Alexander Rodionov, Lanit: Expansion of functionality of ESM — the main direction of market development

Alexander Rodionov: More exact estimates of market size are not known to me for today. The companies working at the market of EDMS do not publish the reporting under document flow business and therefore to receive reliable digits about current market condition rather difficult. Indirect estimates of the amount of the market could be received by the analysis of the website of state procurements because the public sector and the large companies occupy rather big percent of the market, but all. Assessment of TAdviser is very similar to the truth, and we trust data of TAdviser.

Alexander Rodionov: I believe, it is not enough. In any organization, simply, there are two basic information systems — a resource management system of the enterprise ERP and ECM. The first manages the structured business content numerically, the second — unstructured, i.e. all business information which addresses in the organization. These two classes of systems close the most part of automation which is required to the modern enterprise. In the organization the new systems can appear only because any of two basic systems was timely not finished under new business needs. In this context of 50 billion rubles is a little because tools of modern ECM platforms allow to close practically all customers needs in management of unstructured content. Opportunities for information storage, differentiation of access rights, determination of the traffic regulation, representation, to involvement of users in work with this content, additional processing rules of information — all this is enough to create any business application for any applied purpose. Unless absolutely specific programs of type PLM or PCS, it is impossible to implement. Thus, business "will underuse" opportunities which are born by the ECM platform and, as a result, money does not come to the market of ECM.

Alexander Rodionov: First, some processes are still not transferred to an electronic system, not digitized, just because is so more usual. If to analyze what document types address at the enterprise in electronic form that is automated and that not yet, papers in turnover of our customers remains still much. Situation in some way paradoxical: there is almost no organization left where by EDMS it would not be implemented at all, and data domains in the organization where EDMS is not involved (though it can be involved), are available. Secondly, in the organizations self-written information systems are used. We perceive it as an underwater part of an iceberg of the market because such customers do not enter the market until these systems cease suit them completely. And the third category of customers — those who use specialized portals, considering that it is simpler and cheaper, than to build on solutions for management of electronic documents. Though then integration of the portal with ESM as documents, the history of their processing exactly there are stored all the same becomes.

Alexander Rodionov: Judging by dynamics of projects in the market, information on tenders, what happens to our business and business of our rival colleagues the market continues to grow. The trends testimonial of the fact that the market can stop, and growth rates to decrease, it is not observed.

Alexander Rodionov: In my opinion, dynamics of the market of EDMS was defined by several basic drivers. Very serious role in formation and growth of the market is played by government institutions. To honor of the state, federal authorities often are even more progressive in work with electronic documents, than the commercial organizations. Our many state customers exchange already today with us documents (within performance of contracts by us) exclusively in electronic form on all motion cycle of documents. Not all our commercial customers are capable of it. Therefore the state is today, perhaps, the main driver of growth of use by the EDMS organizations, it gives an impulse to search and digitization of new processes, an institution in the system of new document types.

Alexander Rodionov: Import substitution is often called the main driver of growth of the market, but I have in this respect mixed feelings. The market is divided among themselves by the Russian and western systems, and if the share of some grows, the share of others falls. Therefore import substitution cannot be the driver of significant growth of the market in general. Of course, in the first year of implementation of costs for the project can be more, than economy from expenses on maintenance of the western system, but at a long distance there has to be cost reduction. And if import substitution, on the contrary, leads to significant and long growth of the market — actually to growth of costs of customers, then in it there is no sense.

Alexander Rodionov: Partly after all already influences and will influence in the short term. The matter is that there are two models of import substitution — explicit replacement of the western EDMS by the Russian system and replacement "under a cowl" when in the Russian system components from the western proprietary vendors change, for example Oracle DBMS. Or other case: EDMS as though Russian origin, but is constructed on the platform MS SharePoint or IBM FileNet. As state agencies have plans for import substitution, the western components of systems, most likely, will be substituted. At the same time producers will independently make investments into a product, but implementation of systems in the updated configuration at the customer, their trial operation, stress testing is another point of growth of the market of EDMS. And this trend will be present at the market next year.

Alexander Rodionov: The main money in this market is spent for deepening and expansion of functionality. If to look at the implemented projects, then most of them — not projects of the current year, they are begun once and this year gained a certain significant, interesting development. It is, in principle, standard, reasonable dynamics of implementation of ECM in the organizations when at first implement the functionality which is most demanded by the customer, and then when a system confirms the viability, the functionality is expanded. Such approach is very circumspect and correct, it is practiced by all big customers. Therefore it seems to me that the important psychological driver of the market is the belief of the customer in possibilities of EDMS, that the implemented system is capable to digest new information volumes and will facilitate work of users with new document types.

