“The concept of paperless office has still not caught up with Indian organizations”
With the exponential growth of data in organizations, there is an immediate to address the issue of managing this growing information – often in unorganized, unstructured and in proprietary formats. Though Document Management Solutions promise to put an end to information management woes, like other technologies these solutions too are gradually finding acceptance India. In an exclusive interview with Network Computing, Shailender Kumar, Vice President, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle India, talks about where India lies on the document management map
What is the current state of Document Management Solutions (DMS) in India? How has it evolved and what are the key drivers?
Companies in India are phasing out conventional imaging solutions and adopting one vendor approach that can help consolidates their content and tag compliance based document lifecycle. They are looking out for a software solution where digital rich media, user desktop folder, office communication, customer documents and also digitized customer papers are stored in a searchable robust eFolder.
Another trend is data archival, which otherwise was untapped by Enterprise Content Management (ECM) vendors or the older imaging solution providers. The financial services and telecom industries have already started to deploy enterprise content management solutions primarily because of the large volumes of data they have to secure and update. Now, even the government and manufacturing sectors are realizing the need to automate and access their content. The key drivers to the evolution of DMS are the large volumes of data organizations have to secure and update. Other factors are the need to automate and access the content; and compliance and risk management. IDC predicts that the content management market in Asia Pacific will enjoy a 5-year CAGR of 10.8 percent to reach USD 385 million by the year 2011.
Is regulatory compliance one of the growth drivers in driving the DMS market in India? If so, which regulations?
Enterprises today feel a greater need for a content management solution to address regulatory compliance. Organizations are frequently at risk of information loss and regulatory non-compliance if they cannot locate and track the history of specific records, documents, or other content and share, distribute, and destroy the records in accordance with legal and best practices.
Today’s mandatory regulatory requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, ISO certification, other state and county regulations and courtroom proceedings, demand that every company have an effective system for managing all business content. This includes everything right from content in e-mails; information on network drives, web sites, and intranets to the more traditional financial and human resource records. Having the information to support compliance is the first step, being able to locate and access that information is the second and often, a more difficult step.
How far have Indian organizations succeeded with the concept of paperless office? What is the role of DMS in making this happen?
The concept of paperless office has still not caught up with Indian organizations. As organizations grew, their data grew at a faster rate. Most of this data was unstructured information and many organizations use multiple systems to house unstructured content created during the normal course of doing business. These documents include Microsoft PowerPoint files, scanned images, spreadsheets, graphics, video, e-mail, and ZIP files, which are usually stored on shared network drives, Web sites, individuals’ laptops, custom applications, FTP sites, or even on hosted servers and applications.
These disparate systems cause duplication of content and effort making it nearly impossible to effectively re-use content for multiple purposes. Additionally, having content in multiple places makes it very difficult to share content across the enterprise and outside the firewalls with customers, partners, and suppliers.
Do current DMS have the capability to handle unstructured information such as e-mail, images and video?
According to industry estimates, any business generates close to 80 percent of unstructured content. This includes e-mails, reports, documents, web sites, presentations, contracts, CAD drawings, images, and other content that is usually (but not always) computerized, but still unmanaged.
Unmanaged data may be structured data in a proprietary format that’s incompatible with common applications, or data that’s inaccessible to most of the organization because it is stored in homegrown systems based on legacy technologies. The location of the content can also be a problem with data residing on isolated servers, in duplicate files, or on the internet, in multiple repositories and various languages all over the world.
The solution is an effective enterprise content management (ECM) system that can consolidate all digital content into a single repository based on service-oriented architecture (SOA), so it is accessible and available to those with proper authority wherever they are in the enterprise and that includes content in e-mails; information on network drives, web sites, and intranets; and the more traditional financial and human resource records. Although this system sounds simple, it can be difficult to implement, since it must provide both internal, external, and platform solutions.
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