Xerox Global Services is split into three lines of business: Document Outsourcing; Business Process Services (BPS) and Xerox Office Services (XOS). The XOS line of business specifically resolves issues experienced by large organisations that are often unaware of the real cost of producing documents in the office.
Organisations research, study and manage their costs closely - company cars, marketing, new business development are all allocated budgets and measured against them. However, few organisations monitor or are even aware of the cost of producing documents, whether financially or in terms of their effect on staff productivity. Typically, organisations perceive the cost of printing as the cost of purchasing printing, photocopying or faxing devices, but this is only a fraction of the overall cost.
XOS begins by analysing the total cost of ownership of a company’s office output infrastructure. The results of this assessment are crystallised into a simple ‘per page’ printing cost. This cost is influenced by the quantity of different device manufacturers and types of consumables, multiple forms of contracts, service level agreements and billing process for each supplier, and the ability of staff to maintain the organisation’s devices among other factors.
In December 2003, analyst house IDC remarked, “Xerox is believed to be the most experienced vendor when it comes to paid office assessments, having done at least 400 covering more than 30,000 personnel. Xerox provides a consultative assessment to reveal opportunities for cost reductions…boasts the use of six sigma, with the ability to focus on improving business processes and document workflow - in addition to the more classic components of an assessment…”
Armed with all these facts and figures, Xerox’s experienced consultants advise the organisation on how to drive down its costs. Once the organisation has decided on the course of action to take, Xerox then takes over responsibility to meet these objectives by managing the organisation’s fleet of devices, throughout the IMACD (Install, Move, Add, Change, Dispose) process and the rationalisation of the devices over a period of time. Rationalisation allows the customer to reach an optimised state where there is the right number of devices to fully support the business and drive cost and productivity gains.
The customer decides with Xerox the optimised state but Xerox then owns the execution. Installation of new devices is controlled by XOS, and existing devices are tagged and monitored physically and on the network. These initial steps in the XOS implementation alone usually save the customer organisation up to 25 per cent in costs, and regular detailed management reports confirm how well the new arrangement is performing.
XOS also improves productivity and adds value to the organisation’s print production by assuming responsibility for the upkeep of the customer organisation’s devices, whether it is a Xerox product or otherwise. This means that the customer doesn’t compromise its existing investment but, by managing all existing contracts, Xerox provides the customer with a single point of contact for billing, administration, and problem resolution for all devices. Xerox manages all of the assets on behalf of the customer, negotiates service level agreements with device suppliers, and ensures they keep to them. Over time, Xerox itself assumes responsibility for the management of repairs, technology upgrades, and every other IMACD possibility. Xerox also reaps economies of scale that the customer organisation cannot, by purchasing consumables in bulk and therefore at a discount.
All processes required to support the output fleet are managed from a dedicated customer help desk facility at Xerox Global Services’ site in Ballycoolin, Ireland. Xerox personnel can deal with queries such as how to install new printer drivers onto PCs or the network, or general maintenance and repair queries. This ensures that personnel in the customer organisation are able to make full use of every device’s functionality, and can concentrate on what they do best: their jobs.
XOS offers the customer very significant cost savings. Xerox Global Services is confident enough to sign a contract committing to save the organisation around 25 per cent of their total costs of ownership annually from the bottom line.
This market is a growth opportunity for Xerox, and one where Xerox Global Services has a proven track record.
For further information, please contact...
21 September 2004
14 September 2004
Xerox Global Services: Media Backgrounder
Xerox Global Services is one of three business groups within Xerox Europe, and is the closest of these groups to traditional consultancy, concentrating more on services than products or technologies per se. The other groups are the Production Systems Group (PSG) and Xerox Office Group (XOG).
Xerox is the global leader in document management, offering the widest array of products, services and solutions in the industry. The Xerox Global Services vision is to be the world’s leading innovator in the outsourcing of document activity, and in the transformation of organisations’ document-intensive business processes. Xerox Global Services works with its customers to deliver cost savings and efficiency, by managing and improving their document intensive business processes - everyday processes such as customer communications, billing, training, or records management.
Xerox Global Services was created at the beginning of 2004 via the merger of Xerox Business Services (XBS) and Business Innovation Services (formerly XISS). This enables Xerox to have one services business for Europe with a single, stronger value proposition for its customers. Xerox Global Services is also better able to meet the demands of large and complex deals, to defend Xerox from competitors, and to consolidate all the necessary resources and expertise required to succeed.
