NEW DELHI, INDIA: By implementing document management solutions, Princy Bhatnagar, Director-Office Group, Xerox, feels that solution providers can help their clients reduce costs and create value by making smarter connections between their people, processes and technology.

Document management solution (DMS) is designed to make the process of finding and sharing information an easy and convenient method. This would increase the efficiency of an organization by saving on 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 organizing content in a logical way and makes it easy to standardize content creation and presenta­tion across an enterprise.

Vendors seem to be optimistic about DMS, but partners are not too keen to implement it. One region for this is that partners want immediate results, which is not the case with DMS. Like in any service, one has to have patience. Thus, DMS is not very popular among channel partners. So in spite of vendors being gung ho about DMS, the concept has not taken off well in India.

Partners need to be educated about the whole DMS process, and then only will they appreciate it. With each penny spent, they are going to reap humongous results.

Beyond boundaries

The current market size is very difficult to estimate. This is because it depends on what you classify as DMS. It is a vast term and every vendor has their own solution for different customers, depending on their require­ments. Xerox defines document management solution as the activity to manage the docu­ments in any form and its movement within an organization. We have close to about 70 plus customers in the country, including sectors like BFSI, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, telecom and to some extent education.

There is significant growth in every possible economy of any industry. The growth in the credit card sector is exponential. Health industry is getting regularized. Retail is booming. Also, from the current 170 million-consumer base, telecom industry is expected to touch 500 million base by 2010, which is a phenomenal growth. With this trend, the application driven document generation and outsourcing trend is bound to grow. While it is difficult to put a figure to it, the trend so far-which is not showing any sign of slowing down-is in excess of 35 percent CAGR growth. This will continue to grow at the same rate going forward.

The DMS advantage

DMS can provide end-to-end management of all the docu­ment processes-create, manage, distribute and store giving a holistic view of a normally fragmented process: from commercial print, reprographics, print on demand, transaction printing, forms and office printing, right through to warehousing and distribution.

It brings new levels of efficiency to the organization, managing the documents across the enterprise and throughout their lifecycle, switching between digital and paper as needed and effortlessly moving them between departments through networks and the Internet. Customers can choose from a range of services across the document lifecycle, and each offers significant added value in its own right. It helps clients reduce costs and create value by making smarter connections between their people, processes and technology. The group works with clients to streamline and simplify everyday processes like customer communication, billing, training and records management.

Bigger pie for SPs

Vendors believe that to provide the document management solution, the solution provider (SP) needs a strong infrastruc­ture, dedicated software provider and a full-fledged service team that is dedicated to providing services round the clock.

SPs can play a big role in increasing the penetration of this concept by providing solutions to customers who are remotely located. Since it is not feasible for the vendors to set-up their office in scattered locations, the solution can be provided through SPs. For this, the response time of the service has to be prompt.

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. The assessment of the documents helps the organization to concentrate more on the core business values by providing a professional method to identify and analyze office requirements with factual data. They can help customers in providing an efficient work process that result in single point of contact for all output management issues.