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2016/10/05 12:32:53

Interview of TAdviser with the marketing director of Directum Vasily Babintsev

Vasily Babintsev, the marketing director of Directum, in an interview of TAdviser told about factors which have an impact on the Russian market EDMS, the last trends and perspectives of development of electronic document management systems.

Vasily
Babintsev
We observe serious increase in demand for our cloud DirectumRX system

What events, in your opinion, had significant effect on the Russian EDMS/ECM market in 2015-2016?

Vasily Babintsev: The reasons of the changes happening in the Russian market should be looked for in earlier periods, now we observe their postponed effect.

First of all, it is about an economic crisis which began in 2014, sanctions and a response course towards import substitution. Failure from the western solutions was connected both from them considerable by the increased cost, and with informal or direct prohibition on purchase. At the same time it is frequent in a talk on import substitution of software products very many begin to tell about transition to Open Source though actually, it is concepts not identical each other. Plans for import substitution include several levels of work: DBMS, operating systems, applied systems and office software. At the level of DBMS there are no domestic analogs therefore at failure from the western solutions freely extended DBMS are selected, for example, today actively advertize Postgres. In a case with OS are also considered by Open Source of the solution based on Linux an alternative. If we speak about the office software, i.e. there is already the Russian proprietary product "MyOffice" and there are free packets of LibreOffice and OpenOffice. And here at the level of business applications there is a big layer of domestic software (and specifically EDMS) which for the last decade proved as the reliable tool, and actively competes with the western systems.

Changes in the legislation and approaches to purchases of software – one more factor which is indirectly connected with import substitution where it has an impact on large enterprises and companies with state participation. For example, Federal laws 44-FZ and 223-FZ are obviously prohibited or strongly limit purchase of the western software. It influences the choice of EDMS by the large companies which anyway are influenced by the state. But even another is more important – in general purchases became much more transparent.

Also today the subject of intercorporate document flow (MKDO) actively develops — in many respects it has purely Russian specifics. On the one hand, it is connected with long distances with which it is necessary to be reconciled at transfer of business documents. Provide, for example, that the document within the country can go week only to one direction, as much — back, and 2 more weeks to be considered. As a result we receive month of waiting of the solution on one document. In such conditions transfer of legally significant document flow to an electronic form — the urgent need of business. On the other hand, and the state on behalf of FTS aims at transfer to an electronic form of all of the accounting and accompanying them documents.

This two-way traffic to MKDO is available. On the one hand, the state works on development of the legislation in the field of exchange of the formalized documents, and with another — business actively develops internal infrastructure and the regulatory base on ensuring the legal importance of unstructured electronic documents.

As a result the listed events caused a wave of change of EDMS in the large companies lately. The market of electronic document management develops more than 20 years, the large companies invested in infrastructure projects, implemented EDMS (began with local problems of registration and accounting of documents, gradually expanding functionality). Now they ripened to powerful corporate ECM solutions, and "old" EDMS not always correspond to new conditions.

There is also a wish to note and the mobility is not new, but still influential trend. It began to develop violently with penetration of broadband access into the Internet and arrival of the new, younger generation of users which is initially focused on mobile work. And now and many heads began to master EDMS via mainly mobile interface.

How do you think whether start of the register of domestic software is capable to change considerably alignment of forces in the EDMS/ECM market?

Vasily Babintsev: In the environment of state agencies — yes, since the legislation demands from state structures of purchase of domestic software, and for them fulfillment of requirements of the law becomes the defining selection term. For business — it is only an additional factor to which it is worth paying attention.

Import substitution stirred up attention to domestic solutions which have no such big advertizing budgets as at world ECM leading. Therefore at the initial stage, of course, alignment of forces exchanged, but in the medium term the greater influence will be had by natural development of power of domestic ECM solutions. And for the last 10 years domestic solutions became competitive.

In general, according to your data in what direction the market moves? What dynamics is traced?

Vasily Babintsev: On subjective feelings, the market stood after recession. It is confirmed also by our statistics. In comparison with 2014, in 2015 almost by 1.5 times the number of new projects was reduced. But at the same time their scales grew: the number of the licenses falling on average on 1 new project grew by 45%. Considerably the number of jobs and within projects for development of already implemented systems grew. In a total amount of the sold licenses of 60% it was the share of development projects.

