order to minimise implementation time and maximise value to our customers. In concept therefore it pre-dates the Autonomy acquisition. 

"Subsequent post Acquisition reviews of the Autonomy portfolio and the ECM solutions have shown the real fit and excellent opportunity area for incorporation into the BPO F&A service offering is in the area of Business Intelligence Analytics where the ECM solution suite will be used as a real differentiator for our customers.

"We continue to deploy a common, standardised repository platform built on HP TRIM (now part of the HP Autonomy suite).  HP also maintains a number of other backend repository platforms to meet the needs of individual clients and integrate with legacy environments, including EMC Documentum and other technologies.  

"Newgen will complement, rather than replace, our standardized TRIM platform.  It provides robust workflow capabilities that are fully integrated with a backend TRIM repository (i.e. with HP Document Processing Services)."

HP says its Multi-channel Capture Services are based on HP proprietary managed technology (non-Newgen) deployed in capture facilities in Australia and NZ capital cities.  

"These centres provide the document and data capture, conversion, indexing and verification capabilities which then feed the source image and indexing information into the HP AutoFlow application."

AutoFlow is aimed at increasing automation through improved integration with ERP and legacy systems, as well as support enablement of e-invoicing to achieve better invoice accuracy and improve on-time payment performance.

Other capabilities include document scanning and character recognition tools, vendor data maintenance, business process management, configurable rule engine and executive dashboards.

"Business processes continue to increase in complexity resulting in delays in processing, a lack of process transparency and manual workarounds to resolve issues," a company statement explained. 

"Autoflow helps you increase process automation, lower costs and increase process throughput. The solution allows you to increase the return on your existing ERP while improving functionality."