The geographical area and population size in India is huge and therefore in a bid to offer hasslefree and streamlined services, it is important and better to move away from paper and capture everything in the digital format. Wacom is a trusted name when it comes to paperless services, globally, says Jitender Sharma, Director, Wacom, in conversation with Harshal Yashwant Desai of Elets News Network (ENN).
Give us an overview of your product and services.
Wacom was based in Japan and it began its operations 36 years ago. We invented the pen technology and it was supposed to replace the mouse. It was meant to give an experience to a person using it the same flair as he is supposed to get while using a pen and a piece of paper. Nowadays, the same technology is using to filling forms and capturing someone’s consent. And, this is very popular among the financial institutions for going paperless. Financial Services providers use Wacom solutions to help secure legally-binding agreements from customers for everything from account opening, to credit agreements. Would you like to tell us about your operations and clients globally? As I said, we began our operations in Japan and have a wide presence in the United States and the Middle East, Singapore, Malaysia, however, our prime focus is on India and China because of the typical geographical area and population size.
How does your product help Indian banks?
The geographical area and population size in India is huge and therefore in a bid to offer hasslefree and streamlined services, it is important and better to move away from paper and capture everything in the digital format. There are several advantages to capturing data stored digitally. You can search and edit any data at any point in time if it stored digitally. However, it is very difficult to use paper data and store. Our product helps in reducing processing time and paper cost by eliminating the need to print, scan, retrieve, store and securely dispose of paper documents.
How are your products better than your counterparts?
Initially, we launched a digital pen with an aim to replace the mouse. But now we also have software development kits. The software development kits are used in capturing data, verifying the handwritings and many others. For verifying your data, you need a 3D image of your handwriting, these type of innovative facilities are only available with Wacom. Our competitors only offer 2D images. With 2D images, it gets very difficult to verify the handwriting and convert them into digital data. Wacom is way ahead with its 3 Dimension offering. With have over 900 patents related to the technology.
Wacom works closely with several Core Banking Solution providers. Would you like to elaborate your work on this?
Our operation has completed more than three decades. As far as the European countries are concerned, paperless banking is completely adopted and therefore, Wacom is a well-known name. But in India, we are fifteen years behind the technology. Here, the paperless solution is only limited to mobile applications. But paperless technology in terms of handwriting in the banking gamut is lacking in India.
Tell us about your operations in India.
We have a visible presence in India. Our offices are located in Bengaluru, Mumbai, New Delhi and Ahmedabad. We are the only company, in the paperless segment pertaining to handwriting offerings in the banking sector, which is based in India. All other companies in the gamut are based in China. Unlike other firms working in the domain, we have a full staff presence across our offices. We offer complete support to our customers at the time of integration. If ordered, our product is delivered within three days across India. Our service centres are available across India. We have a special offering for Indian banks. We have a hybrid solution that works even if there is the unavailability of internet services. A person can write on a piece of paper and the same can be digitised once he comes back to his branch just by using our mobile application.
How do you showcase your product to the CXO of a financial organisation?
Our approach is very clear, we go the global way. In India, we want to work with the Core Banking Software Solution providers. Globally, CBS providers trust our solutions to work on paperless services. Prior to offering services, we initially do a POC with the bank with their five to ten branches and once they see the benefit —of going digital, they opt for our services.
