Vladimir Andreyev, DocsVision: We tell document flow – we mean service

Vladimir Andreyev: Many associate the document management with something static, and the objective basis for such opinion, certainly, is. This market actively developed only in the period of the initial formation, and then came to stable conditions: we generally meant IT support of organizational and administrative document flow by the term "EDMS". The majority of systems were aligned concerning functionality and in this rather steady configuration there were many years.

In the last a year and a half provision began to change significantly. First, the corporate customer ripened to that level closely to connect tasks of management of documentation with a perspective of management and business process optimization. Secondly, the scale of tasks strongly changed. Today EDMS quite often covers with itself activity of all organization, and it is especially noticeable in large corporations. As a result projects on tens of thousands of users and tens of millions of documents, of course, belong to the category large, but are not represented absolutely exotic. Further: large integrators which were engaged in the EDMS systems earlier so far as, treat today them more seriously. For quite some time now new domestic suppliers whose appearance we would hardly observe if we were still focused on organizational and administrative activity and support of performing discipline work at the market.

And, of course, transformation of a role of EDMS in business, to increase in the status of these products in an IT landscape of domestic enterprises to a large extent is promoted by legally significant document flow. It is already come true fact, and emergence of new legal acts in the near future will promote further changes.

Vladimir Andreyev: Due to already listed factors important is an opportunity to scale functionality of EDMS. Not least it is a question of architectural creation of the systems of this class, and in this respect we see significant changes too. The declaration of existence of characteristics of scaling, in addition to the available project practice, should be confirmed by results of testing. It belongs to our Docsvision system fully.

Borders between two systems, key for business market, – EDMS and BPM begin to be blurred gradually. Today integration between them is the developed technology direction. In fact, this reflection of the mentioned upward tendency of a maturity of the Russian business customers in problem solving connected with management of documentation – if they come to us for an electronic document management system today, then think already of categories of business process automation.

Recently the trend of transformation of the EDMS platform from the uniform monolithic application in a set of the interconnected services (service model of the application) became relevant – it provides an optimal configuration of the solution depending on solvable requirements and simplifies maintenance of a system.

Is change and applied character. It is impossible to tell that in a mass order there are essentially new features, but focus is shifted precisely. The concept of electronic archive, for example, arose not yesterday, but right now problems of its formation even more often arise in practice.

Vladimir Andreyev: The market of the offer of solutions which can be referred to category of document flow (that exactly today it is possible to carry, by the way, too a question not rhetorical here) becomes not only more difficult. It both is unstable, and is contradictory. On the one hand, on it there are new players proposing rather uzkofunktsionalny solutions. With another - the market of EDMS in understanding of many users remains same as, say, about four years ago: quite homogeneous, with more or less aligned range of offers from different suppliers. By all canonical rules of market development, in this situation it would have to be consolidated. Consolidation could happen in the form of merges and absorption, it could also develop, perhaps, at the logic level when the companies, remaining independent, in an explicit form divide the market among themselves. Someone is engaged directly in automation of the movement of documents, someone – electronic archive, someone in BPM systems, etc. But nothing it does not occur yet.

Vladimir Andreyev: Yes, the customer of EDMS changes too, and it is in fact other perspective of consideration of trends about which we already told. So, the problem of formation of electronic archive costs in the practical plane now, and in particular with respect thereto the new class of consumers appears – for example, the department of material service or OTsO can be it, and the chief accountant of the enterprise can act as the key business project orderer. These divisions or specific managers can have very mediated relation to what we call corporate document flow today, and in the majority of similar cases we speak about management of primary documentation (accounting, that which belongs to management of any asset type, or any other). From here - the need for functionality. The storage of documents needs to be constructed, not only being guided by needs of the specific functional customer, but also taking into account characteristics of information security, efficiency of access to documents and metadata, the same scalability and so forth. The efficiency of work with storage also dictates existence of quite certain functional accents - technologies of search, classification, conversions of formats and so forth. As a result technical requirements to the solution considerably differ from on what we would be focused, solving, say, a problem of control of performing discipline. At the same time all of us work equally with documents, and customers first of all at EDMS producers - at least will look for the solution of the task because along with the needs for electronic archives they have an impressive number of paper documentation which is required to be translated in an electronic form too.

