Interview with the CEO of ID-Management Technologies Roman Konovalov

Roman Konovalov: In plans of the company – diversification of ECM projects on other industries

TAdviser: The efficiency of managerial model of business in many respects is defined by efficiency of the organization of electronic document management. As far as does need of implementation of electronic document management understand the management of the organizations?

Roman Konovalov: 5-7 years ago owners (users) of business processes of document flow in large and medium-sized companies, had no clear vision why this or that automated system is necessary as it will help with work on how many system applied instruments of automation in creation, approval significant organizational and administrative documents, orders, agreements can be effectively used.

Later few years, the question of transition from "paper" to electronic interaction regarding processes of office-work and document flow in general, becomes more and more relevant. The large companies, holdings, began to look narrowly at the solutions allowing not only to automate document flow as separate business process, but also to integrate with it adjacent business processes thereby having provided in the area of responsibility a full-fledged picture of document flow in electronic form (including with a set of all business documentation, and not just the organizational and administrative documents (OAD)).

TAdviser: What main technology trends of an ECM segment of the Russian IT market in the current year?

Roman Konovalov: Their set. There are the main, there are derivatives. We select for ourselves the following:

The first – mobile solutions for EDMS. I.e. a full-fledged work with electronic documents from mobile devices, an opportunity to browse, approve, give the resolution, an opportunity for work in the mode "offline", with the subsequent synchronization. At the same time the user of such "mobile" system does not feel at all discomfort as in the application the "friendly" interface is used, and data processing rate remains at the high level.

The second, a technology trend most significant in our opinion – ensuring end-to-end document flow in the distributed structure of the enterprise (a certain "federal" function which allows to carry out versatile work with different types of documents in all branches of the enterprise (even if they are on the different ends of the globe), in management company and also loading/unloading of documents in "outside world" (other companies which participate in business interaction). Such common information space of document flow. At the same time the mode of confidentiality of information, security of routes, and of course access control to data according to certain signs should be provided.

The third – decrease (optimization) in cost of ownership of a system, an opportunity nobody "designing" of business processes in EDMS that is called "with summer". In some cases (it is especially relevant for today's time, today's geopolitical situation) – leaving from a license component regarding system architecture towards the platform collected from components of the Open Source (OS). It is not necessary to pay for licenses, they in free access – "download and use", on condition of, of course, the fact that the contractor will provide the proper level of reliability of work of the most application solution constructed on this platform. There are a lot of nuances, but the fact on the person – the market "asks" more and more about such alternative solutions.

TAdviser: Qualitatively as it is possible to characterize a situation in the Russian market of EDMS – positive, negative, stagnation?

Roman Konovalov: Difficult question. Nonlinear I would tell. In general – works regarding requirement in the market – the sea. Maturity level grew, requirements increased, the number of appeals to the IT companies increased. But the economic factor, budgets selected for IT – create the difficulties. In my opinion – it is necessary to work, learn to react quickly to changes, to adapt technology, to be ready to work somewhere not with that margin with which got used (I mean our IT companies), to be absolutely customer-oriented.

TAdviser: What portrait of the customer of SED-2015 is a large corporation, the representative of the state segment of economy?

Roman Konovalov: Both. In Russia I think, there will be one hundred more, and even it is more than companies which can be potential customers of EDMS. Among them - large and average corporations, the companies.

TAdviser: What division acts as the internal customer?

Roman Konovalov: In a role business of the customer most often acts department of the administration of the company. It in that case if is about Organizational and Administrative Document flow. In other cases (other document types) – respectively representatives/heads of other business divisions. But the pilot, the beginning is rather after all ORD, i.e. an area of responsibility of divisions of the administration.

TAdviser: Whether often within EDMS implementation projects the first person shows so strong interest what personally supervises the project?

Roman Konovalov: By our experience, quite often. Certainly, the attention of the top management to any project, especially to the project which is connected with business process automation reduces terms of implementation and increases its efficiency.