Xerox Global Services now operates in 17 European countries. It works closely with its fellow business groups, adapting new technology from Xerox Research Centre Europe (Xerox’s sole European R&D facility) for use ‘in the field’, and sourcing the most appropriate devices and functionality from the XOG and PSG business groups to suit the needs of its customers. Its heritage in documents has made it the market leader in document outsourcing. In addition, Xerox Global Services is one of the best suppliers at delivering against its service level agreements (SLAs) - a statement corroborated by analyst house IDC .
Using these attributes, Xerox Global Services intends to grow its client base in 2004, as well as contributing to the success of XOG and PSG by promoting sales through its outsourcing and consultancy projects. Xerox Global Services will continue to grow in numbers and expertise through the transfer of personnel from customer organisations in large outsourcing contracts.
Ultimately, Xerox Global Services’ “raison d’être” is to help organisations make their document processes more efficient and effective. Even today, many European companies still perceive documents as something made of paper and with four corners (established by the IDC study commissioned by Xerox Global Services in 2003, “Documents – The Life Blood of Your Business?”)
In reality, documents are hard or soft copies including faxes, e-mails, presentations, web pages, and even music or still/moving picture files. The study revealed that most organisations are unaware of the actual costs associated with these various types of documents - only 10 per cent of the 956 organisations interviewed could estimate how much they actually spent on documentation, yet 82 per cent state that documents are ‘crucial to the successful operation of their organisation’. With the average cost of documents to a company running at up to 15 per cent of its revenue, there is a significant market for Xerox Global Services to help organisations identify these costs and help manage and reduce them. As an example, Xerox Global Services can save a €100 million revenue organisation with a document spend of €2.1M over €420,000 in document costs alone. Xerox Global Services counts Lloyds TSB, Siemens, EDS, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Bouygues Telecom amongst its European customers.
Xerox Global Services delivers its services to customers via 180 sales personnel and 250 document consultants based in Europe, and employs approximately 4,000 people in total. All services can be delivered to customers on their own sites, but Xerox Global Services also has facilities around Europe where large projects can be completed away from the customer premises if preferred. Xerox Global Services is split into three lines of business: Document Outsourcing, Xerox Office Services (XOS), and Business Process Services (BPS).
For further information, please contact...
Xerox is the global leader in document management, offering the widest array of products, services and solutions in the industry. The Xerox Global Services vision is to be the world’s leading innovator in the outsourcing of document activity, and in the transformation of organisations’ document-intensive business processes. Xerox Global Services works with its customers to deliver cost savings and efficiency, by managing and improving their document intensive business processes - everyday processes such as customer communications, billing, training, or records management.
Xerox Global Services was created at the beginning of 2004 via the merger of Xerox Business Services (XBS) and Business Innovation Services (formerly XISS). This enables Xerox to have one services business for Europe with a single, stronger value proposition for its customers. Xerox Global Services is also better able to meet the demands of large and complex deals, to defend Xerox from competitors, and to consolidate all the necessary resources and expertise required to succeed.
Xerox Global Services now operates in 17 European countries. It works closely with its fellow business groups, adapting new technology from Xerox Research Centre Europe (Xerox’s sole European R&D facility) for use ‘in the field’, and sourcing the most appropriate devices and functionality from the XOG and PSG business groups to suit the needs of its customers. Its heritage in documents has made it the market leader in document outsourcing. In addition, Xerox Global Services is one of the best suppliers at delivering against its service level agreements (SLAs) - a statement corroborated by analyst house IDC .
Using these attributes, Xerox Global Services intends to grow its client base in 2004, as well as contributing to the success of XOG and PSG by promoting sales through its outsourcing and consultancy projects. Xerox Global Services will continue to grow in numbers and expertise through the transfer of personnel from customer organisations in large outsourcing contracts.
Ultimately, Xerox Global Services’ “raison d’être” is to help organisations make their document processes more efficient and effective. Even today, many European companies still perceive documents as something made of paper and with four corners (established by the IDC study commissioned by Xerox Global Services in 2003, “Documents – The Life Blood of Your Business?”)
