Som Imaging changes the face of document management in India

Back in 2005, Kolkata based Som Imaging Informatics or Somnetics started realizing that digital communication was the future. Sharing official content through post or by simple physical delivery by fellow colleagues for internal purposes would be obsolete very soon, as electronic mailing system was about to take over this market.

One of Somnetics' very first business models, managed scanning and digitization service, was based on this prediction. A few projects later, the brains behind the firm realized that only digitizing official documents in bulk was not enough to implement an absolutely flawless document management environment. "We would initially store the digitized documents in PDF format in CDs, hard disks and other portable devices. Although the offices looked cleaner than before, and documents stored in soft format were definitely more secured than hard copies, we started realizing that even the hard disks and portable devices had their own share of vulnerabilities such as disk crash, easy access by unwanted people, misplacement of portable devices, no availability of data when physically away from the location etc. That is when we conceived the idea of developing our very own document management system that would address these issues and make content sharing, access, searching faster than other traditional methods," Shantanu Som, director, Technical, Somnetics.

Since most document management systems are run on VPN, which is an expensive affair, The company shifted to Cloud as that would enable the mid market users to enjoy a better experience.

This product is offered to any organization which is willing to migrate from traditional document management system to new age document management, irrespective of their size and vertical. The company's existing clients include SMEs, Government organizations, corporate and institutes.

i-doc on cloud is launched as a service for those organizations whose IT infrastructure is either poor or who are not willing to take the hassles of running the running this software on their existing VPN or LAN. It would help them save part of their capital expenses involved in maintenance or upgradation of hardware.

Most organizations in India, including the east are migrating to Cloud Computing, as they are hosted service and they need not take the hassles of hardware maintenance on their shoulder. This especially holds true for the non-IT sectors equipped with just the basic infrastructural set-up.

i-doc plays the role of both record management and document management. The difference is, the former deals with only storage, archival and occasional retrieval of those documents that have completed their lifecycle. However, they continue acting as a proof or reference of a particular set of activity related to that document.

Documents on the other hand have a specific lifecycle, a workflow. They reach various departments for review, editing, data extraction, monitoring, sharing to get a specific end result. i-doc, unlike other record management system, enables fast execution of document life cycle.

Apart from mere searching, sharing, uploading and downloading, it has other features like customized workflow creation, version control, audit trail and audit log of documents for tracking changes, role and right based document access control (to restrict unauthorized people from accessing the documents), web document, web calendars, web forms etc for better online collaboration. It also supports multi company registration for large conglomerates and MNCs for better inter-company document collaboration.

Compatible with all OS and web browsers, this software can be accessed from smartphones and tablets, for which authorized people have the privilege to view their documents even when they are physically away from their office premise. All these features have made i-doc quite popular as a product in eastern India.

i-doc as a product is sold on a perpetual licensing model which generates extremely fast ROI. i-doc is often availed with our scanning and digitization service and form processing service. Running this software on Cloud means no extra IT expenses for the customers. We often club the maintenance cost with pay-per-use revenue model for 12 months, for a minimum of 5 users.

Using this software also enables the organization save physical space in office that was previously consumed by hard copies, save the time spent in searching and retrieval of documents, save money involved in multiple replication of documents through photocopying and ofcourse the expenses of transporting documents from one location to another.

i Doc has already witnessed its soft launch. It will be launched officially by the end of next month. Some of its present clients are Metro Diary, RP Sanjeev Goenka Group , Exide Industries, Adhunik Group, IPM Commodities, Alminerals, Zodiac Courier Service, Steel Authority of India Ltd. The product is priced on perpetual licensing model on per user month month basis, with a minimum of 5 users for a minimum period of 12 month.