A variety of problems of the most different divisions which are solved based on EDMS today is defined even more often by templates of our work with the customer which were atypical still yesterday. Earlier, having implemented EDMS, having trained personnel, and, perhaps, having performed still some works, we left the enterprise and could not return there any more. Now, having solved one task at the enterprise, we often pass to another, and thus our interaction is actually made on a continuous basis.

Vladimir Andreyev: Pressure of the state connected with import substitution policy, certainly, takes place, but I would not tell that it is very strong. It could and resist, there are no other factors here and.

Yes, managerial tasks about which we briefly mentioned above and also many others can be solved based on the known foreign products, but if to speak about large enterprises, it is desirable to have a powerful sheaf – ECM plus ERP. Similar steady sheaves in the market exist, and, say, integration of SAP ERP into the OpenText ECM system is very good to that an illustration. However in a present situation it it becomes frequent very heavy for the customer on economic purposes.

Important what domestic manufacturers at the moment can claim that on a number of technical and functional characteristics (we already told about some of them above) they already practically do not concede to the known foreign ECM systems. The Russian companies, of course, are closer to our customer, and it is important because interaction the customer contractor is even more often made on a continuous basis now – from the project to the project.

Vladimir Andreyev: Certainly. It is very useful to structure them by these or those parameters: select, for example, that are already implemented and what on objective premises explicit perspectives on the near future have. "Unpromising" you should not use the term, but it is quite possible to speak about innovations which in the context of development of EDMS have, perhaps, pent-up demand. The implemented direction can unambiguously be considered business mobilization today. Often said terms in our area are also the blockchain, artificial intelligence and Agile.

To a blockchain customers in general show a certain interest that set us thinking on application of this concept in real, but not in the demonstration purposes. We found such direction, and even developed the solution, but, we will tell directly, aim to purchase it now not too. As a result I would refer demand for a blockchain in EDMS to category of postponed.

In the development area of functions of artificial intelligence (and in our area it is generally limited to methods of processing and the analysis of tests) works are already actively conducted. Our case already reached real projects, and these are not demonstration, but quite working implementations. One of examples - the project in the Government of the Ivanovo region on application of algorithms of machine learning in EDMS which, by the way, became the winner of the All-Russian tender of projects of regional and municipal informatization of "PROF-IT.2018" in the "Best Project on Implementation of the Innovative Technologies" nomination. Specialists Digital Design, and a basis of EDMS of the Government in which 1500 users work work on it - it is SDU "Priority" based on Docsvision. The AI direction so far, of course, is limited, but perspectives obviously exist.

Even more boldly perspectives are designated in Agile. The term, as we know, is universal, but in the different industries is interpreted in different ways. We generally connect it with the concept of low-code or, otherwise, with a possibility of customization of EDMS without attraction of resource-intensive programming methods. In the context of innovations, by the way, speak about low code absolutely infrequently, but this ideology is capable to yield quite tangible result in the near-term outlook.

Vladimir Andreyev: Docsvision represents today the platform based on which it is possible to create applications under specific objectives. An opportunity to construct actually any configuration of specific EDMS is provided by means of implementation of a number of models today. Work with models will be organized through the platform, thus it is category of higher level, than the application - a certain metaapplication.

For example, the role model reflecting possible schemes of work of employees with documents, model of statuses which this or that document or, say, model of the user interface can have. All of them it is declarative (i.e. without programming) are described and then automatically generated in the corresponding visual designers - and it actually and there is implementation of that concept of low-code. The user has an opportunity to develop the EDMS functions, without resorting to need to be engaged in writing and debugging of the code. In the conditions of close connection of implementation of EDMS with management and business process optimization what we already told about, it is difficult to revaluate this property.

In the preparing new version of Docsvision which we by the way, update the first time for the last four years users are expected by also considerable improvements of the user interface.

Of course, architectural features concern also those things which directly the user does not notice, and nevertheless they are significant for improvement of characteristics of reliability, scalability, flexibility and some others. Today we carried out refactoring of the source code (i.e. rewrote it under new architecture, without changing its applied contents) the Docsvision systems, and we can claim that now it completely corresponds to service model. Potential of scaling of a system was considerably increased, and that is important, procedures of carrying out updates of these or those its components became simpler.

At last, to display all architectural features of our system in space of business benefits, we offer the customer the technique Docsvision Value Management allowing to estimate economic characteristics of implementation within the project. So far we used it pointwise, but reaction of customers to its application very positive, and in the nearest future we will extend this practice to all our projects.