IBM Datacap Reviews

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 are using the tool to capture data from bills that customers send in.

It is not used on the business side. It is on the back-end side, and it is sort of automated. We process things for the digital channel.

We don't use it internally in the organization. We link into it and expose it to customers. Generally, it hasn't change the way we work, but we hope it will change the way our customers interact with us.

The most valuable feature is its ability to capture data, which changes all the time into different formats.

The usability is great. The tool is powerful, and it's the right thing for us to use.

The integration process was pretty easy. There were exposed APIs for us to call and the documentation was available for us. Therefore, we could do it pretty easily.

I would like to see the product have the ability to process more documents in parallel. Right now, it is a single queue. Therefore, if you want to really test the load and stress test it, having multiple instances and the ability to scale it up would be great.

The stability is great.

I would like it to be able to handle multiple instances. E.g., if we had suddenly one million documents to load into it, the solution would work through them one by one. It would be great if it could dynamically scale up and have three or four instances that it could handle, or even many, concurrently.

I have a direct line to them, which is amazing. They are very good.

We were not using anything previously. This was something from our innovation stream. It was a new experiment that we wanted to test.

The initial setup was easy for us.

We worked directly with IBM.

It is supposed to reduce costs.

Pricing depends on how much we use it. We pay per bulk quantity. We pay as you go. Therefore, it sort of depends on our usage of it.

IBM offers a strong product. We also looked at Google's offerings with something similar. There was another company that we looked at, which I can't remember. 

What differentiated IBM was we had a strong relationship with them already. It was a natural fit for development and support throughout our process and journey of this application.

It is not easy, but it is worth the time to configure and set up. The benefits dramatically outweigh the cost and labor of implementing and using it.

Make sure that you are using it for the right reason. There has to be a compelling, valuable reason why and where you are going to put this product in, and you have to pick the right thing. Otherwise, you are wasting time and money.

We are using it for automation projects.

It is something that we want to continue to invest in and use.

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.

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.

It's an accounts payable automation. It automates the capture of invoices, extracts relevant data, creates an export, and feeding it that way. 

It's resiliency. There are multiple ways of identifying what you are looking for. There are multiple export formats. 

It's a platform, not a configured application, so you can do what you want with it.

They have to stop focusing on new development and stabilize the latest release. It is not stable. 

We're going to a web interface, which is very common these days. However, the web interface in the latest release is not stable. This is causing issues. We are about to lose a very large client because IBM can't fix the product.

It's scalable. It can run in the background (zero users) to our larger clients (8,000 users).

The technical support is horrible. They have downsized the support teams too much. They've outsourced some of them along with some of the development, and they're just stretched too thin.

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon.

If someone is looking just to install and remedial capture, the initial setup is maybe a month.

Most of our engagements are a four to six month time frame. Not overly long, when compared to SAP or Oracle, which have about two to four year engagements. We are about a six month average. Primarily ours is more about understanding the business requirements. We'll not alter the business to fit the software. We'll make the software fit the business. It's understanding it to a finite degree.

That's the complicated part. Almost 20% of any of our engagement is talking to the client and end users, and understanding what they need.

It really only has two serious competitors in the market. 

Kofax: They bundle their products, but they also license via page count, whereas Datacap doesn't. Therefore, initially Datacap looks expensive until you do a three to five year ROI. Unfortunately, Kofax has been sold maybe four times in the past three years.

The other one is Captiva, which was part of the Dell EMC portfolio, which was bought by OpenText. Having worked at OpenText, we terminated it, knowing, "That's where software goes to die." In our thoughts, the product is in a death spiral. 

That is the difference between the products.

They've got to stop chasing their tails and putting new things in it. At the moment, they need to stabilize it. Once that is done, this will allow the sales reps to sell it, then they can go ahead and start doing the fancy stuff.

We use it for extracting data for insurance filing purposes.

We are using data in flat files or XMLs and importing it directly into our database, or exporting it to clients who can process it and do insurance verification.

The solution automates manual data entry.

The usability is challenging and hard for our business users.

I would like better ease of use and more support options.

The stability is about average.

It is scalable. However, we are not scaling it up because we haven't got it over capacity yet.

It is hard for us to scale it up. I know it has potential, but it's not easy to do that.

The technical support is difficult and expensive.

There is a trend of moving toward automation and automotive processes.

The initial setup was complex because the system was complex inherently.

We used an integrator for the deployment, and our experience was very bad. They gave us an unreliable, broken solution which did not work, then they would not work with us. Afterward, we couldn't get a quote for more billable hours of support. They just disappeared and ghosted us.

The solution has increased our productivity, but not to our expectations.

The solution saves eight to 16 man-hours a week.

It has not reduced our operating costs.

We have worked with Imagine Solutions and have dealt with enChoice. However, Imagine Solutions was on the shortlist.

We chose Datacap because the team demonstrated expertise.

Manage expectations and confirm you have actual buy-in from upper management.

We plan to expand our use of automation in our organization.

We have integrated the solution with non-IBM tools.

I attended the technical track. I learned about the upcoming improvement, which is coming with the Datacap software. We are looking forward to that.

The most valuable features of IBM Datacap is the capturing and recognizing of pages, documents as well as the scanner and barcodes. I also like the fingerprint recognition.

I would like IBM Datacap to add features similar to Captiva. Currently, when you are entering invoices, you have to enter multiple rows. In Captiva, the multiple rows will be dynamically added. This would be a beneficial feature for IBM to add.

Our users prefer TM's navigator more than  IBM's current navigator. It could just be a training issue, however, they like having more options like filter badges.  

In one case, our client needed to scan 5,000 pages in five minutes, or less, Datacap was not able to accommodate this task. 

I have been using IBM Datacap for nine years.

The initial setup of IBM Datacap is easy, with no issues.

Pricing of the solution is reasonable.

I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.

Datacap is good at processing unstructured data. You can build up some nice data flows, and it is simple to configure. The tool adopts a low-code approach, but you can do a lot of coding if you want to customize and automate your flows. Datacap also has the flexibility to integrate. 

Datacap's technology seems a little behind the industry. It's still using the old .NET framework. They should move to .NET Core and start integrating some machine learning. You can do some integration yourself, but you expect a solution to include the latest machine-learning approaches if you're paying reasonable money for it. 

Datacap is stable. 

I rate Datacap 10 out of 10 for scalability because it's easy to integrate, and you can add load balancers to scale it up. 

I rate Datacap support seven out of 10. We've got an IBM support agreement and contacted them for a few answers. We typed in the questions and they gave us a response. The turnaround time was okay.

Neutral

The licensing for Datacap was steep the last time I checked, but I don't know the current pricing models. 

I rate IBM Datacap seven out of 10. I would recommend it depending on the use case.