Document Management has long been a powerful tool for the data-laden business, says Mark Dye, but with volumes ramping and regulatory bodies wielding an ever bigger stick, DM is looking like a more and more attractive carrot.

First of all, a complaint. You see, I've got a bit of a problem with the term Document Management. Not the idea; not the technology, not the marketplace. Just the Term. And here's why.

For me a Document - especially with a capital 'D' - is something that comes on heavy, gilt-edged, watermarked paper; something grand and official that's sealed with crimson wax and then rolled up and tied with purple satin ribbon.

Seems I may be a little behind the times on this one however. Because - and here's the cheek of it - just about anything that's ever created on your common or garden computer apparently qualifies as a document these days. I ask you. People wonder why this country's going to the dogs.

On a rather more serious note - driven by factors including increasing legislation, ramping management costs, bottomline pressure, and the need to track and report on data more and more quickly - the fact that all these billions of 'documents' are now floating around our businesses is causing all manner of problems beyond
simple semantics.

It isn't just the sheer volume of data that businesses are now creating and storing - although this is an important issue. The real dilemma is that so much of our data is fragmented, disparate, and inaccessible when we need it most. It lives in file servers, desktops, laptops, PDAs, mobiles, storage arrays, virtual storage arrays.
And that's without the millions of paper files gathering dust in bulky, real-estate hungry filing cabinets. Consequently, Document Management - a technology that promises to sort out the whole sorry mess - has never been in greater demand, and it isn't difficult to see why.

In theory, says Trevor Cole, director at Datum International, most of the data that companies need to make informed decisions already exists within their corporate infrastructures. The problem is that it's often difficult to find the right information quickly. "We call it the Information Black Hole" he smiles. "Because it's easy to store information, but almost impossible to get it back out again when you need it. It is an achievement to find the exact file (you) need quickly and efficiently".

According to Clive Longbottom, service director with analysts Quocirca, this is caused not just by the massive volumes of information now being generated, but the rate at which these volumes are still accelerating. "In some sectors, (data volumes are) doubling every 6 months", he says, "and (they're) doubling across the board at least every 18 months." Crucially, he explains, this is no longer just a set of MS Office documents. "It's the intellectual property of the business covering mergers and acquisitions, patentable work, full financial models and so on."

With this in mind, he cites not taking appropriate steps to properly manage your documentation as an "increasingly dumb thing" to do and "a good way to be well off the curve against the competition."

This is why the market for both Document Management (DM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions is at last maturing, argues Cole, and why many adopters now rate such solutions as being as essential as their financial systems. Will Yandell, director of Union Square Software, is one of them. Indeed, he believes that even the respective evolutions of DM and Finance software have been similar.

"No one could imagine running a company without an accounting system", he says, "yet this happened in the 1970's when systems were predominantly paper-based. We are facing the same development now, with a move away from the 'anarchy' of network shares to a transactional approach where a document forms a record much like an invoice does within an accounting system. We are all going to have to get used to the rigour that these new ways of working represent."

Bob Goodwin, Marketing Director at Digital Vision concurs, pointing out the neat little parallel that paper-based practices have been a particular bugbear of Accounts Payable (AP) departments for decades.

"Even the most rigorously organised AP system has plenty of opportunities for problems, including lost or misplaced invoices, incorrect manual data entry, time lost sorting and filing paper, or trying to locate matching purchase orders," he says. "All of which leads to slow processing, which can in turn impact directly on the organisation's financial reputation with partners and suppliers."

It's against such a backdrop that the benefits of DM begin to look truly appealing. For instance, says Goodwin, on average a full time AP employee can process around 8,500 invoices per year manually. But businesses that have managed to automate invoice handling are able to process upwards of 80,000 invoices per person, per year - a quantum leap. Document management is therefore something every organisation, from 10 staff to 100,000 staff, should and must consider. This according to Dave Chalmers, director of Macro 4.

"I'd argue that wider DM is at least as important as HR and financial systems. Not only can well designed and implemented systems save an organisation significant levels of cost, they can keep the executive team out of court and out of jail."

However, cautions Goodwin, deploying DM and or ECM on a company-wide level can be an expensive business, so focus is vital. The key, he says, is to look at individual organisational pain points - the functions within the business that receive and handle the largest proportions of documents."These are the areas in which Document Management solutions can deliver real and tangible benefits."

The market continues to be fuelled primarily by regulatory fear factors such as the Data Protection Act (DPA), the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) and Sarbanes-Oxley (SO) which all require accurate DM practices that ensure specific data can be produced within certain time periods. Further forthcoming legislation such as MiFID and ISO27001:2005 will have similar repercussions.

But according to Goodwin the overriding incentive for shifting to DM should be good business practice. Old habits inevitably die hard though, especially cultural ones, and overcoming these can be as big a challenge as the technical aspects of DM adoption, warns Victor Lindahl, European Marketing director at eCopy.