In reality, documents are hard or soft copies including faxes, e-mails, presentations, web pages, and even music or still/moving picture files. The study revealed that most organisations are unaware of the actual costs associated with these various types of documents - only 10 per cent of the 956 organisations interviewed could estimate how much they actually spent on documentation, yet 82 per cent state that documents are ‘crucial to the successful operation of their organisation’. With the average cost of documents to a company running at up to 15 per cent of its revenue, there is a significant market for Xerox Global Services to help organisations identify these costs and help manage and reduce them. As an example, Xerox Global Services can save a €100 million revenue organisation with a document spend of €2.1M over €420,000 in document costs alone. Xerox Global Services counts Lloyds TSB, Siemens, EDS, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Bouygues Telecom amongst its European customers.
Xerox Global Services delivers its services to customers via 180 sales personnel and 250 document consultants based in Europe, and employs approximately 4,000 people in total. All services can be delivered to customers on their own sites, but Xerox Global Services also has facilities around Europe where large projects can be completed away from the customer premises if preferred. Xerox Global Services is split into three lines of business: Document Outsourcing, Xerox Office Services (XOS), and Business Process Services (BPS).
For further information, please contact...
Xerox Global Services: Media Backgrounder (Business Process Services (BPS) Line of Business)
Xerox Global Services is split into three lines of business: Document Outsourcing; Xerox Office Services (XOS) and Business Process Services (BPS). The mission of Business Process Services is to help customers improve and manage their key document-related processes.
The definition of a document has changed. Research sponsored by Xerox and carried out by IDC in late 2003 shows that the definition of a “document” now encompasses far more than just paper. Increasingly faxes (83 per cent), e-mail (78 per cent), electronic files such as Word or PowerPoint (76 per cent), web pages (48 per cent), or multimedia files (46 per cent) are now considered as “documents.” Documents and the information they contain, in whatever format, play a critical role in how organisations manage their business; for many organisations, documents are the product (e.g. insurance policy), support the product (e.g. user manual) or support critical business processes (e.g. invoices in accounts payable). Hence the effectiveness of how documents are used is intrinsically connected to business success. BPS’s focus is on streamlining and automating clients’ document intensive business processes, based on the ‘new’ definitions of ‘the document.’
This is often achieved by converting paper to digital information, and BPS’s services are designed with this in mind, to resolve a specific customer issue, and deliver a clear return on investment. BPS works towards offering its five services as complete managed, outsourced, or hosted services to the client.
1/5 Imaging & Archive Services
Many businesses have a requirement to manage increasingly large volumes of document archives, particularly in industry sectors such as finance or pharmaceuticals - that have significant legislative compliance requirements. This service enables customers to capture documents as digital images and manage them within a business critical process, helps them to meet legislative and codes of conduct requirements, and improves the longevity and security of documents. It allows organisations to make critical documents widely available to all who need them, as well as to those who need to integrate them into other systems. Imaging and Archive Services also saves organisations significant amounts of money in physical storage, rent, heating, and lighting, as documents are stored electronically rather than physically.
2/5 Finance & Administration Services
Businesses depend on their “back-office” finance functions to optimise cashflow, both in and out of the company, and manage the cash required to deliver bottom line financial performance. For accounts payable, the speed at which invoices are paid and cash flow is managed can reduce the quantity of ‘late’ fees incurred. In accounts receivable, invoice disputes must be resolved rapidly to reduce the time wasted in collecting payment. In the logistics function, they need to effectively track and confirm goods deliveries, speeding up the invoicing process, and reducing the cash collection cycle. This service focuses on providing an outsourced service that supports accounts payable, accounts receivable, and logistics functions within an organisation. It manages the electronic capture, indexing, and storage of documents such as invoices, weigh bills, bills of loading and proof of delivery, to optimise back office performance.
3/5 Client Account Lifecycle Management
Businesses that depend on processing incoming customer documentation such as mortgage, insurance and credit card applications, contracts and correspondence, need to process those documents as quickly as possible in today’s competitive environment. At the same time, these businesses may need to comply with legislation that enforces transparency and accountability such as Sarbanes-Oxley and EU Directives on Corporate Compliance and Industry Regulations. This service enables organisations to process these types of documents digitally, therefore improving compliance, responsiveness to customer demands and reducing the complexity of processing client transactions.
4/5 Localisation Services
Many organisations experience the ongoing issue of having to translate crucial documents into multiple foreign languages quickly and accurately. This service uses high levels of automation to translate and validate up to 40 different languages at once. It provides customers with advice on authoring documents in those cases where technology cannot yet automate local variations, such as colloquialisms.
