Northwestern Ohio County Clerks Office Ensures Records Access with Captaris Alchemy

Story Highlights

• Disaster recovery assurance for millions of court records
• Captaris Alchemy integration with Konica Minolta MFPs and Panasonic 3065s
• Online records access drives productivity and public service

Bellevue, WA — November 5, 2007 — Captaris, Inc. (NASDAQ:CAPA), a leading provider of software products that automate document-centric processes, today announced that the Sandusky County, Ohio County Clerks Office has integrated Captaris Alchemy with Konica Minolta multi-function printers (MFPs) and Panasonic 3065s to digitize and manage millions of court records. These records, dating from the mid-1800s to the present day, are now protected from potential disaster and will be able to be easily accessible online by staff and county residents for enhanced productivity and public service. Read the full case study at: http://www.captaris.com/news_and_events/case_studies/index.html.

Warren Brown, Sandusky County Clerk of Courts, oversees record-keeping for several courts across the county including case files related to criminal, domestic and civil matters, journals, judgment entries and other records of court proceedings. The Common Pleas Court receives about 2,600 filings a year, ranging from dozens to thousands of pages. Files are received via fax, mail or hand delivery from the general public, law firms, the grand jury or lower courts. Generally these files must be stored “forever.” Today the court’s attic is being cleared of more than two million old court records, which are being scanned by either the Konica Minolta MFPs or the Panasonic 3065 and entered into the Alchemy records management solution. “We’ll scan and digitize every single piece of paper for which the Clerk of the Court is responsible,” says Brown. While his top priority is archiving historical court papers and microfilms, the Clerk of Courts staff will eventually enter all incoming documents directly into Alchemy without storing paper records at all. The Clerk of Courts and other county departments use multi-function products (MFPs) and scanners supplied by Perry Corporation, an Ohio-based provider of office automation technology and document management solutions.

Once the archiving project is complete, Brown indicates that it will be a seamless progression to incorporate all incoming documents. His team will use Alchemy Scan and Datagrabber to capture and automatically index new court records. With scanned microfilms and paper files as well as the addition of the Alchemy Web module, county residents and court staff will eventually have immediate online access to court files, whether created in the 1800’s or today.

“Alchemy is our insurance policy,” says Brown. “If papers were destroyed tomorrow, we have a tape of Alchemy databases in a safe and would be able to provide those records to the public immediately.”

Reported time saving for the Alchemy solution fall within a minutes to seconds ratio, according to county employees. According to one county employee, “….prior to our implementation of this solution it would have taken me no less than 30 minutes to find something I can now find in 30 seconds.” One of the commissioner’s staff members uses OCR scanning to upload meeting minutes, resolutions and other files. Work efficiency is expected to be significantly reduced, according to Brown. “Spending 60 minutes a day pulling records from the attic will be reduced to 60 seconds or less,” he added. A significant benefit will be the ability of county residents to eventually have online access to historical or current court documents.

About Captaris Inc.
Captaris, Inc. is a leading provider of software products that automate business processes, manage documents electronically and provide efficient information delivery. The products of Captaris and its subsidiary Castelle, including Captaris RightFax, Captaris Workflow, Captaris Alchemy and the Castelle FaxPress line of products, are distributed through a global network of leading technology partners. We have customers in financial services, healthcare, government and many other industries, and our products are installed in all of the Fortune 100 and many Global 2000 companies. Headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, Captaris was founded in 1982 and is publicly traded on the NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol CAPA. For more information please visit www.captaris.com.

The following are registered trademarks and trademarks of Captaris: Captaris, Alchemy, RightFax and Captaris Workflow. FaxPress is a trademark of Castelle. All other brand names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.