|
 |
|
News
|
Ken Peterka's interview with KCCO Business Radio of Minneapolis - September 9, 2002.
The following is a transcript of Ken Peterka's interview: KCCO Radio: “Captovation was recently recognized as one of Minnesota’s fastest growing technology companies. Ken Peterka is the Chief Executive of the company and he joins us this afternoon as part of our Minnesota Business focus. Welcome to the show Ken!” Ken Peterka: “Thanks Susie.” KCCO Radio: “Well, I understand you have recently been named to Deloitte and Touche’s Fast 50 Program. I guess that must make you feel pretty proud being the CEO of the company?” Ken Peterka: “Well, yes, we are very happy to receive this award, and very glad to be recognized for our revenue performance over the last five years.” KCCO Radio: “What does Deloitte and Touche look at when considering whether or not a company makes the list?” Ken Peterka: “They look at your revenue growth over the last 5 years. And I think they really look at, not only the average percent of revenue growth, but also that you have sustained revenue growth every year for the past 5 years.” KCCO Radio: “Ken, you talked about how important the people that work at Captovation are in getting that award, explain that a little bit for us.” Ken Peterka: “Oh, very much! The software business, which some people might think at first glance is an easy business, and that is not the case at all. There is a lot that goes into the design and development of the software, the testing, quality assurance, and the marketing and sales activity...everyone here at Captovation with their hard work and efforts, we’ve been able to achieve our revenue goal.” KCCO Radio: “Ken Peterka is our guest; he is the CEO of Captovation, our Minnesota business focus this hour. Can you tell us a little bit about the company, when were you founded, that kind of thing?” Ken Peterka: “Oh sure, we started in 1994. Ever since the founding of the company, we have specialized in the document imaging industry. And we really started out by focusing on document capture software. Scanning of business documents and indexing those documents into an electronic document management system. We were previously known as Complex Imaging Systems, but a few years ago we changed our name to Captovation. Some people thought that Complex Imaging Systems might mean that the software is hard to use, quite the contrary. So, we changed our name and face and proceeded with releasing our flagship product today, called eCapture, and we have done a lot of marketing efforts to really market and expand on that product line.” KCCO Radio: “And how does it work?” Ken Peterka: “Well, eCapture really allows paper-intensive organizations to digitize their paper documents, then archive those documents into an electronic document management system. The labor involved in a document capture process, that is the actual physical scanning of the documents, the indexing or assigning of meta-data to the documents do represent a significant cost as far as maintaining an electronic document imaging system. So, with eCapture, we focus the software at just streamlining that process in an effort to reduce those ongoing costs.” KCCO Radio: “So the benefits are costs, I would imagine there are also organizations not dealing with hundreds and hundreds, or thousands and thousands of paper.” Ken Peterka: “Oh sure, we have companies that use our software that just scan a thousand pages a day, up to two hundred thousand pages a day. So, what companies really do when they get involved in as far as digitizing the documents, some of the benefits they yield from having an electronic imaging system are preventing lost documents, specifically organizations. They get simultaneous access to documents, where anybody on their computer network can look at and view and print a document. They can eliminate storage space, because paper can take up a lot of space in file cabinets.” KCCO Radio: “Yeah, we sure know that. So what kind of companies, is it banks, schools, government? What are the different types of companies that use your software?” Ken Peterka: “Well, one of probably the most popular applications in electronic document imaging is probably Accounts Payable. Now, almost every company has an accounts payable department, so they are interested in this type of technology or those where they have a lot of invoices to pay.” KCCO Radio: “So, a bigger company?” Ken Peterka: “A bigger company. Although real popular other industries would include insurance, financial, retail, education, and health care are probably the top industries that use this type of software.” KCCO Radio: “Ken Peterka is our guest. Again, he is the CEO of Captovation, our Minnesota business focus. Being named to Deloitte and Touche means that you have had to increase your revenue by a certain amount, and doing that in these particular times must be something that your feel particularly good about, is that not true?” Ken Peterka: “Oh, yes indeed! Shortly after 9/11 last year, we sat down with everyone at the company. The economy at that time was already starting to go into a recession I believe. And we sat down and we said, well it is just going to get worse. So, we decided that we were going to combat the economy with more aggressive sales and marketing activity. And so we increased our sales and marketing efforts, and this year we have continued to see our revenue grow. The profits are less than last year, but nonetheless, we continue to maintain profitability.” KCCO Radio: “That is no small task in these days.” Ken Peterka: “Indeed.” KCCO Radio: “All right, well thank you so much Ken for being with us today. It’s been a pleasure.” Ken Peterka: “Great, thank you very much.” KCCO Radio: “Have a great afternoon.” KCCO Radio: “Ken Peterka, with us on KCCO. It’s Captovation, our Minnesota business focus."
|
