Mar 26, 2007 — Express Computer (March 26, 2007) Document Management Systems (DMS) have seen substantial changes during the past decade. With businesses expanding and mandatory regulations to follow, the generation of paper-based documents has also risen. With a huge amount of documentation to deal with, organisations the world-over rely on solutions to manage documents and make their offices less paper intensive. This helps them reap business benefits such as competitive advantage, increased market share, quick ROI, high efficiency and low turnaround time. Enterprise Content Management has become an imperative for Indian enterprises driven by the unprecedented growth in data-structured, semi-structured, and unstructured information-which is estimated to grow by 50 percent a year. Of all this information, over 80 percent is unstructured, 95 percent of which is unmanaged. There are reports, which show that employees can spend up to 40 percent of a workday looking for content and untangling issues related to versioning, ownership, and reformatting.
As a result, much expensive content goes underutilised or must be recreated. Additionally organisations are also beginning to feel the heat from various regulations such as the IT ACT, SEBI Listing Clause 49, Basel II and the SOX act. These regulations compel organisations to store and manage data for specific periods of time giving rise to content management challenges. Hence given these content management challenges, enterprises need to look at adopting well defined and well planned content management strategies in association with experts in the field. The DMS market is emerging as a huge market opportunity. According to industry reports, it is growing at 30 percent year-on-year. According to IDC, companies with the fastest growing profits in their industry sectors are tackling document processes and achieving the concurrent benefits. Specifically, there is a positive relationship between effective document management and two factors, above-average growth of profits and an organisation's ability to respond to changing market conditions. According to Gartner, up to three percent of the revenues of typical corporate could be spent on office output (print, copy and fax). The total cost of document management and office output could vary from 5 to 15 percent. IDC says companies spend up to 10 percent of their revenue on document production, management and distribution. According to IDC, the document solution market in the APAC region is worth $94.3 billion. The market for dynamic content software is constantly changing and evolving as new business needs emerge and new technologies develop. In recent years, organisations have taken note of the fact that efficient management of documents and content is a critical aspect of doing business. Failure to gain control of documents and content can consume a significant amount of time and money. It can also hinder an organisation's ability to improve business processes, communicate internally and with external entities-suppliers and customers.
From a base of 170 million consumers, telecom is expected to touch 500 million consumers by 2010. Credit card growth is exponential, the health industry is getting regularised and retail is booming. With this trend application driven mission critical document generation and outsourcing is bound to grow. The trend so far, which is not showing any sign of slowing down, is that the overall market is projected to have a CAGR of 18.1 percent between 2003 and 2008. The major hardware players in the DMS market are Canon, Xerox, HP, Sharp and Samsung. There are also software companies, the likes of EMC, IBM and NewGen that are focusing on Enterprise Content Management, Business Process Management (BPM) and Document Management Solutions. Other software companies are focusing on the management of document for specific verticals as Solidworks is doing for the design industry. Pankaj Ukey, Office System Product Lead, Microsoft India says, "Document management is one component of the overall framework of SharePoint Server 2007. Significant investments have been made in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, including out-of-the-box integration with Office 2007 client applications, to provide a robust productivity infrastructure for organisations that will help streamline the way people do business. There are options for Web content management, collaborative workspaces and also applications in the back end. Xerox is planning to tap the document management opportunity in India through Xerox Global Services. It offers services in three broad areas-Business Process Services, Xerox Office Services and Document Outsourcing and Communication Services (DOCS). Ravi Venkatraman, Director, Xerox Global Services says, "DOCS is the latest offering from Xerox that offers a full range of consulting and managed services. It aimed at optimising costs from document design and composition to production and distribution. The service line was launched in October 2006 and targets BFSI, manufacturing, retail and advertising agencies in India. Xerox Office Services is a suite of services for managing document output and infrastructure assets to help organisations deliver measurable efficiencies, reduce costs and improve productivity." Canon India is providing print and document management contract services. The government and PSUs that have surplus manpower have deployed document management. Most BPOs and ITES units are opting for the holistic service.