DCC signs Abbyy in big-data capture push

Move to unstructured data processing is key to provider expansion

Data capture VAR Document Capture Company (DCC) has signed a deal with Abbyy that enables it to broaden its offering to deal with unstructured data.

Parimal Patel, managing director and founder of Wembley, Middlesex provider DCC, said the firm aims to benefit from the big-data trend, expanding its offering beyond assisting research organisations with more ready-made data sets.

"Back in 2001, when I founded DCC, we were mainly focused on structured data capture. Now we can do more unstructured data, which historically we had left to other players," Patel told ChannelWeb.

DCC had mainly served the public sector, including NHS organisations, to help them to digitise their data in a bid to extract more value from the information and ultimately improve their services, operations and processes. But more organisations are now aiming to benefit from ever-broadening sources of data, Patel noted.

"We had long been aware of Abbyy, and were looking for the right product. There are products out there that have similar features and functions and everything but we felt that Abbyy gives us not only the features and functions but is beneficial to the quite niche and complex areas our work requires," Patel added.

Abbyy also had "the right technical expertise and support" behind it, to help DCC offer a deeper, expanded service to organisations looking to collect and crunch more data, he indicated.

Abbyy's software portfolio – which includes optical character recognition (OCR), mobile data capture, paper-to-SharePoint functionality, PDF conversion, and document processing for ERP – will be DCC's key tool in this drive.

DCC, which at the moment has eight full-time staff, is looking to hire more marketing and business development staff to support its expansion, Patel said.