Alexander Bader, TerraLink: The digital economy means transfer of all corporate communications to an electronic form

Alexander Bader: It is possible to tell that all top trends of the IT industry find the reflection and in the field of Enterprise Content Management. For example, ECM after producers of corporate applications goes to clouds more and more. As the locomotive the SAP company makes its essentially new version of the leading system for resource management of the enterprise here — SAP S/4HANA. Together with this system the market is entered also by the new SAP applications focused on work in a cloud, for example, the solution for SAP SuccessFactors personnel management.

It causes the necessity of application of new ECM solutions which will be able to support work with documents for such class of systems. The OpenText company, for example, significantly expanded possibilities of the flagship product — OpenText Extended ECM for SAP which can work not only in traditional on premise to architecture, but also in cloud and also, among many other improvements, provides support of the new SAP Fiori interface.

We master all these new technologies on the projects and we offer the clients. They promote promotion of the most effective and the modes of work demanded by users with the corporate information — as structured and unstructured. It promotes increase in business performance, reduction of cost value of business processes and provides other benefits from automation.

Alexander Bader: Speaking about industry specifics, it is necessary to make one clause at first. There is enough tasks, important for customers, which are equally demanded in all industries. These are such tasks as management of ORD, a contracted work, personal documents of employees, documentary ensuring work of services of quality management, archiving of finance primary documents and others. In many cases the solution of these tasks already gives considerable economic effect. However from our point of view, the customer gains the greatest economic effect of system implementation of management of business content if a system will solve problems the specific and considering features exactly specifically of his business. So, for the oil and gas industries, other extracting industries where important quickly and effectively to provide arrangement of new fields for their fastest commissioning, we offer tasks of automation of work with design documentation and managements of communications with suppliers (designers, builders, etc.) and also documentary support of transfer of a new asset to productive use. For these projects it is also extremely important to provide management of title and nature protection documentation and also quick reaction on requests of regulatory authorities.

For capital-intensive businesses, for example, in processing industry and in production a high-relevant task is increase in efficiency of use of their equipment — the fact that it is accepted to call EAM. This activity is regulated by international standards of the ISO 55000 group in which there is a special section of requirements for documentation of information. Therefore here tasks of management of operational documents, documentation on labor and environmental protection will be demanded.

In banking sector and in telecommunications the tasks providing documentary and legally significant customer relations, maintaining client and product files, contracting, promotion of new products and services are always demanded. It is similarly possible to select the most demanded tasks for other industries — trade, transport, the food industry, etc.

In general it is possible to tell that questions of a ratio of industry and technology experience are particularly acute for all consulting companies whose business consists in automation of activity of the customers. Our company is distinguished by the confirmed technology examination and deep understanding of feature of key products for resource management of the enterprise and business content of our main partners — OpenText and SAP. On the other hand, without understanding of industry specifics it is impossible to make the qualitative project therefore industry expertize helps us to apply these products most effectively to each specific customer.

However not everything comes down only to industry specifics. Also other factors, such as organization structure can be of great importance. For example, the tasks implemented within the concept of the general service centers (GSC) will be most relevant for the enterprises having the developed organization and filial structure namely: mass input of documents, integration with SAP ERP (and further — with SAP S/4HANA), and, respectively, regarding applied tasks it will be accounting of finance primary documents, personal documents, processings of supplier accounts and others.

Alexander Bader: We have an accurate vision of development of a product based on changes in the legislation, regular comparison of our road map to plans of partner operators of e-document flow and on relevant tasks of our clients.

This year the most important changes in a product were connected with support of exchange of the universal transfer document (UTD) and passing of certification to SAP corporations.

Support of TerraLink xDE of exchange of the universal transfer document (UTD) on several operators of e-document flow allows clients to observe requirements of the legislation according to which since July 1, 2017 the old format of electronic invoices was abolished. Transition to the new document format raised many questions at all market participants, demanded building of new processes, redistribution of areas of responsibility. Our purpose consisted in providing to our clients functionality with a required stock of time. Today our clients note the intensive growth of the electronic document management thanks to transition to UPD that means significant cost reduction.

