By Editor
The 6th edition of the conference attracts almost 300 document imaging experts from Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA)
Fujitsu hosted its 6th partner conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, from 20 to 22 May. Almost 300 experts from 47 countries in the EMEA region attended the event held under this year’s theme “Document and Digitise: Free Knowledge”.
PFU executives offered strategic updates and an overview of Fujitsu’s document scanner business. Representatives of various industries such as finance and construction gave valuable insights into user scenarios. Eleven channel partners were awarded with special prizes in several categories.
Fujitsu invited distributors, independent software vendors (ISV), resellers, business users and manufacturers to provide a detailed view of the latest trends and market opportunities in the document capture market. The conference focused on transforming documents into useful sources of information by integrating them in electronic workflows to release the knowledge they contain.
In his opening speech Mike Nelson, General Manager for Sales and Marketing at PFU Imaging Solutions Europe Ltd., explained why document scanning still is relevant in a ‘born digital’ age and how PFU will work with the channel community to nurture new opportunities and secure market growth now and into the future.
One of the highlights was the keynote by NASA space scientist Dr Garry E. Hunt. He explained that technology alone is not the answer for conquering the paper mountain. Instead, changes to corporate culture, business processes and working practices are of great importance and will finally lead to improved business and finance performance. Another keynote was dedicated to document capture in the healthcare industry, given by Dr Lester Russell. The Global Chief Medical Officer at Fujitsu Healthcare & Life Sciences described the use of digitisation to leverage Big Data as well as the benefits it brings to individual patients and medical staff.
As in previous Imaging Channel Conferences a special item on the agenda was dedicated to charity. This year’s donation will go to a project by the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund: the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital.
By holding ICC 2014 in Abu Dhabi, Fujitsu emphasised its commitment to the Middle East market and supported new business opportunities of channel partners from all countries.
“We used our sixth Fujitsu Imaging Channel Conference to show our partners how we can work together to grow and develop the market into new areas,” said Mike Nelson. “Our theme, ‘Document and Digitise: Free Knowledge’ was brought to life by our customers, who demonstrated new applications for ID capture, front office banking and telecommunications. This is exactly the kind of information our channel partners need to help them seek new business opportunities and the feedback has been very positive.”