The service also improves translation accuracy and cost-effectiveness through translation memory and terminology management, ensuring that clients realise substantial cost reduction through content re-use, while increased translator efficiency means delivery times are substantially reduced. Localisation Services is a good example of where technology invented by Xerox Research Centre Europe is applied to a real-life business issue and become part of the expertise offered by Xerox Global Services.
5/5 Product Lifecycle Services
This service is targeted at organisations that have to produce documents or manuals to accompany their product, anything from a mobile phone to a car. It involves improving the organisation’s entire document supply chain by managing the content authoring and creation, localisation and translation, production and distribution of accompanying documents to wherever the product is being sold in multiple markets.
Up to 40 per cent reduction can be achieved in the time it takes to get a product manual from the point of creation to mass-production, including all validation, changes, review, pre-production and printing itself. This service can reduce wasted documentation, remove warehousing costs and make it quick and easy for customers to publish documents in different media on demand i.e. in hard copy, on the internet or via mobile devices.
For further information, please contact...
The definition of a document has changed. Research sponsored by Xerox and carried out by IDC in late 2003 shows that the definition of a “document” now encompasses far more than just paper. Increasingly faxes (83 per cent), e-mail (78 per cent), electronic files such as Word or PowerPoint (76 per cent), web pages (48 per cent), or multimedia files (46 per cent) are now considered as “documents.” Documents and the information they contain, in whatever format, play a critical role in how organisations manage their business; for many organisations, documents are the product (e.g. insurance policy), support the product (e.g. user manual) or support critical business processes (e.g. invoices in accounts payable). Hence the effectiveness of how documents are used is intrinsically connected to business success. BPS’s focus is on streamlining and automating clients’ document intensive business processes, based on the ‘new’ definitions of ‘the document.’
This is often achieved by converting paper to digital information, and BPS’s services are designed with this in mind, to resolve a specific customer issue, and deliver a clear return on investment. BPS works towards offering its five services as complete managed, outsourced, or hosted services to the client.
1/5 Imaging & Archive Services
Many businesses have a requirement to manage increasingly large volumes of document archives, particularly in industry sectors such as finance or pharmaceuticals - that have significant legislative compliance requirements. This service enables customers to capture documents as digital images and manage them within a business critical process, helps them to meet legislative and codes of conduct requirements, and improves the longevity and security of documents. It allows organisations to make critical documents widely available to all who need them, as well as to those who need to integrate them into other systems. Imaging and Archive Services also saves organisations significant amounts of money in physical storage, rent, heating, and lighting, as documents are stored electronically rather than physically.
2/5 Finance & Administration Services
Businesses depend on their “back-office” finance functions to optimise cashflow, both in and out of the company, and manage the cash required to deliver bottom line financial performance. For accounts payable, the speed at which invoices are paid and cash flow is managed can reduce the quantity of ‘late’ fees incurred. In accounts receivable, invoice disputes must be resolved rapidly to reduce the time wasted in collecting payment. In the logistics function, they need to effectively track and confirm goods deliveries, speeding up the invoicing process, and reducing the cash collection cycle. This service focuses on providing an outsourced service that supports accounts payable, accounts receivable, and logistics functions within an organisation. It manages the electronic capture, indexing, and storage of documents such as invoices, weigh bills, bills of loading and proof of delivery, to optimise back office performance.
3/5 Client Account Lifecycle Management
Businesses that depend on processing incoming customer documentation such as mortgage, insurance and credit card applications, contracts and correspondence, need to process those documents as quickly as possible in today’s competitive environment. At the same time, these businesses may need to comply with legislation that enforces transparency and accountability such as Sarbanes-Oxley and EU Directives on Corporate Compliance and Industry Regulations. This service enables organisations to process these types of documents digitally, therefore improving compliance, responsiveness to customer demands and reducing the complexity of processing client transactions.
4/5 Localisation Services
Many organisations experience the ongoing issue of having to translate crucial documents into multiple foreign languages quickly and accurately. This service uses high levels of automation to translate and validate up to 40 different languages at once. It provides customers with advice on authoring documents in those cases where technology cannot yet automate local variations, such as colloquialisms.
