ECOMPEX Offers One Stop Solution Services for Document Imaging, Data Processing to Government

ECOMPEX, Inc. has enjoyed success providing many federal government agencies with document imaging, coding, processing and management services by developing and using cutting-edge artificial intelligence (A.I.) technologies and finding a niche not occupied by other major government contractors, President and CEO Mr. Hubin Jiang, the founder and owner of the McLean, VA - based company, said in an interview with MEA Magazine.

"Our business model is not new, but it is different from many others," said Jiang, who hails from Rugao, China, and has lived in the United States since he arrived in 1987 to pursue his Ph.D. in electrical engineering. However, in the early 1990s he left his doctoral program to focus on applied technology development. Prior to launching ECOMPEX, he was the co-inventor of a satellite remote sensing imagery system - the Maryland Image Visualization and Analysis System, and participated in the research and development of CorpCast, an expert system with self-learning capabilities. He also is credited with the development of a neural network model for simulation of human visual perception and a machine learning model for natural handwriting recognition. He has rich experiences in document understanding, expert systems, content management and document imaging, in which he now holds several patents.

Jiang went on to found ECOMPEX in 1996. He personally developed the company’s first imaging and scanning system, VersaScan®, which has been sold to various Fortune 500 companies and federal agencies, but at first he struggled to gain a foothold for his fledgling business. "There were a lot of problems at the beginning because I only had a technical background," Jiang said. "I had no experience with business development and management. A lot of technical entrepreneurs think the technology sells itself, but in fact, good technology is only one of the aspects for success. It’s also about dealing with people, and how to do work so people recognize your past performance and come back to you again and again." His success is attested by the company's current status as a major government contractor, with more than 200 employees at its McLean, VA headquarters and other locations across the country.

Download Full Article (PDF 779kb) | back to top

ECOMPEX's Business Model - The One Stop Solution

The core of ECOMPEX's information management solutions is document imaging, coding,
and data processing.

"We are a solution provider. We are not a pure software vendor or a pure service provider. We are the owner of our technologies. We combine our technologies and services together as a full solution provider," said Jiang. The company has achieved certification as a high quality solution provider under the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 9001:2008 standard, which specifies requirements for quality management systems.

The core of ECOMPEX's information management solutions is document imaging, coding, and data processing. This entails, first of all, conversion of paper files into electronic format—the company is easily capable of converting more than 500,000 paper documents to electronic form a day. But that's just one of the solutions the company offers, which extends to document management, litigation support, automated data extraction and document classification, IT and helpdesk support and processing of public information requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Documents provided under FOIA must be redacted to remove sensitive information, such as names that cannot be made public, which ECOMPEX's A.I. software can process automatically. Major clients include the U.S. Army, the National Security Agency, Ginnie Mae, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Justice, Interior, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation.

"A one-stop solution is what is truly needed for an organization to get efficient, effective information management results. Whether it is a Government or private organization, our unique business model successfully supports their dynamically changing requirements and our software flexibility provides for quick responses to meet their mission critical tasks. Our clients have realized major benefits from the one-stop solution we provide," professed Carlos Videla, Vice President, Federal Sector for ECOMPEX.

The electronic documents ECOMPEX produces can be sent to the client in any format desired, such as PDF or TIFF image files. One of the company's strengths is working with unstructured, free-form documents, where information is needed that could be anywhere in a very long document.

"Our emphasis is on quality and accountability," Jiang said. In addition to FOIA requests, documents converted from paper to electronic form may be needed to support the Government's claims as a plaintiff or defendant in various court cases, or to ensure continuity of operations (COOP) in case of disaster. "If the Government was shut down for any reason, they need to be able to quickly access documents electronically, that is why quality and quick turn-around time is important," he said.

"We support mission-critical tasks," Jiang said. "The Government may change its requirements very often. They may need different formats, different kinds of output or databases." With its in-house team of software developers, ECOMPEX is able to adapt quickly to such shifting demands. "This relieves clients of the need to decide what software to buy," Jiang said. Instead, ECOMPEX provides its customers with the software to support their mission critical services, such as Millenndo®, an automated classification, data extraction and redaction solution; jDocMax®, a document management and retrieval solution; eDocWare®, a production imaging, collaboration and workflow solution; eDocDigitization®, an intelligent data entry solution; and MailDepot®, an automated mail processing and management solution.

"ECOMPEX’s innovative document imaging, document processing, and information retrieval technology is revolutionizing how Government and private industry approaches information management. We provide innovative artificial intelligence products and services to support all aspects of enterprise information management. Our multi-faceted technology solutions enable the automation of document processing tasks such as classification, data extraction, and redaction of unstructured documents of any type - paper or electronic, which results in major savings in time and costs for our clients," emphasized Dr. Kim Mitchel, Chief Science Officer for ECOMPEX.

Download Full Article (PDF 779kb) | back to top

The ECOMPEX Paperless Partnership Program

By teaming with ECOMPEX, companies can offer document imaging and coding services to their clients, giving them the immediate capacity to do what the customer wants at a price they can afford.

