Canon is launching into invoice automation for business and government customers in Australia and New Zealand with an offering based on the I.R.I.S. capture and OCR platform developed by a Canon European subsidiary company.

The I.R.I.S. solution will integrate with a range of different erp and financials platforms, including out of the box integration with SAP and Oracle. It will initially be offered as an on-premise deployment however the launch later this year of a cloud version of Canon’s ThereFore document management product will include a direct connector to IRIS.

Luke Maddison, Canon Australia Group Manager, Business Marketing, said the I.R.I.S. scan engine had already been offered as part of the Uniflow 5.0 offering launched in 2010. however this was the first time a standalone IRIS suite was being offered in the region.

I.R.I.S. integrates with Mulit-Function Devices (MFDs) from Canon and other vendors.

It incorporates I.R.I.S. Intelligent High-Quality Compression technology (iHQC) to convert document images into highly-compressed colour PDF and XPS files with searchable text at rates claimed to be 15 times more efficient than jpeg2000.

“Suitable for small businesses or large enterprises, IRIS eliminates time-consuming manual data entry, reduces invoice processing costs and enables staff to get information more quickly and efficiently, freeing them up to focus on more productive and valuable tasks.”

“Canon’s focus is on improving access to and sharing of information for businesses by providing full integration between all of its software and hardware devices to further streamline the automation process,” Maddison added.

“For instance, at the point of scanning to an MFD every document gets automatically tagged and stored electronically, making it easy for staff to search, access and process payments quickly and easily.”