This blog entry was written by Digiform (Turkey) CEO and Capturefast (USA) co-founder Gurkan Karagoz regarding his observations about his recent attendance to the CapServe 2017 Summit, held in Washington D.C.

The Capture market has a global value of $3.2 billion and half of this market is represented by the United States. That’s why all of the major capture players are focused on being successful in the US. Not only new software and hardware technologies, but also innovative capture processes and business models are being tested and developed in this market.

The size of the US market is appetising, however it’s not that easy to get in and out of the market. Either you need to have a very strong marketing strategy, or you need to offer a superior technology. As CaptureFast, the technological advances we gained over the last few years should have caught the attention of the market, which is why I was invited to participate as a panelist at the CapServe’17 summit where industry leaders such as Kofax, Abbyy, Kodak are invited to attend.

Before CapServe’17 I had never witnessed an event where the interaction and connection between attendees, sponsors and organisers was so strong. Even the physical space was arranged in a way that fostered continuous communication between all parties. Rather than an auditorium style sitting arrangement where speakers speak in monologues, people could sit where they want in round tables, work, chat, have coffee and even eat. The speakers encouraged active attendee participation by asking things to random people without notice, or referring to the companies at the demo tables. 

The summit began with the opening remarks of Bob Zagami, Managing Director of Harvey Spencer Associates who is the organiser of the event. As the Mobile Panel which I was a panelist at would take place in the second day of the summit, during the first day I was planning to relax, unwind, and alleviate the stress and excitement that I was feeling.

Out of nowhere Bob suddenly broke off the bench and before he started with this speech, he started to walk around the room with the microphone in his hand. Just like a bride and groom going around the tables and having individual conversations with each and every invitee at their wedding, there was not one person in the room that Bob didn’t recognise. He started to engage in daily conversations with them, “How are things Chris?”, “What did you do with that project Louis?” and set the tone to a very causal and friendly environment. 

Suddenly Bob started to walk towards me. He stated, “We have a new company, a new face among us, let’s all welcome CaptureFast and Gurkan, to the USA.” When he handed me the microphone I jumped right into the subject, as if I was not stresses out at all. I was so caught up in my conversation that suddenly I found myself throwing the CaptureFast Smart Scanner in the air, demonstrating how it never breaks or ceases to work. When I showed that the device which had a few tumblers on the floor was working smoothly, I was awarded with huge applause.

The Smart Scanner demonstration became the attraction of the summit, and our demo table was practically never empty. I had lots of fun and engaging conversations with many device manufacturers. They said, “We can also throw our device just like you did, and our only guarantee can be that it definitely won’t work! 

I returned back home with hope and excitement for the future. I am now confident that the US is ready for us and we are ready for the US as well.

At the summit we let the world know that we are developing technologies such as Cloud Capture, Advanced Capture, Clientless Capture, that the industry has not even heard of. We will featuring detailed articles regarding all of these new services at our 

blog. I think that with CapServe’17 we have been accepted to the club, and now the market is waiting to try out our cloud-based mobile document capture solution as soon as possible.

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PS: Visioneer CTO Jon Harju was the lucky winner of the Smart Scanner, and I guaranteed that it would work without any glitches regardless of the fall!