Irvine-based software maker Kofax Inc. says it can help businesses conquer the mountains of information they face each day.
Its TotalAgility Cloud, which debuted last month, is designed to track documents long considered too unwieldy to automate, as it “captures” various forms of information and turns it into digitally stored data.
It’s a notable new offering for one of Orange County’s larger privately held software makers; the Spectrum-area firm is estimated to do about $400 million annually.
Its products are used to digitize “document-intensive processes,” Kofax said, saving the proverbial—and often very real—“time and money and improving customer engagement.”
Savings Touted
After “capturing and being able to identify and classify those documents … we need that automation up there in the cloud,” Bryant Bell, Kofax senior director of product, said of the new product.
Bell said with more companies using virtual offsite storage, the need is “to have capture be cloud-based.” Firms can “configure the capture platform exactly … and be off and running,” with, he said, less expense in a “comprehensive” offering.
The Kofax automation element is especially big, said Bell, seeing opportunity for the product as companies continue to replace human workers with software.
“They don’t have to negotiate another contract, they don’t have to figure out integration.”
He didn’t give pricing, but said Kofax can save companies 20% on data handling.
PE Swaps
Kofax is owned by San Francisco private equity firm Thoma Bravo, which paid about $1.5 billion for it in 2017.
The company has seen several owners the past few years; it was part of Lexmark International’s enterprise software business, following a 2015 deal.
Kofax is now adding companies under its own umbrella under the new owners; this year it closed on a reported $400 million all-cash buy of the imaging division of Nuance Communications Inc. (NYSE: NUAN), which beefed up its robotic process automation business, a type of enterprise IT that uses machine learning and AI to automate the back-office.
Kofax was No. 15 on this year’s Business Journal list of largest OC software companies.
Thoma Bravo is expected to have another OC-based portfolio company soon. This summer it said it will buy Costa Mesa’s J.D. Power, a provider of data analytics and consumer intelligence best known for its surveys of products and service quality in the automotive arena, though it also works with financial, healthcare, insurance, energy, and telecom firms
Its selling price was said to approach $2 billion.
Artificial Intelligence
TotalAgility Cloud uses AI to acquire, interpret and act on unstructured data in documents, emails, social media and other sources, amping up simple character recognition, without requiring onsite infrastructure. It aims to cut manual work and mistakes.
Kofax had previously said new machine learning and natural language processing capabilities were coming to help clients understand even the intent and emotions expressed in emails, legal documents, social media posts, customer support inquiries and other communication.
