Impact Systems

In his monumental work "Future Shock", written in the late sixties,

Alvin Toffler predicted a paperless world. The e-office of Tofflerian parlance

with no paper might still be a distant reality in 2004, but India might soon be

getting its first taste of the digital transformation of a paper strewn office.

Pune-based Impact Systems is introducing digital pen and digital paper in the

country this October, in collaboration with Swedish company Anoto AB. Anoto's

digital camera technology and image processing in real time enables matter

written on digital paper to be transferred directly to a computer.

Says Dhananjay Datar, director, Global Business Development, Impact Systems,

"Once the paper is complete, it can be transmitted directly to a computer

or database and no longer requires to be interpreted by somebody who then enters

the information, which prevents incorrect entry of data. Moreover, it can be

reproduced in the same form on to the computer."

Impact plans to develop different applications for the digital paper and is

targeting the pharmaceutical, healthcare and R&D sector with the offering.

However, it would be unfair to conclude that Impact's claim to fame starts

and ends only with the digital pen and paper. In fact, its pedigree as a focused

player in the document management space, expertise in developing related

products and working relationship with software biggies-Documentum, Lotus and

Adobe distinguishes it as a niche player amongst Indian software companies.

Besides these partnerships, Impact's growth has also come from two of its

flagship products in the document management space, called e-RecordsManager and

e-FormsIntegrator. e-Records—Manager is the only product that is US Department

Of Defense 5015.2 certified as an integrated solution with Documen—tum. This

happened following the purchase of the software by the US Army. The company also

plans to launch a Qtrack incidence tracker product by the end of the year.

The company counts IBM, Glaxo SmithKline, Pfizer, Ranbaxy, Eli Lily, etc

amongst its blue-chip customers. The company ended 2003-04 with revenues of Rs

11.5 crore with 20% of it being contributed by products.