The service also improves translation accuracy and cost-effectiveness through translation memory and terminology management, ensuring that clients realise substantial cost reduction through content re-use, while increased translator efficiency means delivery times are substantially reduced. Localisation Services is a good example of where technology invented by Xerox Research Centre Europe is applied to a real-life business issue and become part of the expertise offered by Xerox Global Services.
5/5 Product Lifecycle Services
This service is targeted at organisations that have to produce documents or manuals to accompany their product, anything from a mobile phone to a car. It involves improving the organisation’s entire document supply chain by managing the content authoring and creation, localisation and translation, production and distribution of accompanying documents to wherever the product is being sold in multiple markets.
Up to 40 per cent reduction can be achieved in the time it takes to get a product manual from the point of creation to mass-production, including all validation, changes, review, pre-production and printing itself. This service can reduce wasted documentation, remove warehousing costs and make it quick and easy for customers to publish documents in different media on demand i.e. in hard copy, on the internet or via mobile devices.
For further information, please contact...
23 August 2004
BARCLAYS BANK AWARDS GETRONICS TWO YEAR €34 MILLION CONTRACT
Network and Desktop Services for over 100,000 IT assets across UK
Barclays Bank PLC today announces it has awarded Getronics UK a two-year, €34 million network and desktop services contract to provide maintenance and support for over 100,000 IT assets across its entire UK branch and head office network. The investment will ensure continual improvement in the service quality Barclays provides to its customers every day.
The renewed contract between Getronics UK and Barclays Bank PLC has been constructed to be highly flexible, enabling Getronics to respond to any changes during the first two years without disruption to Barclays’ operations.
“We needed a partner who was very accomplished in managing customer-facing systems and who fully understood the necessity to provide this service without any interruption to our day-to-day operations,” explains Frank Tudor, Supplier Relationship Manager, Barclays Bank PLC. “We have relied on Getronics for over 16 years, and trust their knowledge and understanding of the complexities of our IT systems and processes.”
Roger Whitehead, Managing Director, Getronics UK and Ireland comments: “This renewed engagement gives us great satisfaction as it expands and extends our relationship with Barclays and provides us with a great opportunity to continue to improve our service to the Bank.”
- ENDS -
About Getronics
With approximately 22,000 employees in over 30 countries and ongoing revenues of EUR 2.6 billion in 2003, Getronics is one of the world's leading providers of vendor independent Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions and services. Getronics today combines the capabilities of the original Dutch company with those of Wang Global, acquired in 1999, and of the systems and services division of Olivetti. Getronics is ranked second worldwide in network and desktop outsourcing and fourth worldwide in network consulting and integration (Source: IDC 2002-2003). Getronics designs, integrates and manages ICT infrastructures and business solutions for many of the world's largest global and local companies and organisations, helping them maximise the value of their information technology investments. Getronics headquarters are in Amsterdam, with regional offices in Boston, Madrid and Singapore. Getronics’ shares are traded on Euronext Amsterdam ("GTN"). For further information about Getronics, visit www.getronics.com
About Barclays Bank PLC
Barclays PLC is a major global financial services provider primarily offering banking, investment banking and investment management services to millions of customers world wide. Present in over 60 countries, Barclays is a leading provider of global services employing over 76, 200 people worldwide.
With over 300 years of history and expertise in banking, Barclays Plc has five major divisions:
1. UK Banking, delivers banking products and services to over 14 million personal customers and 746, 000 businesses in the UK through over a variety of channels comprising: 2,064 branches, over 3,790 ATMs and the internet.
2. Barclaycard, is one of the leading credit card businesses in Europe with 11.9 million credit card customers across the UK and Europe. Barclaycard now incorporates all of the Group's UK secured and card lending products and expertise.
3. Barclays Capital, is the investment banking division, providing corporate, institutional and government clients with solutions to their financing and risk management needs.
4. Barclays Global Investors, is one of the world's largest asset managers and a leading provider of investment management products and services.
5. Private Clients and International Banking, combines the wealth management operation and global retail and commercial banking with over 375,000 affluent and high net worth clients as well as 2.2 million international clients.
For further information visit www.barclays.com
For further information...
22 July 2004
Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE): Media Backgrounder (Content Analysis Research Area)
Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE) is structured into four complementary research areas: content analysis; document structure; image processing; and work practice technology.
The content analysis research area consists of four core linguistic technologies that are used to build different content management software applications. These core technologies are: finite state technology (FST); machine learning; parsing; and semantics.