TAdviser: The solution of ID-Management Technologies company is executed based on Documentum. Why a choice was made for benefit of this platform? Whether there are in a product portfolio alternative solutions?

Roman Konovalov: The EMC Documentum platform was selected as the platform leading in due time on creation of EDMS. It differs in reliability, scalability, flexibility and universality. Eventually, the increasing customers needs and the market set new tasks for the companies and require permanent development.

As I noted above, in our company there is a technology directorate in which the EDMS constructed on components of Open Source using own business logic at the application layer is developed and approved. It and network our alternative offer to the market. We left with it and it is in demand.

As a specific example, it is possible to give an initiative which proceeded from one of our customers recently – it was offered to us to analyze a technological capability of transfer of the existing business logic from the EMC Documentum platform on components of the open source. Our specialists are architects and analysts carried out the scrupulous analysis based on which a certain prototype of the "updated" system was created. Now he is given to the customer to testing on real data. In case of success we will receive, I hope, the next reason for implementation of such alternative.

Besides, today we patented our solution EDMS and also we conduct work on registration in the register of domestic software. We consider that our alternative product – completely domestic.

TAdviser: What architecture of ASUD and your alternative product?

Roman Konovalov: The architecture of our solution is rather simple and traditional – the database, storage of contents, the thin client and the jobs in ASUD attached personally to each employee of the company – to the user of a system. The base of the platform are popular Open Source products.

TAdviser: In June of this year ID Management Technologies and Rosseti signed the annual technical support agreement. In what an essence of cooperation with Rosseti company? How support of EDMS of subsidiary companies is implemented?

Roman Konovalov: With Rosseti company we are connected by old and effective cooperation at system operating level and reference implementation of which we are proud and we develop. Some tasks are supervised by me personally. The basic principle of our work consists in development of the specific solution, then a system is implemented, business processes of the customer are built, then technical support of a system is provided. For this purpose in ID-Management Technologies company own special technical support service including three lines works. Besides, we collect statistics, we do the analysis of the forecast of emergency situations, we carry out preventive works with systems if they appear in a risk zone in terms of fault tolerance, high-speed performance. Also we exercise the general control of satisfaction of the customer with quality of the services rendered by us that allows to improve processes of provision of services and to increase thereby convenience of users during the work with systems.

By the way, division of technical support – the structure "living" in the company which is completely focused on support implemented EDMS and rendering the qualified methodological support to users.

TAdviser: Whether the company has plans for diversification of a client portfolio? Plans for creation of specialized industry solutions?

Roman Konovalov: Diversification of the existing implementations (including EDMS) a relevant task on the near-term outlook. A system universal is also built in business processes of the enterprise or company of any industry. But, I will discover small technology secretion – we are going to produce several industry solutions.

TAdviser: In what specifics of implementation of ECM projects in the state segment?

Roman Konovalov: The specifics of implementation of ECM projects in the state segment are caused by the current legislation. The last years growth of attention of the country leaders to questions of widespread introduction of information technologies, in particular, to electronic document management is observed. In my opinion, existence of EDMS in state structures the integral part of the general upgrade promoting increase in efficiency of work with documents. You judge as far as it is important. I think what is very important.

TAdviser: Information on systems with which it is necessary to integrate EDMS is how important?

Roman Konovalov: It is very important. Integration of EDMS with the adjacent systems - huge article of additional labor costs for us as for the contractor of the project and big production risks. The success of the project in many respects depends on quantity of systems with which it is necessary to integrate EDMS, from understanding that occurs on the party of the integrated systems. And from expectations of the customer – how seamlessly there should take place integration what risks he is ready to undertake what – are not present.

TAdviser: What plans of the company for development of the ECM direction of business?

Roman Konovalov: The first in plans of the company – diversification of ECM projects on other industries about what it was already mentioned above. The second – improvement of technology of creation of our product. With respect thereto upgrade of the production vertical working in the company with involvement of new specialists is possible. For the rest – decrease in cost value of product development and increase in customer focus.