Document management: demystified

Organizations across sectors have understood the importance of focusing on their core functions and outsourcing IT and other non-core areas. This is helping them in driving cost efficiency and greater profitability in the long run.

Many enterprises are familiar with larger outsourcing but when it comes to document management and outsourcing, many still struggle to understand its importance and do not realize how document management can drive cost efficiency and reduce risk. Moreover, it helps in strategic impact of outsourcing on confidentiality, productivity enhancement, brand consistency, superior end-customer experience, and stronger competitive positioning.

THE ABCs OF DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

According to a study done by IDC, an organization may spend anywhere up to 15% of total spend on document related activities-creation, distribution, and document lifecycle management. Whereas the reality is that most companies do not know their document-related costs.
Larger the company, the bigger the absolute spend. Certainly organizations cannot afford to ignore the impact of document management as a key contributor to their bottom-line.

The second concern in the organizations is the risk reduction. As the organizations are not experts in document management, they have a rough idea on what they want and may not have an in-house knowledge to arrive at the optimal solution. When an organization implements an in-house solution, it is usually sub-optimal for this reason but everyone is unaware as the costs are not transparent. What they are risking is not the things coming to a grinding halt, but creeping inefficiencies which starts impacting competitiveness and customer experience. It is hard to pin down to document related solutions, because it is opaque and responsibilities are distributed. When one engages a partner, he/she is laying down requirements and SLA's and the risk of delivering these lies with the partner, with a single point of accountability.

Another concern of data management is its strategic nature. In large organizations it is difficult to focus and specialize in every aspect of operations. They have to choose the areas where they want to excel and develop them as their core competencies. Document management is an area that most organizations treat as peripheral to their business. This can have major impact on the customer experience, costs, productivity, and efficiencies.

LEVERAGING DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

Contrary to the general belief, document management services is not just about archival of documents in a repository or processing it through a workflow. Document management services look beyond the realms of traditional printing to take a new look at how documents can be produced and managed to deliver tangible business results. The optimization of storage, bandwidth, readiness and accuracy of data are most critical in the DMS (Document Management Services) space.

The document management services industry is expected to grow manifold in the next few years. The global document management market is estimated at roughly $130 bn.

DM DIVIDENDS

Managed documents bring along various kinds of benefits not just at a process level, but also at larger organizational level-in terms of efficiencies and overall competitiveness, due to its impact on end customer experience and cost savings. The need of DMS is across all verticals. Every possible organization has documents to manage and to store. For example DMS in the auto industry helps to manage customer deal jackets or vendor files, employee records, accounting files, proof of delivery, and order parts. Other documents that must be maintained include service orders, including written remarks from the mechanics and warranty work performed, etc.

When you are able to process, retrieve and data-mine these documents better-you are improving response time, time to market, helping better decision making and leading to overall better customer experience and improving competitiveness. This is a huge benefit which no enterprise can ignore.

Document 3.0

A seismic shift can be witnessed taking place, in the way organizations use documents to conduct business today. The drivers of this shift include three major new IT platforms for document workflow and management-cloud computing, mobile devices, and social media.

An IDC research has also identified a rise in scanning to support these platforms, with mobile device users being more active than non-users in both scanning and printing. Paper documents still play a major role, but their content needs to be harnessed through digitization, or what we call intelligent capture. The result is a need for ‘smart documents and smart document management.' This means building greater intelligence into documents in the form of automated information extraction, end-to-end document management that also addresses the security of the information, and storage and retention/disposal strategies.

Many organizations have come out with different solutions to address the new needs of enterprises arising out of the current trends like easy IT integration, print from anywhere, and cloud access.

As we move towards the next decade, smarter ways of managing documents and information will be the critical factor in ensuring business success. The business leaders need to keep a watch on the exciting journey as the document management progresses from being a key driver for business productivity and cost efficiency to more about developing a competitive edge and serving customers better!