Also the demand pattern changed. The companies not just select systems for workflow automation, and look at the specific application solutions capable to yield fast visible result: intercorporate document flow, purchase management, etc. It means that today EDMS is considered by customers as a system for the solution of the end-to-end business challenges going beyond classical understanding of office-work: financial archive, contract management and approval of invoices for payment, business trips.

What projects prevail now (upgrade or scaling of earlier implemented solutions, start of new projects from scratch, migration on new an EDMS/ECM system)?

Vasily Babintsev: There are all projects, but it is worth differentiating comparison by quantity and scale of projects.

Migration on the new ECM systems is characteristic of the large companies, for them upgrade happens constantly - it is natural evolutionary process. It is a little such projects, but they are enormous on the scales. The example of JSC Surgutneftegas is indicative — data migration from an old system on DIRECTUM were carried out in 2014 and demanded 7 days of continuous work. In May, 2016 transfer to the new version of DIRECTUM borrowed 3 days.

Start of new projects from scratch prevails in a segment of medium and small business. For the small companies possibilities of cloud corporate systems opened, now they can not buy, and rent full-function powerful ECM solutions. Without serious initial investments and need to hold the IT infrastructure. Since the beginning of year we observe serious increase in demand for our cloud DirectumRX system: 70 projects in 10 months or, on average, on 2 projects a week. Different clients: from 10 to 200 jobs.

Whether you agree with a statement that recently customers became more exacting and that in the current conditions they wait for the best for smaller money?

Vasily Babintsev: Such situation was always, just crisis and other non-standard circumstances aggravate desire to save. At quieter economic situation clients are more loyal, they look for alternative, non-financial sources of increase in efficiency, think of convenience of users. Now echoes of crisis are felt, and money often comes to the forefront.

But for us it is not an occasion to forget about non-material effects. Connection of end-to-end business processes, mobility and simplification of interfaces are steady trends, and customers pay attention to them too. In particular, when the account goes on thousands of employees when it is impossible even just to train each of them, and business requires preserving of continuity of processes – it is necessary to think of convenience of work of the ordinary user with a different profile of loading, including with traveling kind of work.

Call, please, 3 main trends of the market which are most noticeable now.

Vasily Babintsev: Select three general trends of the market quite difficult, in each segment there are the.

For medium business — it is corporate cloud systems.

In large business — change local or outdated EDMS on modern ECM platforms, including with support of end-to-end processes in filial and holding structures. Here we refer intercorporate legally significant document flow.

If to speak about public authorities, then this import substitution and the movement towards Open Source.

In general at the level of business users is a mobility and simplification of interfaces.

Try to predict what functionality of solutions of the class EDMS/ECM can become most relevant/is popular in 3-5 years.

Vasily Babintsev: Intercorporate legally significant document flow: by 2018 analysts expect triple increase in this market (EDI, accounting records, unformalized documents), at the same time the share of unformalized documents can increase from 2% to 46%.

Also it is the managed federal systems of the large companies. As there is a trend for implementation of scalable ECM solutions with connection of end-to-end processes, support of working capacity separate EDMS, united in federation will become relevant. It both the centralized support of version control, and parallel development of separate installations of software ground under specific business challenges: financial archive, personnel document flow, contract management, etc.

Web and mobility for all users: the number of mobile employees grows, it is important to ensure to them a full-fledged work in EDMS, regardless of a position, a loading profile, including online and offline, taking into account the unstable mobile Internet.

What, in your opinion, should be a "ideal" ECM system? What shortcomings typical for modern solutions, should it be deprived?

Vasily Babintsev: If there was an opportunity to create such "ideal ECM system", then it would exist for a long time.

EDMS is not "transcendental object", she is developed and adapts under needs of the customer. Therefore also ideal EDMS does not exist in the nature, and there is a system suitable the specific company at a certain stage of its development: closes her key needs for document flow and interaction of employees, flexible in development in terms of business functions, suitable under IT infrastructure of the company, clear and convenient for the customer.

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