"Organisations will always have the need to capture, store, and distribute paper-based information." The struggle comes in trying to incorporate this into electronic workflows. "Successful co-ordination of the two systems is a difficult and rare achievement."



Too often, explains Lindahl, companies have two processes tackling the same business task - a productive, electronic workflow moving at Internet speed, and a paper-bound process that slows everything down and frequently results in misplaced information. Something's got to give and an investment in DM is touted by many as being the path of least resistance. But according to Aaron Day, Corporate Director at GSIT Document Management, many businesses are reaching this crossroads with no real idea as to which way they ought to be turning. They don't know where to start.

One option, he says, especially for the risk averse, short resourced business, is to look at an online. managed solution. He comments: "Many companies are both wary about DM and desperately misinformed.

We even came across one firm recently that had mutlifunction machines in every department and that was scanning all its operational and day-forward documents onto their desktop machines! That's not DM; in fact it's worse than sticking to a paper based system."

"The SaaS model is obviously getting a lot of press right now and there's a fit here with DM too. A managed online solution is a good option for a number of operational reasons and because it's intrinsically secure you're automatically underwriting your risk as a director." ROI will depend on the scope of the DM solution of course, but typical first year savings on print alone can be around one to two per cent of a company's turnover.

And many businesses will see this alone as reason enough to take DM extremely seriously. "Printing and copying can represent around three per cent of a company's turnover", confirms Neil Sawyer, Marketing Manager for HP's Enterprise Imaging and Printing Group, "and it's been argued that only ten per cent of imaging and printing costs are visible."

So are there any short-term steps that businesses can take to exploit such savings ahead of a DM roll out? Here, says Sawyer, an audit and review of your existing printing and copying fleet will allow you to consolidate your use and support costs and improve things further through more informed investment decisions.

Controlling user access to features such as printing and copying in colour, and printing certain types of document is also critical, and will be especially important in environments where you are consolidating devices in to centralised workgroups.

Chalmers believes that another key challenge is that DM is rarely managed centrally, especially in the case of print and print equipment. "Many organisations are coming to realise that colour print can be a very expensive item", he says. "A colour page costs approximately twenty times what a black and white page costs. Even a black and white page printed on a colour device can be many times more expensive."

In other words, while wholesale DM deployments can be expensive and lengthy, it's not a good idea to roll-out Document Management in too piecemeal or fragmented a fashion either - lest you end up ignoring some major bottom-line cost savings through being over zealous about top-line budgetary constraints.

The fact is that, either way, literally thousands of documents now flow through the synapses of even the smallest corporate network on a daily basis - touching and often impacting every aspect of the business as they go.

The organisation that underestimates the need to properly manage this fast-burgeoning data flow - and the complexity of doing so - might just find themselves on the wrong end of an entirely different kind of document... ... An official court summons nicely tied up with a shiny purple ribbon perhaps.

Typical Document Management considerations include:

I. Creation - Where, when and how was a particular document created? Crucial from a collaboration and version
control perspective.
II. Location - Where will the document be stored? How accessible will it be? Could it end up taking as long to find a document electronically as it would trawling through a filing cabinet?
III. Format - What file formats and types will the system employ? What database will sit at the solution's core and how will it be configured?
IV. Retrieval - What retrieval methods and formats will be used?
V. Accessibility vs. Security - How will documents be kept simultaneously secure and accessible?
VI. Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery - How well does the system fit with your BC & DR strategies? If it doesn't how easily can this be overcome?
VII. Retention & Archiving - Where, why, and for how long should particular types of documents and data be retained?
VIII. Workflow & Distribution - Does everyone that needs access to the document getting access to it, and in the right order?
IX. Authentication & Compliance - Do the documents and the DM process meet internal approval, audit, legal, and other regulatory requirements?

Avoiding the DM procurement pitfalls

1 - Know what you're buying - Spend some time up front understanding your business; spend some time with the vendor to understand what they offer and how it suits your needs. The days of creating a list of yes/no questions to evaluate vendors seem to be disappearing as organisations have more sophisticated and mature needs that warrant a more flexible and customised approach to product selection and project implementation
2 - Know what's on offer from the vendors. Demand a clear picture of the total cost of ownership. Be relentless in pinning down exactly what is and isn't included up front, what will and won't be included later, and what is an optional cost.
3 - Think about how you'd like to implement the solution, and how it will be managed. Implementations that facilitate Knowledge Transfer and a team-based approach often have a high success rate and are a way to limit costs. Don't try to cut corners by excluding the vendor. Instead, spend time with them in collaborative development and deployment of the first project. Learn from the experts with a clear view on what you want to get out of the engagement so that you can wean yourself off and continue with future initiatives.