Document Management solutions have not yet reached, on the Romanian market, the degree of penetration and popularity that, for example, ERP applications have. However, both the private and the public sector are starting to show an increased interest in this type of solutions. In order to find out how consistent this interest is, how well the need for document management systems is perceived by potential customers, and especially when and how they consider it necessary to start a Document Management project, we invited some of the main players in this market to a debate in our magazine. They kindly responded to our request: Madalina-Manon Serbanescu, Business Development Manager Information Management Business Solutions – Star Storage, Claudiu Borsan, Country Sales Manager – ELO Digital Office, Tudor Popa, Technology Sales Consultant – Oracle Romania, Radu Ionescu, Sales Director – Docentris, Cristian Apa, Information Management Sales Representative – IBM Romania, Theodor Dumbrava, Business Process Solutions Development Manager – Xerox Romania and Republic of Moldova, Viorel Delinschi, Business Development Manager Information Management Business Solutions – Star Storage, and Alin Nita, General Manager – FivePlus Solutions.
GV: From the perspective of your accumulated project experience, when does the moment come when a company should realize that it needs a Document Management (DM) solution?
Claudiu Borsan, ELO Digital Office: I consider this the moment when the first document or information vital to the business of that company is lost. When an employee responds to a request by saying: “I can’t find that document!” or when, when you need a certain piece of information, it is delivered to you in over 24 hours. If it’s a report, a statistic or a project that needs to be prepared, it’s understandable that it takes time. But when there is information that exists in the company, and the need for this information is urgent, and the answer is slow in coming, then it is obvious that the company needs a DM solution.
Radu Ionescu, Docentris: Normally, a company needs a DM solution right from the beginning of its activity. I think that any company, no matter how small it is, no matter the number of employees, customers, etc., may need such a solution. Our customers include companies with a small number of employees, but which run a large volume of documents. Other situations: small offices or representative offices, which have information content that needs to be accessed by their parent companies, usually located abroad. So, from this point of view, I would not see a limitation to the time of establishment or the size of the company. Of course, for large, mature firms, a DM solution is a priority, but this does not exclude SMEs from the equation.
Cristian Apa, IBM: I would say that the need for a DM solution is derived from a combination of factors. We cannot only talk about volume or very specific requirements, there are several factors that contribute to the shaping of this need. And if we look at it from the perspective of the type of data that exists in corporations, regardless of their size, according to market analysts, we have between 80 and 90% of information in the form of unstructured documents. Statistics show that every two years, the amount of information stored within a company doubles. In these circumstances, companies are faced with the following situation: they have a huge amount of data – and I stress data, not information – from which they are unable to extract information. Thus, the implementation of a DM system does not only solve some punctual issues, but responds to a fundamental requirement, namely to deliver that business information in context and in time. In order to achieve maximum value, information must be delivered within a certain timeframe, but this must be done taking into account the context. Moreover, it is very important that the recipient, the receiver of the information, can trust the quality of the information delivered. The most common and, I think, the most handy example: if I am looking for an invoice and it is missing, I have to be sure that its absence means that the client has not paid it and not that the invoice could not be found in the archive. This is a very important point – in more than 50% of cases the issue of trust in information is questioned by managers who have to make decisions based on this delivered information. From this point of view, there is a real need, including in the Romanian market. But the question we should all ask ourselves is: how much awareness is there of this need? We need to make a clear distinction between the fact that there is such a need and its awareness, and we need to see how much a customer is willing to pay for an IT solution capable of solving the specific DM problem.
Viorel Delinschi, Star Storage: This is where we, the developers and providers of such solutions and services, can step in to help companies realise the need, but also the risks they face without such a solution. There is a need for this approach, because, in general, the value of information is underestimated, and its true value appears when, for example, there is an incident that could damage its integrity – a natural disaster, a fire, etc. These are phenomena that can totally destroy most of the information stored on traditional media, on paper, and in such unfortunate cases, the consequences are very harsh and can lead to the disappearance of the company from the market.
GV: Is this need generated internally or under pressure from external factors, requirements such as audits, regulations, legislation, etc.?
Tudor Popa, Oracle: I believe that, first and foremost and in the vast majority of cases, the need to implement a DM solution is internally generated. Of course, there is the legislative side, which helps in the alignment with a number of requirements, but I think the internal need is much more important. If you know that you don’t have certain business processes automated, if there is an awareness of the time wasted walking through paperwork or files to get certain documents approved, then you really understand the value of such a system, which can allow you to be one step ahead of the competition. After all, the goal of any company is to make a profit, and the solutions to this are either to reduce costs or to increase the speed of accessing important information so that you can make a decision faster.
The public sector needs efficient business models.
G.V.: What is the situation in the public area, where we cannot talk about profit, but about other indicators?