Passing of TerraLink xDE of certification of the Center of integration and certification of SAP (SAP ICC) confirms compatibility of a product with SAP NetWeaver 7.40. The solutions compatible to SAP NetWeaver are more simply and quicker integrated into the environment of SAP. To many clients it is important that the solutions and products for integration selected by them were certified by SAP. In this case they receive the proved compatibility with SAP applications and with an extensive ecosystem of the solutions working for SAP NetWeaver and also can reduce risks and total costs by IT. We are sure that the confirmed compatibility of TerraLink xDE with SAP NetWeaver will allow to meet requirements of our clients as much as possible.

Alexander Bader: After it became known of the transaction, there were many different assumptions of how the products Documentum as a part of OpenText will develop further. As it became clear from publications of OpenText company lately, OpenText really highly appreciates that role which products of the line of Documentum play in such industries as power, pharmaceutics, banking, insurance and in some other, and makes thrifty use of the accumulated experience on management of business content in these areas.

Also new owner of a line appreciates possibilities of such products as Captiva, InfoArchive and LEAP. Clients of OpenText company can be sure that their investments into mastering and creation of product-based application solutions of a line of Documentum will not be gone, and already today we see that OpenText significantly invests in its development, and the volume of the completions made only lately is quite considerable, and, frankly speaking, impresses. Not accidentally today the official slogan sounds as "Documentum now is OpenText".

Thus, clients are present no need to perform migration from one platform on another as OpenText will continue support and sales both Content Suite Platform, and Documentum Platform together with the applications and solutions implemented on their basis. Today it becomes clear that some target point to which in process of the movement there will be a standardization of both platforms — OpenText Content Suite and Documentum on the basis of most strengths of everyone them them and ensuring full compatibility between them is necessary.

Judging by that information which is already published, OpenText will develop, performing development of the platform of the next generation based on the LEAP platform which provides use of the applications which are initially focused on cloud services. These applications will be integrated with both existing platforms, Documentum and Content Suite, will expand their functionality to provide soft junction to future cloud services of content management to the applications based on them.

Our company, having wide experience of project implementation using products which entered OpenText product line now, it is ready to help customers with implementation of their purposes regardless of what of platforms they selected.

Alexander Bader: As for many the discussed subject of Big Data, in my opinion, for our community this term not really exact and not really interesting. We should use more likely the term Big Content as the latest technologies in this area are guided by extraction of new knowledge from the saved-up content.

During the work the enterprises accumulate huge document files, and in these arrays a lot of useful information is hidden, however it can not always be identified traditional means, including context search. Besides, often happens it is necessary to analyze and compare information provided in text form and also to reveal the hidden trends and to prepare information in an evident type for their analysis. It is absolutely clear that all similar tasks require use of a huge stack of the latest technologies that we can observe in the new product OpenText Magellan whose opportunities according to the analysis of the corporate information as structured, and content, just impress. For example, the built-in multilanguage work, recognition of the scanned text, face recognition, automatic classification, analytics, artificial intelligence, self-training and others. Someone will be pleased for certain by existence of API and Open Source-component. Probably, now to tell not the opportunity about all other numerous product capabilities so persons interested I urge to ask questions me personally.

Alexander Bader: The TerraLink company intends to make the intellectual contribution and to continue to use all the efforts in order that the digital economy in Russia did not remain the beautiful declaration, but turned into reality. The digital economy is not only UAVs and connection of the refrigerator to the Internet. From our point of view, it is essentially new organization of work of IT services and business in general, transfer of all corporate communications to an electronic form that means, first of all, failure from paper documents.

If to reduce digital economy only to UAVs and 3D-printers, then, of course, no special needs for ECM technologies are browsed. Though it is obvious that that to make such printer, at first it is necessary to prove it economically, to obtain under it the credit, then to design, raspiarit, then to agree with suppliers, but also to patent, release, certify, sell and to deliver to the customer into place. What means development of some documents, the absence or inadequate quality of which can give up as a bad job all business. And if in the old manner all drawings are issued on a drawing table and to be delivered by the courier — about what digital economy it is possible to speak in principle? The digital economy is, first of all, transfer of all business to digit, and electronic documents are a natural and integral part of this process. And, naturally, the more business leaves digit, the need for electronic documents and management tools by them is more. We can rely on the developed applications of OpenText which are intensively using content of business applications such as Salesforce, SAP SuccessFactors and SAP S/4HANA.

And here we see the mission in helping our clients both technology, and to methodologically organize effective electronic document flows at all stages of their chain of creation of additional value. What, actually, we always did well and intend to do even better from now on.