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.