Alexander Rodionov: At the state level, perhaps, the NHTE (network help telephone exchange) portal became an important event. However the initiator of any new format of electronic document management it did not become yet so this year changes in a normative field, significant to the market, did not happen. As for next year, hardly any normative innovations are capable to provide to the market significant growth. Even if the corresponding regulations will be adopted, they will influence the market not at once — in a year or even more.

Alexander Rodionov: I am not inclined to politize this story. In my opinion, the main driver of import substitution are not sanctions, but the grown cost of support and development of the western solutions — because of the double growth of dollar exchange rate. The Russian developments in some cases are more effective from the economic point of view. Our customers are people mainly pragmatic, they see in transition to the Russian solutions purely economic advantage for the business.

Alexander Rodionov: In my opinion, in the context of ESM the artificial intelligence and machine learning will be the most demanded. The first direction of use of these two technologies — at a stage of capture and image understanding when paper documents with nonrigid templates or from electronic images are entered into a system, is required to take certain essential signs. For example, via the state portal the address of the citizen which needs to be processed came, without attracting the living operator. Then it is required not only to take from the address a subject, date and let about the applicant, but also know an essence of the address and to redirect it to this or that public authority responsible for the matter. It is a task for machine learning when the neural network studies to sort addresses, it is correct to get from them the facts and to route. Absence of the person in extraction of essential signs from the document and its subsequent routing — one of tasks which to us clients already handle. Even there are first pilot projects. In my opinion, this subject will shoot as it promises significant economy. The second direction of possible use of artificial intelligence and machine learning — when the document during the movement on route of lifecycle meets the transactions executed by the person, but the program robot could execute them. For example, it is required to compare several versions of one document, to compare data from the document with information from external information systems.

Alexander Rodionov: These two technologies so far to a lesser extent affect the market of ESM. The distributed registers do not find application because in the field of document flow that problem which the blockchain would solve better, more effectively, than the existing technologies is not found yet. To guarantee authorship, to verify authenticity, there is an electronic signature, for the distributed interaction use the same EDS and the system of distributed databases of the documents having internal means of ensuring of integrity and protection against unauthorized changes.

As for Internet of Things, development of this market is influenced by two factors — radical reduction in cost of cost of sensors and development of platforms of routing and collection of information, their simplification, increase in availability. A problem of use of IoT in ESM — besides a problem of search of the scenario in which at any events in the world around the document for a system would automatically be generated. So far we did not find such scenario which would be justified by business need and "was in the best way closed" by IoT use.

Alexander Rodionov: Our company experiments in this direction, already we try something with our customers. The direction of the deep analysis and the data visualization accumulated by an ESM-system when processing and passing documents is represented to me effective. In fact, in a system long-term statistics how quickly and effectively the organization processes information, by document types, divisions, specific employees, the periods collects. For today all this information is just accumulated and not used for acceptance of optimal management decisions. We try to be risen to this task, to learn to get very valuable information from the data which are saved up in EDMS. It seems to me that this direction can become a serious factor of market development of EDMS, but for this purpose, first, it is necessary to find information analysis methods, relevant to top management requests, and secondly, high-quality visualization is required — that the management of the organization could make management decisions. On a joint of analysis algorithms of information and high-quality visualization, in my opinion, there can be a new big data domain of development and application of EDMS.

Alexander Rodionov: The majority of our big projects of 2018, as well as in general on the market, is a continuation of last projects. This year we completed implementation of EDMS in RusHydro where replaced the western EMC Documentum and MS SharePoint with the Russian Landoks platform so now more than 12 thousand employees of this organization work in the new environment and use more wide functionality. In my opinion, it was the first project of such and such scale in the Russian market.

Very interesting project is complete in PJSC MOEK where we worked on that all processes of technology connection of heat consumers to network were executed in electronic form. The consumer leaves the request on the website, and further routing of all processes goes in EDMS on normative terms, the fixed algorithms, and the results of consideration are returned to the applicant in a personal account. At the same time requirements to the request of the consumer as the majority of data of public joint stock company can receive from Rosreestr and FTS via the connector EDMS to SIEI are significantly simplified.

