Working out the real cost of ownership

As a field, basic document management has become a rather mature technology. Looking at the typical multifunctional devices that customers are buying today, just about all of them offer some kind of basic document management functionality bundled with the machine itself.

This is more than a nice-to-have feature. It really adds value to the device, what it can do and the impact it can have on productivity.

The basic document management system can handle a small number of users and is really aimed at the individual machine and the few desktops that connect to it. It is largely useful in allowing users to manage their own documents and workflow. It's helpful to have the most frequently used documents and templates stored for quick access.

An historical dependency on proprietary systems has inhibited expanding these abilities into the main IT network. While companies can interface with these and connect a group of desktops to them, the full use of remote management and monitoring has been complicated by the range of different systems that vendors have produced.

Right now, there is a gap in the market for third-party solutions providers offering products to resolve these integration issues.

Equipment manufacturers have, perhaps somewhat belatedly, realised the primary need in the modern office is to get all the equipment onto the same network. It's a trend in telephony solutions and it is no less a concern when it comes to scanners and printers.

Achieving this integration has been the problem, but most vendors are now offering software development kits (SDKs) that enable different machines to work pretty much seamlessly with the main software platforms and back-end systems.

Equipment manufacturers have, perhaps somewhat belatedly, realised the primary need in the modern office is to get all the equipment onto the same network.

Michael Powell is product marketing manager at Kyocera Mita SA

It must be noted that, to unlock the full value of document management, it is necessary to interface with enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, workflow and database applications. There is a lot which can be achieved, in terms of cost savings and productivity, just by managing from the user end or some central point. But the real business value is in how you utilise the information in these documents and make it accessible to the rest of the organisation.

This is still an early trend in the local market. The need for it and the demand from customers is very pronounced. There are solutions providers that can offer the kind of custom-built middleware to make this a reality but we have yet to see the 'killer app' that makes it easy.

In fact, looking at it from the outside, it seems obvious that this has always been a priority - simply because of the enormous business advantages it can provide. It seems ridiculous that there isn't already a pervasive solution for this, until you take into consideration the vast number of different systems that manufacturers have developed and the fact that there has not been an emphasis on open standards, such as you see in the enterprise software market.

That said, there is still a lot which can be done, even with the tools that current equipment is bundled with. We have the basic document management features on the machine and we have the ability to take these to a network level using the SDKs which are often available.

We are, however, still short of the next step, which would be a full, out-of-the-box integration with the applications that are commonly found on a business network.

The good news is that manufacturers are well aware of this need and there is a trend towards making the equipment software more generic and standardised, facilitating integration with other applications.

At the moment, we are still in a space where user intervention is required. You scan a document and manually load it into some sort of fileshare or portal application.

What we want to see - what the customers really demand - is the ability to scan a document, populate it with some metadata tags and have it immediately available for authorised users. We are getting close, but we're not there yet. Yes, you can do this if you bring in third-party solutions but the goal is to have this as a built-in feature.

Studies over the years have shown that up to 80% of the real information in a large business sits on individual desktops, not on a central database, and is often difficult to access without user intervention.

A really intelligent document management system would meet the need to expose this information to the right people at the right time, cutting down on the overheads of search and all the productive time that gets wasted in that process.

* Michael Powell is product marketing manager at Kyocera Mita SA.