FST in simple terms is the use of devices to increase time and space efficiencies when creating language-processing tools. It is a well-established technology used extensively in many areas of natural language processing. FST is particularly well-adapted for multilingual tools as relevant local language phenomena can be easily and intuitively expressed as finite-state devices.
The theoretical foundations of finite state technologies have been developed to a high level of sophistication in the past two decades. It is now regarded as an established fact, for example, that finite state models are suitable for modelling broad areas of syntax, particularly in spoken language. To expand the range of applications a new weighted version of the technology (WFSC) is currently being developed with results which promise to confirm Xerox’s position as world leader in the field.
Machine learning can be described as the study of computer algorithms that improve automatically through experience. In other words, through examples a system will learn by itself to perform tasks automatically, in particular ones that have traditionally been performed manually by humans. At XRCE, machine learning is applied in textual information access to new options in processing document collections. The XRCE Categorizer is an example of such an application whereby, given a few manually classified files, the system quickly learns by itself how to classify documents hierarchically in existing categories. It can also learn entirely new categories on its own by detecting emerging topics of incoming documents and suggesting new categories to the user.
More information specifically on Categorizer is available in a Xerox press release, issued in February 2004 (refer to contact details below).
Parsing is the deconstruction of text into its syntactic parts (noun phrases, verbs etc) to then be able to analyse and identify useful functional relations between them in large collections of text (e.g. web pages, document collections). Xerox is already at the stage of enabling machines to parse text for its meaning using its incremental parser (XIP) technology. XIP is designed to build robust analysers that tackle deeper linguistic aspects than those traditionally handled by the now widespread shallow parsing technologies. Parsing is an essential building block for natural language applications.
Semantics is closely linked to parsing at XRCE but it goes beyond the syntactic structure by looking at meaning and concepts. Concepts and the relations between them are identified and abstractions made so that a ‘knowledge representation’ is built for specific applications e.g. identifying “bank” as a financial institution vs. identifying it as the edge of a river. Semantic representations also lend themselves to inference, particularly the use of background knowledge to refine or extend the interpretation of a text.
The content analysis research area not only generates technologies with practical business applications to solve business issues on its own, but also with the other three XRCE research areas. Individual technologies that have been guided by XRCE from R&D concept to development and/or commercialisation - either through a Xerox business group or via a third-party organisation - are:
• Terminology Suite
• Inxight LinguistX
• XIP
• LIRIX
• BioTIP
• Categorizer
• CopyFinder
Separate, individual fact sheets are available on all of these technologies and the business issues they solve (see below).
For more information, please refer to www.xrce.xerox.com or contact...
The content analysis research area consists of four core linguistic technologies that are used to build different content management software applications. These core technologies are: finite state technology (FST); machine learning; parsing; and semantics.
FST in simple terms is the use of devices to increase time and space efficiencies when creating language-processing tools. It is a well-established technology used extensively in many areas of natural language processing. FST is particularly well-adapted for multilingual tools as relevant local language phenomena can be easily and intuitively expressed as finite-state devices.
The theoretical foundations of finite state technologies have been developed to a high level of sophistication in the past two decades. It is now regarded as an established fact, for example, that finite state models are suitable for modelling broad areas of syntax, particularly in spoken language. To expand the range of applications a new weighted version of the technology (WFSC) is currently being developed with results which promise to confirm Xerox’s position as world leader in the field.
Machine learning can be described as the study of computer algorithms that improve automatically through experience. In other words, through examples a system will learn by itself to perform tasks automatically, in particular ones that have traditionally been performed manually by humans. At XRCE, machine learning is applied in textual information access to new options in processing document collections. The XRCE Categorizer is an example of such an application whereby, given a few manually classified files, the system quickly learns by itself how to classify documents hierarchically in existing categories. It can also learn entirely new categories on its own by detecting emerging topics of incoming documents and suggesting new categories to the user.
More information specifically on Categorizer is available in a Xerox press release, issued in February 2004 (refer to contact details below).
Parsing is the deconstruction of text into its syntactic parts (noun phrases, verbs etc) to then be able to analyse and identify useful functional relations between them in large collections of text (e.g. web pages, document collections). Xerox is already at the stage of enabling machines to parse text for its meaning using its incremental parser (XIP) technology. XIP is designed to build robust analysers that tackle deeper linguistic aspects than those traditionally handled by the now widespread shallow parsing technologies. Parsing is an essential building block for natural language applications.