The interesting project of non-standard application of EDMS for accounting of the equipment was implemented in one organization which I cannot call, unfortunately, yet. It turned out that basic registers of document flow are cards, registers, change of the statuses — very well are suitable for accomplishment of some simple accounting functions when the equipment is issued for a certain term to a large number of agents when holding actions, and it needs to be traced. We very quickly could remake basic functionality of our Landoks system for the solution of such task. All this was executed in distributed environment by means of phones and scanners, the customer was satisfied.

It is possible to tell that finding of such new, interesting scenarios of application of EDMS as platforms for rapid development of applied applications — one of strongly "underused" areas of market development of EDMS in general.

Alexander Rodionov: We work mainly with big customers, and, perhaps, the biggest complexity for any large company — to be solved on the project. It is big costs – both financial, and non-financial. What before implementation of ESM worked based on personal arrangements unstructured processes, by means of the people maintaining integrity of processes — all this it is necessary to describe, get from the heads of carriers of processes, to put at first on paper, and then to put in an information system. The organization of a preliminary stage of system implementation — it is very difficult to people to make a big stress, such changes in parallel with accomplishment of the current functional duties. And top management participation is extremely necessary here, the management should confirm confidence that a system is necessary because otherwise the project can wallow in infinite approvals.

Alexander Rodionov: Begin to implement process of document flow in the industrial mode as soon as possible, to formulate and make necessary changes directly in a system work progress. The matter is that priorities of users are significantly displaced after start of a system in operation. Notes which are stated by users on a system test stage significantly differ from those which express at an operational phase. When employees begin to use a system, focus of their attention is displaced, seeming to important stops being like that, to the forefront there are other questions. So we convince all our customers of as soon as possible to begin to use a system. It is necessary to decide on it, and here the personal initiative of representatives of top management plays a huge role.

Alexander Rodionov: The overwhelming share in structure of revenue of Lanit in the ESM direction is brought by our Landoks platform. At the same time we with big optimism look also at a segment of the market of the western solutions because we trust — consumers need to give the choice. A certain number of the Russian customers already selected and selects the western ECM systems, and it is normal. The strength of our company is in what we know and as are under construction western EDMS, and we have own platform with a large number of solutions therefore at implementation of the western systems we are capable to introduce knowledge of the Russian specifics in the project.

Alexander Rodionov: The popular belief that the Russian ECM platforms are inferior to the western solutions on performance and scalability, is not true any more. Perhaps, it was fair a few years ago, but now ECM platforms of the main Russian players on the practical level differ from western on scalability, a possibility of support of the high-loaded processes very little. And in any case, even if this gap also takes place to be, in recent years it was very seriously reduced. Therefore over time will find harder and harder requirements of customers for which implementation the Russian solution would not be suitable only because of the scale of data and requirements to performance. Passed years when the western ECM were implemented only to implement functionality of organizational and administrative documentation or approval of agreements on their base. The choice of the western platform should be proved by the specific functional reasons today. Strength of the western ESM-systems are ecosystems of solutions, including integration with the western ERP systems. If at the customer SAP is implemented and many integration flows with ECM are required, then the choice for benefit of OpenText is reasonable as development of connectors of such level within the Russian system will demand big labor costs.

Alexander Rodionov: This year we grew by 15% in relation to volumes of last year and we expect approximately the same indicators of growth next year.

Alexander Rodionov: There are several directions on which we stake. The same main competence — creation and development of ECM systems in big customers due to involvement in the system of bigger number of documents and business processes. It concerns both the commercial organizations, and public sector. At the same time we consider also several new scenarios of use of ESM. So, we created the "boxed" solution "Landoks: The express" which allows the organization to begin to work in EDMS not in months, and in a week. At the same time this solution in difference of other "boxed" is not limited in further development with the purpose to turn it into a large system. We propose this solution as new large customers already now — as fast start of the big project, and to the organizations of medium business not ready to spend several months for implementation. The second direction — development of adaptive methods of access to EDMS, namely — using the web client and mobile devices. All requirements for providing Information Security and all functionality at the same time remain. The third direction of development — development of applied ESM-solutions based on the Landoks platform. So, for PJSC RusHydro we will make the solution on purchase management and we are going to offer it to the market.

As for business development, this year at us the partner network — in it already more than 20 partners significantly extended. We hope that thanks to "Landoks: The express" next year they will be able to offer the customers system implementation of electronic document management at more competitive price and will earn from it.

In more detail about the ESM-expert of Lanit on the website https://lanit.ru/about/departments/10712/