MDSL Acquires Innodoc for Auto-Invoice Processing

Market data cost and contract management software vendor MDSL last month acquired Cincinnati, Ohio-based Innodoc, a provider of technology for document imaging and management, for an undisclosed sum to support improved automation and processing of paper- or image-based data invoices for use in MDSL's MDM and TEM data and telecoms cost management software.

Officials say Innodoc's solution -- which uses optical character recognition to scan a document several times to learn the document type, extract data, and perform validation -- can process 60 documents per hour, a 15-fold improvement over MDSL's previous processes, and automatically provides users with detailed alerts of any discrepancies to resolve billing issues.

As a result of the acquisition, MDSL has created a new subsidiary, MDSL Innodoc, and Innodoc president and chief executive Steve Naghshineh has been appointed chief operating officer and vice president of the new business, reporting to chief executive Ben Mendoza, who says MDSL has been an Innodoc partner and used its technology for several years, but acquired the company after beginning an implementation of the joint solution at an unnamed major financial firm, which made it "too risky for the Innodoc technology to remain outside of MDSL's control."

"The Innodoc technologies to allow us to process anything, from anywhere in the world.... The technology actually doesn't care what type of invoice, or even what language (so long as we can recognize it) that we process, so this opens up many new possibilities for us on top of our existing market data and telecoms processing capabilities," Mendoza adds.