Cost reduction upon transition to electronic document management

To implement the electronic document management system (EDMS) and at the same time to avoid excessive costs, it is necessary to pay special attention to the following questions:

• project goal setting;
• delimitation of the project;
• identification of possible restrictions and risks;
• working group of the project;
• choice of a software platform;
• work planning;
• project implementation control.

Let's consider each of them in detail.

Project Objectives

EDMS banks, project and construction companies, public institutions, pharmaceutical, oil-and-gas production enterprises and so on can be implemented practically in any organization irrespective of a field of activity, whether it be. Automating processes of the movement of data and documents, heads aim at achievement of quite specific indicators. Often the purposes of implementation of EDMS are:

• transparency of business — control of performing discipline and operational tracking of timely accomplishment of tasks;
• reduction of time and non-productive expenditure on the movement and approval of documents — automation of the most problem business processes in terms of time expenditure and excessive reproduction of paper documents. A serious step forward is transition to approval of documents in electronic form by means of use of the electronic digital signature;
• reduction of time expenditure on document retrieval. Structurization of all data, regulation of rules of naming of documents and determination of all details on which search is run is required. Use of full-text search;
• information security. The problem of information security support within implementation of EDMS is solved at several levels: the first — the authorization and authentication in a system defining further access to its resources according to a certain role; the second — protection of transmitted data by their enciphering; the third — delivery of additional software and hardware tools for control and monitoring of leakage of a confidential information;
• organization of joint work of geographically distributed users. The matter is relevant if the organization has branches, remote divisions or if it is necessary to provide access to documents to the sent employees or partners.

Limits of the project

The lack of the accurate limits of the project recorded in technical specifications involves the mass of troubles. One of them is wrong assessment of terms of project implementation that threatens with their failure, and respectively attracts losses both for the contractor, and for the customer.

Because of indistinct borders there is wrong assessment of the project budget that can or entail excessive expenses, or in the principle to call into question the probability of implementation of the solution in general.

Quite often it happens that the contractor and the customer differently understand work borders. It threatens with emergence of conflict situations at a stage of delivery of work and, therefore, the shift of terms.

Before detailing the purposes and to designate borders of the performed works, it is necessary to define "narrow" places and those spheres in a company performance in which use of electronic document management systems will be the most effective. An efficient method of determination of such "narrow" places is audit or preproject inspection of the company by business analysts and experts in the field of electronic document management. Formulating a framework of works taking into account the received recommendations, it is possible to be sure that the constructed solution is sufficient and at the same time not excessive.

Restrictions and project risks

At work planning and also at a stage of project implementation it is very important to consider all restrictions:

• restrictions of financial character, such as insufficient budget;
• restriction временнóго character — implementation deadlines;
• the technical and administrative restrictions connected with security and access to objects in the company — for example, inaccessibility of key staff (holidays, business trips, strong load, etc.).

Among all risks the certain place is taken by a human factor. The matter is that implementation of a new information system (and EDMS especially) involves change of usual business processes of each user. It is necessary to master new interfaces, new features; besides, automatic maintaining registers of the user transactions is entered that causes increase in responsibility, etc. Often end users do not support implementation information systems and can sabotage process.

To reduce influence of this factor, it is necessary to involve very actively an administrative resource, to carry out propaganda among target users, to involve employees in problem definition and testing, to inform users on the project progress. It is very important to fix a possibility of use of a system, having developed necessary regulations and having issued orders and orders.

Working group of the project

The implementation project of information systems can be performed both by the company — the system integrator, and forces of staff of the organization. As the contractor it is necessary to select the integrator having experience of adaptation of the EDMS platform to tasks of the customer and implementing solution.

Irrespective of who will implement the project much attention should be paid to creation of a project team on the party of the customer. The project deliverable in general as the command participates in formulation of technical requirements, approval of technical specifications, intermediate control of results and in final acceptance of works can depend on it. Therefore the people having sufficient experience and possessing the complete information about business processes of the company should enter it.

It is recommended that the project team was made:

• the project orderer in the company;
• staff of IT departments;
• heads of business divisions;
• informal leaders and the most qualified and active employees.
• The number of people which should enter a command, is defined by the volume of an assigned task.
• Choice of a software platform
• The cost estimate on the software will consist of the following positions:

platform of document flow;

• the add-on standard modules focused on the solution of separate tasks;
• services in creation of the new integration modules and modules implementing specific tasks.

Today a large number of systems and platforms of electronic document management is presented at the market: DocsVision Documentum Lotus Notes/ Domino Microsoft SharePoint , etc. Selecting the platform, each customer looks for a compromise between flexibility of a system (an opportunity to implement tasks without development of new modules), its complexity and the price. Than more flexible solution is selected by the customer, that platform high price.

In certain cases on a ratio "price/quality" optimal can become a product which part the different software platforms which are solving highly specialized problems, but having the general data exchange interfaces among themselves are.

Project plan

Considering all restrictions and risks, it is necessary to plan process of system implementation in details.

Knowing limits of the solution, the purpose and restriction of the project, it is necessary to create the plan of its implementation. It is necessary to define stages and their sequence accurately. As a rule, stages of system implementation are determined by the following principles:

• selection of functional subsystems (archive, office, etc.);
• selection within a functional subsystem of separate tasks;
• determination of resources and terms of execution of works.

Having on hand the approved plan of system implementation, it is possible to reduce the risks of failure to follow the project connected with loading of the corresponding specialists and the periods of holidays. It is necessary to remember that the detailed plan anyway is one of the key principles of implementation of an information system.

Project implementation control

It is necessary to approach with heavy responsibility control of intermediate results of creation of a system, it will allow to have timely an impact on the course of further development. Even such subtleties as inconvenience of the interface, excess actions at accomplishment of business processes, etc., can be a stumbling block and cause negative attitude of users at later stages of implementation. Adjustment of the solution at early stages much more effectively also requires smaller costs.

Conclusion

The organization of electronic document management in the company can optimize considerably the business processes connected with the movement of documents and data, to increase controllability of business and also to reduce the overheads connected with creation of paper documents. It is necessary to understand that implementation of any corporate information system and furthermore electronic document management systems is a process difficult, requiring careful study on preparatory stages and strict control at an implementation stage. Only in this case it is possible to bring the project to a successful completion without the excess financial investments.

• Source