Q & A: Document Management

Som Gangopadhyay, Assistant Director, Marketing, Canon India, talks about how proper document management can help CIOs reduce costs and manage their documents better

Som Gangopadhyay

How does the market for document management look in India in terms of trends?

Document management as a concept is not so strongly engraved in the Indian CIO’s mind. It is a product for mature markets. Owing to this, there are certain drivers of document management. The one driver that forces an organisation to look for a structured document management process is its trans-geographic boundary. The more organisations mature and start operating in different geographies, the more they require such devices that can communicate seamlessly with each other. Organisations or countries which are opening up their economies and are transacting business with developed countries elsewhere in the world also require their communication systems to talk to each other. This is the second issue which actually fuels the document management market.

The third factor which is important here is compliance. Aligning business with compliance laws is now slowly becoming the buzzword in India too. To do this you need a structured document management system installed. As for the current Indian status, this is a nascent subject as opposed to its recognition and deployment in mature APAC markets such as Singapore and Malaysia. The indirect benefits of documents are many. However, since it does not give a direct benefit, it falls at a low priority level for the Indian CIO.

Approximately 48 percent of the personnel in an organisation do not even know how many hard copy devices the organisation possesses. The IT department gets the infrastructure up and running, deploys the products, but it does not have control over it. Because there is no control, pilferage happens.

Normally, 1.5 percent of an organisation’s turnover is actually the document load of the organisation. For a CIO who is bargaining for each dollar and each rupee to implement a new project, this proper balanced deployment of hard copy devices can help them put the amount saved into other processes of other projects that they have to deploy.

With printers getting intelligent, is security and back-up taken care of?

This is a much talked about subject, but people haven’t yet taken the plunge. The moment your document leaves your mother system, you need to secure it, right till the time it reaches your printer. Today, there are intelligent devices that try and provide security on the input device which can be across geographical boundaries and to the output device, so both points can have security measures. We spend money on firewalls but do not bother about laser printers. That machine can spill all your secure documents.

We at Canon are working on technologies to encrypt PDF documents, and you can decrypt it while taking the printout. This happens in a secure password protected environment so your printout cannot fall into the wrong hands. We believe that a PDF document is the most secure format.

How do you perceive the SMB market for document management?

The SMB sector is growing. There is a serious drive from the government in providing infrastructure. Canon’s SMB strategy includes making available the technologies that were initially used by large enterprises to SMBs. We have brought it down to the SMB level and we have also brought down the price.

What is the roadmap of document management systems?

I see three different levels. One is the government. They will keep on buying devices and they will use them for different functions. At the enterprise level, people will go in for functionality rather than have single function devices. I would not own a printer but I would want to own the facility which would solve my documentation purposes. Finally, commercial printing is increasing and Canon is now ready to tap all these three areas.

Have multifunctional printers entered the mainstream of business computing?

The market in India is not mature at the moment. Most CIOs think that they need specialised printers. However, by specialising in a printing job, they put an additional burden on their resources. Today, the architecture is so advanced that they can handle priorities. Devices are becoming so intelligent that they can put the content in separate files. From the machines, provision can be made to broadcast the contents to all the copy holders, and it directly goes and sits in their mail boxes.

What is your unique selling proposition?

We are an R&D-oriented company. We deploy 10 percent of our global turnover in R&D and this has been the case for the last 15 years. This has given us approximately 2,000 patents, putting us second only to IBM. As far as marketing goes, we are a Japanese company and so are not into aggressive marketing. We take one step at a time and consolidate our position with each step.

Tell us about some upcoming technologies in document management.

Biometrics will become popular. You will find biometric tools in your credit card or your passport. I feel that as the penetration of broadband increases, and as it becomes cheaper, people will transfer high data load. Communications hubs will need to be Wi-Fi.

Desktops are going out of fashion. Notebooks will be as small as your cell phones. Nanotechnology is another area which will open up a new plethora of innovation. Today it may appear far-fetched, but five to 10 years from now you will find nanotechnology in practically everything. Complete computing devices—the size of a mobile phone that transacts not only your business documentation but your personal entertainment as well—will become common. I don’t think it will take too much time for this to come to India. It will happen faster than we think.