On A Take-Off Mode

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

As the area of work is expanding, it has become essen­tial to manage
important information so that they can 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.

Document management is one solution that is designed to make the process of
finding and sharing information easy and convenient to increase the efficiency
of an organization by saving time. The solution is designed to organize content
in a logical way and makes it 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 archiving.

Varied definition

Document management solution (DMS) 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 name
of the authors. According to the company, document manage­ment solution is all
about archival, retrieval, index and workflow.

Xerox defines document management solution as an activity to manage
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) while minimizing the defects of
process outputs (Six Sigma),” explained Ravi Venkatraman, Director, Xerox Global
Services.

Document management is meant for customers who manage workflow, and control
the movement of documents. It helps customers to maximize their productivity and
utilize their resources efficiently. It is meant for helping 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 at their own pace. Canon had recently
launched a smaller version of document manage­ment solution that is targeted to
simplify business for enterprise segment. Canon India had also conducted four
seminars across India that was aimed at increasing awareness among customers to
adopt this solution. It has also focusing on personal workspace.

Puneet Datta, Senior Manager Marketing-Business Imaging Solution, Canon India
shared, “Canon aims at simpli­fying the process of document management and
planning to come up with solutions that are convenient for customers to
implement and understand. Normally, the problem with document management
solution is that they are not effective for managing the hard copy of documents.
We have come up with products in this domain that manage the digital documents
as well as hard copies.”

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. HP offers 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 SPs have 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.

Role of SPs

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 SPs.
Also, since this concept is too vast, there is lot of sub-elements that are
taken care of by SPs 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 have not appointed any SP for this. Explaining the
reasons, Datta shared, “This is due to the fact that the solution is still at an
initial stage, its distribu­torship cannot be assigned to a third party.”

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 promoting an
entire concept. And since the concept is itself at an initial stage, vendors are
apprehensive in getting SPs in the loop in implemen­ting the solution for bigger
clients.

Opportunities for SPs

Vendors believe that while providing the document manage­ment solution, SPs
have 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.

SPs can play a big role in increasing the penetration of this concept by
providing solutions 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 said sthat SPs 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, SPs 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, SPs 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.

Why 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 needs 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 two
to three 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 datacenters or networking. Now
they have to start concentrating on document management solution also. It is
time that vendors along with the SPs promote this concept in the market and let
the solution take off in a dedicated manner.

Amrita Tejasvi

(amritat@cybermedia.co.in)