Anthony Macciola, chief technology officer of Kofax, who is currently in Australia, said that one of the early adopters of a mobile capture platform due to be released by Kofax this quarter, envisaged just such an application. The insurance company wants to 'empower customers so that the customer loads the app on their mobile phone and it walks them through the process,' of completing a claim form.

This might involve the insurance client being asked a series of questions via the app on the phone and then being told to take and upload a photo of the crash site, and of the two drivers' licences for example. Mr Macciola acknowledged that the first version of the mobile capture system that Kofax will release this quarter is intended for simpler in-the-field data capture.

Kofax's product roadmap however will see it release a version of the app to allow video, and audio content to be captured, and also to collect signatures using smartphone or tablet screens later this year. It is also planning to offer a payments dongle, so that tablets or smartphones can be used to swipe credit cards for in-the-field payments to be collected.

Mr Macciola said that he believed; 'Mobile is the change agent for the next 10-15 years,' and questioned why people would continue to use scanners three or four years from now when they had their own mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones which could be used to capture documents, photos, video and audio.

Kofax claims that the mobile capture software market in the US will rise from almost nothing today to $US1.3 billion by 2015.

The initial version of the Kofax mobile application will run on iOS and Android devices. Mr Macciola said that the company was also exploring the option of making a Windows Mobile 7 version available later in the year, which would extend its reach to the Nokia platform.

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Initially the system will be available in a very controlled release, to selected customers. Mr Macciola declined to speculate which of the company's Australian customers might be included in that early release programme, but it numbers organisations such as Suncorp, NAB, ANZ and Centrelink among users of its Kofax back office document capture system.

Insurance is a key focus for Kofax internationally. Mr Macciola envisaged the first iteration of the mobile system being used by a claims adjuster in the field who would log into the Kofax system using the mobile app, and based on the active directory be allowed to capture a range of content for field claims.

'He might take the drivers licence and accident report repair quote and the repairers' business licence, put them on the hood of the car, take a photo, compress it then send them off,' he said.

That information would then be integrated with the Kofax back office system which uses scanners and copiers to capture images of documents and extract key information for further processing. Mr Macciola said some enterprises used Kofax to capture millions of documents a week.

The company has not yet announced what it will charge for the mobile system. The Kofax back office system is charged on a volume basis, but the mobile application will be a single annual fee per named user he said.