DMS paves the way for a paperless office

How does a firm digitise loads of documents and business data and make its office truly paperless? A Document Management System (DMS) facilitates this process by instantly retrieving hard copies through the imaging technique. Chitra Padmanabhan analyses the potential for DMS adoption in India

Laxmi Narayan rao says DMS has helped Indian banks looking to outsmart each other in technology initiatives

THE State Bank of India in Chennai was desparate to solve an acute problem area in the bank. Whenever there was a query from other branches regarding vouchers, the only way to sort out the issue was to conduct a detailed search and locate the exact voucher in specific files. The vouchers used to be manually filed date-wise in the order of generation and the manual inter-bank reconciliation of data was therefore a waste of precious time.

In order to speed up this process, the bank deployed a Document Management System (DMS), which digitised the whole activity. The vouchers were first scanned and indexed in the order of manual filing already done. All the voucher images were saved date-wise, which facilitated easy reference. Hence, all transactions pertaining to the specific date could be viewed by simply clicking on the date folder.

The SBI case reflects just a fraction of the potential benefits that companies can derive out of DMS. There are many similar stories in both government offices and private bodies.

What is DMS?
Document Management is the process of managing documents through their lifecycle—from inception through creation, review, storage and dissemination, all the way to their destruction. The basic technique used in document management systems is imaging, where a scanned image of a document is saved in the relevant location for quick retrieval. “The starting point of a DMS system is scanning of large volume of documents using high-end scanners,” explains Lakshmi Narayan Rao, assistant director-value marketing, Canon India.

At the next level, documents in the form of images are stored in the hard drive or optical disk where they get indexed, and later, if a person wants to read the document, he/she uses the retrieval tools available in the document imaging system. The technology works in such a way that an image once scanned remains sacrosanct and there can be no modification of data.” Once a document is scanned then the data in the image can be extracted through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology for any modifications,” says Sugato Basu, regional manager, Newgen Software Technologies. “The technology enables you to make annotations on the image like making notes, paper circling, applying digital stick on pads but that does not take place directly on the image, it takes place in an overlay layer placed on the image,” he adds. The system can work independently or in tandem with the ERP system of an organisation.

The use of DMS in government offices is confined to preserving scanned copies on a CD, says sugato basu

The system
The genesis of document management in India can be traced to its strong hold in the imaging industry. Imaging has been a popular technology in India since the 50s within the newspaper industry. Another area, which saw wide usage, is the medical imaging area—in the form of CT scans, MICR, etc.

DMS in today’s parlance is an extension of imaging technology, wherein data is used in the digitised format and further used for workflow process. The current technology has been prevalent in India for the last 11 to 12 years. The use of digitised data created a need for storage and quick retrieval. DMS did not really take off at that time because of two big impediments—very high bandwidth and storage costs. The surge in the DMS market happened when the cost of bandwidth and storage started falling.

Looking back at the earliest usage of DMS technology in India, imaging-based DMS was first used in 1992 when the government introduced poll cards. These poll cards carried scanned images that were superimposed on the card. “DMS players during that time had bagged huge contracts from the government, which gave a boost to the DMS market,” says Basu of Newgen Technologies.

In subsequent years the entry of MNCs into this space created intense competition. Consequently the focus changed from digitising paper documents to using them effectively in the workflow cycle. “Corporates were looking to minimise the use of paper in their day-to-day working,” says K L Balasubramaniam, general manager for Asia-Pacific at Hummingbird. During this period, the banking and financial sectors were considered the early adopters of this technology. “Banks were looking to outsmart each other in technology initiatives, which would give a boost to customer service initiatives,” explains Lakshmi Narayan Rao of Canon. (See Box below:Case studies).

DMS market in India
The market for DMS can be divided into two diverse sectors—companies who use DMS purely for scanning, storage and retrieval of documents and companies who use DMS for streamlining their workflow processes. “If you’re looking at basic usage of DMS for retrieval purposes, the market is approximately around Rs 12-14 crore—growing at the rate of 25 to 30 percent. When the market is further extended to advanced usage in workflow processes, the figure for 2002 is estimated to Rs 100 crore, which is currently growing at the rate of 80 to 90 percent and is expected to continue to grow for another 2 to 3 years,” says Alok Shende, head-IT practices, Frost & Sullivan.

DMS in the government sector
Whether it is the Passport Office or the judiciary, almost all government offices have documents that are preserved for years together. Stacks and stacks of data are filed away for future reference, most of which are seldom retrieved. In such a scenario, DMS if used well can act as an ideal tool to streamline the process. Ironically, while there is tremendous hype about e-governance initiatives on the part of the government, DMS has not received an encouraging response from this very sector. “The government departments do not have a robust storage mechanism and the use of DMS is confined to preserving scanned copies on an CD,” says Basu of Newgen Technologies. A need to quickly retrieve documents is not felt in this sector.

However there are certain inherent problems that are holding the sector from adopting this technology. “An image cannot be legal tender as proof in a court of law. The original document needs to be produced as the final proof,” says Basu of Newgen Technologies. While laws have been passed, there is still a long way to go before the government sector adopts DMS with enthusiasm.

Telecom sector
The cellular revolution in India has provided various avenues for the innovative usage of DMS. “Cellular companies receive hundreds of application forms and also complaint letters that need to be addressed immediately,” says Balasubramaniam of Hummingbird. In a highly competitive market, to hold on to the customer is the ultimate edge over competition. DMS in the cellular market is largely used for quickly attending to customer queries, as retrieving paper documents could amount to considerable time lag. “Private players in the telecom space are highly conscious of providing the best service to customers and DMS is used there for bill processing, form processing, etc,” says Vivek Rawat, country manager-IBM Data Management Solution, IBM Software Group, India. (See Box below:Case studies)

BPO segment
An emerging market for DMS players is the current BPO wave, which is a productivity driven space. Each and every level of internal productivity is measured for quality by the outsourcing client. “Today, BPO players are not merely call centres who address customer queries. The sector now provides various high-end services, which lays additional stress on productivity levels,” says Basu of Newgen Technologies. In complex work processes with multiple teams the workflow is decided through movement of paper images from screen to screen. DMS systems for a BPO set-up require a high level of scalability. For instance, a call centre today may have 15 seats but as the scope of work increases, the architecture needs to be scalable enough to make room for additional users.

Manufacturing
The demand for DMS in the banking, insurance and telecom space is largely fuelled by the customer. Customer service is the common thread that binds these sectors together. Though the manufacturing space is not competitively impacted by customer service, the use of DMS can bring about a significant increase in its supply chain capabilities. One innovative usage of DMS in the manufacturing space is by Bhartia Cutler Hammer (BCH), a Faridabad-based company, which had a robust SAP implementation and was looking for a solution that could digitise unstructured documents, which could not be used within SAP. The company faced the problem of tracking and retrieval of documents relating to quotations given by vendors and tallying of purchase orders against delivery challans. This remained a cumbersome task that created problems relating to non-compliance. BCH today uses a DMS solution from Newgen Technologies, which enables BCH employees, while working from the SAP screen, to click on the ‘scan’ or ‘view’ icon to retrieve any document linked to vendor specifications and payments.

The future course
The current business scenario still foresees wide usage of paper documents, and it is not feasible to completely switch to online processing, especially when it comes to dealing with customers. But with computers increasingly becoming a part and parcel of daily life, DMS surely holds a promising future.