Alin Nita, FivePlus Solutions: Here the requirements have started to appear more as a pressure to align with the requirements of the European Union, requirements that target all state institutions. A concrete example is the part of petitions, which can be submitted by any citizen – in this case, EU regulations foresee a certain time for resolution for each type of petition submitted. However, if the classic algorithm is followed – filing at the counter, sending the petition by post, waiting for the answer, etc. – a lot of time is lost and it is completely out of the EU standards and the time limit given by the Romanian legislation for solving a petition.
Viorel Delinschi, Star Storage: In the public area, the pressure is more external and not so much from within the organization. However, the adoption rate is very low in the public area.
RG: What are the reasons: financial, is it a problem of mentality or a lack of technical competence of the administrative apparatus?
Radu Ionescu, Docentris: It is primarily a problem of mentality, but also an acute lack of effective business models. And from this point of view, we can observe a very large gap with the private sector, which has become aware much faster of the importance of efficient document management and has understood much better the advantages in terms of access speed, security parameters in which this can be achieved, etc. On the other hand, in the budgetary area there are the premises of consistent budgets, at least in terms of the fact that there are external models, which mark the value of the investments to be made to achieve an efficient DM system. There is a demand from the market, which comes from the private sector, especially from multinationals, which have such systems in their organisations. There is also the pressure that we, who promote the solutions in the market, exert through business arguments in favour of DM solutions.
Cristian Apa, IBM: In every organisation, be it private or public, there are work procedures, workflows and implicit bureaucracy, but if we look at DM applications only as a support for document workflows, I don’t think this is the best approach. Implementing a DM system has a multiple impact: changing the mindset of users, the way they work, but most of all, reorganizing a company’s workflows, at a conceptual level. And from this point of view, I believe that one of the first things to do when starting a discussion with a client is to propose a redesign and optimization of the workflow – not necessarily the document flows – before actually benefiting from such a solution. Because the main benefit of a DM solution is to optimise the activity of that organisation. This aspect is much more important and has a much greater impact than simply implementing an IT system.
Consultancy, a key element in successful implementation
GV: Is it common for a potential customer to ask the vendor or implementer to remodel processes?
Cristian Apa, IBM: It is a problem that depends very much on us, those who shape the market in a certain way. It is also a problem for the business consulting firms, because some vendors do not have the capabilities in this area and then they have to turn to a specialized company, but the two aspects have to be dealt with together in order to guarantee a successful project.
GV: Are there any such companies in the market with expertise in this area?
Alin Nita, FivePlus Solutions: Each company has its own team of business consultants, with varying degrees of experience in this field, through which it can impose a certain approach. But, on the other hand, there are also “pure” consulting projects, where the client is oriented towards certain types of solutions, less towards vendors, implementers, etc. This is a natural approach because, in my experience, one of the main beneficiaries of DM solutions is the top management of the company, not necessarily the head of the office or the end-user of the solution. And if we talk about top management, we are talking mainly about the private sector, because in public institutions the rate of change of management is very high depending on the political algorithm of the moment, and supporting such a project requires a strategy, an informed decision, involvement, time. Speaking of the public domain, document management will be imposed as a result of the need to reduce costs, an idea that has been used in political circles recently. Action still needs to be taken at the level of management education to convince people that the alternative to “bureaucratic red tape” is document management, which objectifies the organisation’s relationship with the public and ensures transparency and efficiency. Thus, with the same volume of activity, but with an improved and automated system, staff can concentrate on other activities.
In my opinion, this will accelerate the understanding of the need for a solution that will streamline work in the area of information management.
Cristian Apa, IBM: I would come with a clarification here – the implementations of DM solutions differ radically from one company to another, even if they have the same business object. There are, of course, the so-called “best practices” collections, defined by certain verticals, but in this case, the framework is much broader than, say, in the case of ERP implementations.
Alin Nita, FivePlus Solutions: There are differences generated by the fact that, usually, we, as vendors, have to adapt to the “local habit”, that is to say to the way the company has structured its processes, to the way it has defined its working procedures, to the way it works internally. And here an important asset is the flexibility of the solution.
Madalina-Manon Serbanescu, Star Storage: It is not possible to replicate an identical deployment model to another client, because it is not possible to make templates. Regardless of the type of customer, prior to an implementation, it is imperative to analyse the customer’s needs and map them to the customer’s business processes. This is why consulting is an essential element in the process of implementing a DM solution.
Theodor Dumbrava, Xerox: From my point of view, the “best practices” part is more present in the business process analysis and consulting stage. And this is because any document management process exists, in a more or less structured form, from the very beginning, within a company or institution and has attached to it certain costs or a certain degree of efficiency, which are in fact the drivers that can make the client understand that he has a specific need and can lead him to opt for the implementation of a solution or for the outsourcing of document management. When I say “best practices”, I am referring to different tools that can be used to track a document flow, for example, at all the stages it goes through – from the moment it enters the company to its storage – monitoring the “nodes” it goes through, the time spent at different levels, etc., and recording the costs it adds up along the way. So in the end, the vendor, initially present as a consultant, can present a real situation, benefiting from quantified time-cost parameters, so that the potential customer has real data to make a decision.