To capitalize on the new opportunities created by the changing regulatory environment, ECOMPEX has started a "Paperless Partnership" program designed to help businesses expand their capabilities to better serve their existing customers. "Whenever you talk to people about putting their records online and processing them electronically, they say, 'Great, I want to do that.' But unfortunately document imaging is not really affordable right now. When they are told about the cost involved from typical imaging vendors, they find they can't do it," Jiang said.

The Paperless Partnership aims to solve that problem. Through it, ECOMPEX partners with companies that have strong customer relationships but lack the software and experience for major imaging projects. By joining with ECOMPEX, these companies can offer document imaging and coding services to their clients, while ECOMPEX gains access to a new customer base. "It gives them the immediate capacity to do what the customer wants at a price they can afford and with no risk," Jiang said.

"This really is an exciting program," exclaimed Jesse Lake, Director of Marketing for ECOMPEX, "I have been lucky enough to see firsthand the mutual benefits that both companies and their customers receive as a result of the program. Partnering with ECOMPEX, you can have access to successful software, know-how, and experience to start production of a quality imaging and coding operation with minimal to no investment. The program really provides a win, win, win situation – for your customer, you, and ECOMPEX."

Download Full Article (PDF 779kb) | back to top

The ECOMPEX Company Culture - Promoting Personal and Professional Success

At ECOMPEX, employees are a part of a culture of respect and work in an environment that fosters personal and professional growth

Jiang attributes a key part of ECOMPEX's success to the company's culture. "We treat everyone as a family member," he said. At ECOMPEX, employees are a part of a culture of respect and work in an environment that fosters personal and professional growth—all while working beside colleagues who are highly talented and motivated individuals. All employees strive for high standards by committing to the company's core values and its ISO 9001:2008 certified quality management system, which in turn allows to deliver the utmost satisfaction to their clients.

"We know that a diverse employee base is a powerful resource, that's why our employees represent a wide range of experience, educational, and ethnic backgrounds. In addition, we encourage a robust work-life balance by providing all of our employees with the tools for their own personal success," said Jiang. "We work together and encourage family involvement. Company picnics and parties include spouses and children, which is not the case at many other companies. We also have many internal award programs, such as our 'Q3 Award' for quality, quantity and quickness, our 'Extra Mile Award' for employees who have gone the extra mile for customers, and our 'Technology Innovation Award' recognizing employees who develop unique and innovative technologies for the company."

Internal technical training for employees is accompanied by third party training on regulatory compliance and project management professional courses are available as well. "We also try our best to help those employees with disabilities, and have been recognized by the Fairfax County Disability Service Board in 2007 for our assistance to individuals with disabilities," Jiang said. "We promote personal capability."

ECOMPEX has been recognized as one of the "Top 500 Asian Owned Businesses in the U.S. for 2008," one of the "100 Fastest Growing Minority Firms" for 2006 and one of the "100 Top Asian Pacific American Owned Businesses" for 2005. Jiang himself was named one of the "Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business" for 2008, a "Smart100 CEO for 2009" by SmartCEO magazine, and one of the "50 Most Powerful Minority CEO's in the United States" for 2009.

Other recognitions the company has received include inclusion on Deloitte's Technology FAST 500 and Virginia FAST 50 list in 2007, 2008, and 2009 as well as the Inc. 5000 lists of the "Top 100 Government Services Companies" in 2008 and the 5,000 fastest growing private companies in the U.S. for 2007, 2008, and 2009. "ECOMPEX's methods have helped us achieve consistently high rates of growth," Jiang said. "To do that, first we have to keep our technology upgraded over time, so we are always pioneers. This year, our technology has become more mature and robust, and we are growing faster and faster."

Download Full Article (PDF 779kb) | back to top

Adapting to Change and Expanding for the Future

ECOMPEX is planning on expanding into new areas of service in the future, notably medical document and records processing

Change is creating new business niches for the company. "With the new administration coming in, a lot of projects are flowing down to the local and commercial environment. There are a lot of opportunities there, and we are expanding into the local government and private sectors," Jiang said.

"Government right now faces so many problems it is determined to resolve. The problems are bigger than just a lack of financial or other resources. There also isn’t enough time. Technology is very important because it can revolutionize the way government works and improve efficiency. Information processing and management plays a special role by reducing paperwork and information backlogs."

ECOMPEX is planning on expanding into new areas of service in the future, notably medical records processing, Jiang said. This is an area that causes healthcare providers major headaches, and there are significant backlogs converting paper records into electronic format. At the same time, electronic medical records are considered crucial to healthcare reform, in whatever form it finally assumes, and to the future of medical research as well as individual healthcare.

The recession that began in late 2007 and deepened last year has hit many industries hard, but for ECOMPEX this is a time of growth. When asked why, Jiang pointed again to the company's focus on being a solution provider. "Our strategy is to further mature our technology and help improve the efficiency of operations, this is very important," he said. "In the current economic situation, people want to do more work with the same budget. Our role is to further expand our information management solutions to serve broader areas and acquire more customers who want to use our technologies and services to do more work with the same or lesser budget and with a high level of quality."

Download Full Article (PDF 779kb) | back to top

For more information on ECOMPEX or any of its full range information management services and technologies, contact Jesse Lake at jesse.lake@ecompex.com or by phone at (703) 288-3382x1214.