Semantics is closely linked to parsing at XRCE but it goes beyond the syntactic structure by looking at meaning and concepts. Concepts and the relations between them are identified and abstractions made so that a ‘knowledge representation’ is built for specific applications e.g. identifying “bank” as a financial institution vs. identifying it as the edge of a river. Semantic representations also lend themselves to inference, particularly the use of background knowledge to refine or extend the interpretation of a text.
The content analysis research area not only generates technologies with practical business applications to solve business issues on its own, but also with the other three XRCE research areas. Individual technologies that have been guided by XRCE from R&D concept to development and/or commercialisation - either through a Xerox business group or via a third-party organisation - are:
• Terminology Suite
• Inxight LinguistX
• XIP
• LIRIX
• BioTIP
• Categorizer
• CopyFinder
Separate, individual fact sheets are available on all of these technologies and the business issues they solve (see below).
For more information, please refer to www.xrce.xerox.com or contact...
Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE): Media Backgrounder (Document Structure Research Area)
Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE) is structured into four complementary research areas: content analysis; document structure; image processing; and work practice technology.
The document structure research area of XRCE research is aligned to the increased adoption of extensible mark-up language (XML) by the IT and internet industries, and the sheer potential of XML as a language of communication between disparate systems.
While the primary benefit of XML is in exchanging data, greater benefits can be gained in content and document management. First of all, XML is naturally suited to represent the logical structure of documents (e.g. titles, sections, chapters, paragraphs) independently of their visual rendering. More importantly it can represent the semantics or meaning of documents (i.e. varied elements such as authors, dates, organisation or product names, financial data, copyright statements, legal warnings). This provides the potential for advanced, semantic-enabled search and data mining, but also for smart processes throughout the document lifecycle including content reuse and repurposing, quality assurance and security. It is also a natural bridge between databases and content for document validation and updating .
However, the challenges of how to create new documents automatically in XML, and convert legacy documents to XML, remain. XRCE is developing and combining new methods for Legacy Document Conversion where the research addresses the three faces of a structural document: layout, logical structure and semantics. The second research theme in this area is XML Schema management where researchers are addressing ways to link together different XML stores, and to repurpose and reformulate XML documents in order to enable “Smart processes”.
The document structure research area not only generates technologies with practical business applications to solve business issues on its own, but also with the other three XRCE research areas.
It combines expertise in machine learning, document mining and clustering, querying and visualization and hybrid methods for document acquisition. One technology that has been guided by XRCE from R&D concept to development and commercialisation is the SmartTagger for which a separate individual fact sheet is available (see below).
For more information, please refer to www.xrce.xerox.com or contact...
The document structure research area of XRCE research is aligned to the increased adoption of extensible mark-up language (XML) by the IT and internet industries, and the sheer potential of XML as a language of communication between disparate systems.
While the primary benefit of XML is in exchanging data, greater benefits can be gained in content and document management. First of all, XML is naturally suited to represent the logical structure of documents (e.g. titles, sections, chapters, paragraphs) independently of their visual rendering. More importantly it can represent the semantics or meaning of documents (i.e. varied elements such as authors, dates, organisation or product names, financial data, copyright statements, legal warnings). This provides the potential for advanced, semantic-enabled search and data mining, but also for smart processes throughout the document lifecycle including content reuse and repurposing, quality assurance and security. It is also a natural bridge between databases and content for document validation and updating .
However, the challenges of how to create new documents automatically in XML, and convert legacy documents to XML, remain. XRCE is developing and combining new methods for Legacy Document Conversion where the research addresses the three faces of a structural document: layout, logical structure and semantics. The second research theme in this area is XML Schema management where researchers are addressing ways to link together different XML stores, and to repurpose and reformulate XML documents in order to enable “Smart processes”.
The document structure research area not only generates technologies with practical business applications to solve business issues on its own, but also with the other three XRCE research areas.
It combines expertise in machine learning, document mining and clustering, querying and visualization and hybrid methods for document acquisition. One technology that has been guided by XRCE from R&D concept to development and commercialisation is the SmartTagger for which a separate individual fact sheet is available (see below).
For more information, please refer to www.xrce.xerox.com or contact...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
About Me
- Glyn
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- PR, internal communications and branding pro currently freelancing as a consultant, writer, DJ, and whatever else comes my way.
Posts
