Document Management Solution: On A Take-Off Mode

Documents play a strategic role in enhancing the productivity of any
organization and improving the customer service. Be it in electronic or hard
based form, documents allows users to store, retrieve and manage all the
important data information and other property.

As the area of work is expanding, it has become essential to properly manage
the important information so that they could be used and reused whenever
required and act as a tool of storage. According to a Gartner report, 7.5
billion documents are produced worldwide each year and one in five workers spend
at least 60 percent of their time dealing with documents.

According to the report organizations spend up to 15 to 20 percent of their
revenue on documents. Up to 30 percent of the identified document output
expenditure within an organization could be saved by passing control to a
document expert.

Document management is one solution that is designed to make the process of
finding and sharing information an easy and convenient method targeted to
increase the efficiency of an organization by saving time. The solution is
designed to organize content in a logical way and makes easy to standardize
content creation and presentation across an enterprise.

Besides, it promotes knowledge management and mining of the stored
information. It harnesses valuable features of documents like template creation,
document authoring, reviewing, publishing, auditing and even destroying or
archiving.

Varied Definition Document management solution is a vast term and every
vendor has his own solution for different customers, depending on their
requirements. Canon defines document management as a solution that contains
three parts including documents, index and attributes where index contains all
the headlines and authors. Attribute contains the kind of content it is (whether
it is text or image) and document is the entire material in each content.
According to the company document management solution is all about archival,
retrieval, index and workflow. Xerox defines document management solution as the
activity to manage the documents in any form and its movement within an
organization. "Within this solution, Xerox has adopted the Lean Six Sigma
approach to deliver cost reductions, reduce process variability and remove waste
from complex processes. Lean Six Sigma is a disciplined, data driven approach
that increases speed by removing non-value added activities (Lean) whilst
minimizing the defects of process outputs (Six Sigma)," explains Ravi
Venkatraman, Director, Xerox Global Services, Xerox India.

Document management by and large is meant for customers that manages the
workflow and controls the movement of document. It helps the customers to
maximize their productivity and efficiently utilize their resources. It is meant
for helping the enterprises to manage their workflow process, in a defined
methodological manner and cost processing.

Players In The Game Vendors in the market are realizing the importance of
document management solution and are approaching the market with their own pace.
Some vendors have taken this product on an aggressive note and while others are
still in the process of gearing up to harness the market potentials. Canon had
recently launched smaller version of document management solution that is
targeted to make the business a simple process for enterprise segment. Canon
India had also conducted four seminars across India that was aimed to increase
awareness among customers to adopt this solution. Besides implementing document
management solution in enterprise segment Canon has also been focusing on
personal workspace also.

Sharing his views on the approaches of Canon for targeting the customers in
an effective manner, Puneet Datta, Senior manager marketing, Business Imaging
Solution, Canon India Pvt. Ltd. shared, "Canon aims at simplifying the
process of document management and aims to come up with solutions that are
convenient for customers to implement and understand. Normally, problem with
document management solution is that they are not effective for managing the
hard copy of documents. Canon has come up with products in this domain that not
only manages the digital documents but also takes care of those in form of hard
copy."

Leveraging its reach in the domain of document management, Xerox provides the
bridge between the traditional paper world and the increasingly digital world of
documents by streamlining and automating document-intensive business processes
of its clients.

HP has been driving the market of document management scanner, a component of
document management solution. Services that are included under the umbrella of
this solution in HP includes document scanning appliances, document processing
and routing software, servers, storage, printing and data output devices.

Security Aspects While managing the entire documents of an enterprise,
security holds an important position and service provider has to ensure that
security features are given a special focus in each of the solution. As document
management system is all about storing documents of an organization it needs
good control over different security aspects. Vendors who are providing this
solution have to ensure that scanning and mailing is done in a secured manner so
that the important data is not leaked or misused. The data stored in the
database of the server are to be kept in a secured manner so that they are
always secure and inaccessible through unauthorized sources. Role of Solution
Providers Though vendors are talking a lot about document management solution
but the concept has yet not taken off in a full-fledged manner in the Indian
market and vendors are taking a passive approach in implementing this solution
through solution provider. Also, since this concept is too vast, there is lot of
sub-elements that are taken care by solution providers like providing complete
printing solution to customers. Hence, right now sps might not be directly
involved in offering a complete solution, but they have been a part of offering
solution to the customers.

Major players like Canon and Xerox are offering this solution to their
customers directly and has not appointed any solution provider for this.
Explaining the reasons, Datta shared "this is due to the fact that the
solution is still at an initial stage and being in the premature level, its
distributorship cannot be assigned to any of the third parties in the
market."

However, HP has been promoting the business of document scanners through the
network of its authorized channel partners spread across the country.

Reasons for indirect involvement of Sps in driving the document management
solution in the market is because it is not just about selling a product but it
is about promoting an entire concept. And since the concept is itself at an
initial stage, vendors are apprehensive in getting sps in loop in implementing
solution for bigger clients.

"The implementation of this concept needs expertise at a higher level
and since the product is new, it will be too early to assign solution providers
for this. They need to have strong project management, 24X7 offerings of service
and up-to-date software solution," explained Datta from Canon.

Opportunities for Sps Vendors believe that while providing the document
management solution, solution provider has a lucrative aspect but first of all
they need a strong infrastructure, dedicated software provider and a
full-fledged service team that is dedicated for providing services round the
clock.

Solution providers can play a big role increasing the penetration of this
concept by providing solution to customers that are remotely located. Since it
is not feasible for the vendors to set up their office in scattered locations,
the solution can be provided by means of sps. For this, the response time of the
service has to be prompt.

Venkatraman from Xerox commented that at this stage solution provider do not
understand end-to-end process of document management. Therefore, they land up in
a component solution that includes printing.

"Printer is one component of DMS that falls under the category of output
delivery device. Sps can play a big role in popularizing this solution.
Completely shifting to document management solution is not the right way. It
depends on the requirement of the customers and the solution should be deployed
accordingly. Since there is different version of document management, solution
providers can utilize the benefit by providing the service through various means
like providing printing solution to the customers," shared Venkatraman.

With the implementation of document management solution, solution providers
can help the customers in choosing the right kind of print technology and
bringing down the cost that could result in saving by increasing the utilization
of company's resources and thereby allowing better asset management. The
assessment of the documents helps the organization to concentrate more on the
core business values by providing a professional method to identify and analyze
office requirements with factual data. Solution providers could help the
customers in providing an efficient work process that result in single point of
contact for all output management issues.

Reasons of Low Adoption The adoption rate of document management solution is
low not only in India but in the entire APAC region. The probable reason for
this is that today the enterprises have limited their expenditures in upgrading
the information and technology department and have not been able to look beyond
it. Document management solution is still not given priority among the potential
market. "The need of the hour is that CEO, CFO and CIO (3Cs) collectively
work on this issue and give a serious concern to this solution. This is
necessary even for the enterprise segment. For an aggressive approach in the
market, the concept is needed to be driven by 3Cs and this sort of collaboration
is not happening in the Indian market. DMS is a niche market. It will take
another 2-3 years to taken off in a full-fledged manner," added Datta.
Ashwini Aggarwal from HP added that for any new product or concept market needs
some time to understand and adopt the technology. Similar is the case with
document management solution. It is at an initial stage and customers have
started recognizing the potential of this product.

Larger enterprises work very strongly in strengthening their IT department
and implementing latest IT tools, upgrading their data centers or networking.
Now they have to start concentrating on document management solution also. It is
the time that vendors along with the collaboration of solution providers promote
this concept in the market and let the solution take off in a dedicated manner.