Trends in the Russian EDMS/ECM market

Main article: Trends in the IT market in Russia

2025: Technology Trends Impacting the Market

TAdviser interviewed the participants of the Russian EDMS market and learned which technological trends in the development of such solutions are most relevant by the beginning of 2025.

Development of Low-code/No-code tools. This is a way to speed up and reduce the cost of implementing corporate systems. Such technologies have already proven their effectiveness in automating tasks related to electronic document management systems and in providing self-service in organizations. Nevertheless, they have their limitations. In particular, a limited number of ready-made blocks and parameters for configuring them, that is, completely new functions cannot be created using No-code tools.

In situations where the company is still considering the possibility of subsequent development of EDMS on its own, it is worth paying attention to products that allow you to refine the system with the help of an internal development team without the participation of the vendor and without losing vendor support, - advises Pavel Perov, Product Director of Avandok (KORUS Consulting Group of Companies).

The development of Low-code platforms continues to blur the border between business and IT users. This fundamentally changes the approach to automation of processes, making it more accessible and faster. At the same time, solutions are becoming more intelligent - the systems themselves offer optimal process routes based on the accumulated data, - comments Igor Prostokvashin, leading analyst at Comindware.

Growing importance of process mining technologies. They allow companies to gain an objective picture of real processes and automatically identify areas for optimization. In the coming years, experts expect a deeper integration of process mining with traditional BPMS tools.

Cloud and microservice architecture. They also significantly influence the development of the market, providing greater flexibility and scalability of solutions. This is especially important in the context of the growing need to quickly adapt business processes to changing market conditions. In addition, in the face of tight transition times, it is important for a business to reduce costs while increasing the ability to deploy and scale systems.

Fast document processing.

In a rapidly changing world, when people do everything on the go and solve several tasks at the same time, any software should be fast - process automation, quick access and instant interaction - this is what you should pay attention to when working in the electronic document management system, including, "says Mikhail Egorov, Senior Executive Director" iDi - Management Technologies. "

Development of mobile versions of solutions. The mobile version of applications for work provides access to the company's information systems from any device and from anywhere in the world. As a result, employees can be constantly in touch and timely send and receive the necessary information for decision-making and perform the required process actions.

Artificial intelligence. We should expect the development of question and answer searches in natural language, dialogue AI assistants, AI decision-making agents. AI will continue to penetrate the structure of processes and gradually replace ineffective routine work, but this process will take a certain time to form typical models trained on large samples of documents.

I expect that interest in mobile applications will grow, and not only among managers and top managers, but also among clerks and ordinary users. As for the near future, I expect EDMS that Process Mining, technologies for creating digital twins of real business processes, and artificial intelligence will penetrate not only into purely technical document processing operations, but also into more intelligent ones: preparing answers, creating draft resolutions, instructions and so on, - predicts, Andrei Kozlov General Director of EOS Soft (GC EOS"").

Emphasis on information security and technological sovereignty. From secure access to data, possible external influence, to reducing dependence on Western software, ensuring stable operation and infrastructure development, taking into account equipment shortages, parallel imports or restrictions on the available hardware base.

Moving towards ecosystems and superapps to improve usability of functionality, taking into account user experience. EDMS, ECM, CSP systems will create a simple convenient digital environment for all employees, their interaction and convenient access to content.

Comprehensive digitalization and automation of all types of document management within a single solution. Projects for the implementation of EDMS are expanding and affect more related systems and processes than before. Large customers are ready to go beyond EDO and look at BPM platforms in order to automate and digitalize work with documents as much as possible, including HR or procurement processes. This reduces the work required to integrate systems, and simplifies collaboration between employees and departments that perform different tasks in the same area through end-to-end single-window processes of working with any document.

Most modern electronic document management systems in the development process strive not only to manage electronic documents, but also allow you to work with any corporate content, manage tasks, relationships with customers and partners, and many others. In fact, today EDMS are turning into EIM (Enterprise Information Management) - a tool for a wide range of business tasks, which allows you to expand the boundaries of use in organizing end-to-end processes, including to build an efficient enterprise on the basis of a single ecosystem of solutions, "says Pavel Perov.

With the increase in the use of EDMS, the volume of documents, the number of users, and the processes become more complicated. In connection with the introduction of personnel document management in the EDMS, all employees of the organization now work, which makes the processes more complex. As EDMSs integrate with other types of systems, they begin to perform functions specific to other application solutions. This creates the need for platform manufacturers to develop new tools for scalability and performance, "adds Irina Kuptsova, head of backend development at IT company SimbirSoft.

An important trend is the transition from text documents to structured ones and the development of design tools and work with such documents available to end users.

According to Vladimir Andreev, President of DoxVision, the task of increasing the usability of user software remains urgent, and for this it is also necessary to develop development tools.

2024: Tech trends: AI and Low-code

When discussing current technologies in the development of Russian EDMS, market participants most often mention the use of artificial intelligence technologies, as well as the possibilities of low-code. However, only these areas are not limited to expanding the functionality of systems.

The general director of the EOS Group of Companies Andrei Kozlov identifies neural network algorithms as a base for solving problems of intelligent processing of documents: sorting, distribution, extraction of significant data. He also notes trends in the use of chat bots and "digital assistants," the integration of instant messengers and social network technologies into EDMS (chat discussions, elements of gamification and social approval, personalization of user profiles, etc.).

Mobility continues to be in demand - support for remote or hybrid work, and not only for management and top management, but also for ordinary employees.

EDMS manufacturers, like many other IT companies, are interested in technologies artificial intelligence and, machine learning confirms, the Ilya Zaychikov development director (EDMS THESIS company). He Haulmont said that at the end of 2023, Haulmont completed the development of the AI module for the EDMS THESIS. Customers will have a powerful, flexible, and ever-evolving tool to automate all business processes with a high degree of personalization. For example, artificial intelligence will help significantly save time when processing incoming documents, working with citizens' appeals, checking counterparties, and so on. In some cases, up to 100% of actions can be automated.

Artificial intelligence is not quick, but it will replace the routine work on processing documents in the organization, expects Vladimir Andreev, president of Docsvision.

A huge breakthrough was made by generative AI technologies, and it is obvious that in the near future we will be able to use them in document processing processes, especially at the stage of text formation, document generation, but completely unpredictable options for using these tools are also possible, the expert predicts.

Here are some more technological trends that Vladimir Andreev called.

• Development of scaling tools. As the use of EDMS expands, the number of documents, processes and users increases quite quickly. With the advent of personnel document management tasks, 100% of the organization's employees work in the EDMS, and the processes are gradually becoming more complicated. Increasingly, the EDMS is tasked with creating a single archive of all company documents. As the EDMS system converges with other classes of systems, EDMSs begin to solve the problems of other application systems, all this requires platform manufacturers to look for more and more new and not always trivial tools to ensure scaling and performance.

• Development of low-code tools and interface specialization capabilities. Low-code has already proven its effectiveness for automating EDMS class tasks and self-service capabilities in organizations. But the low-code is still very far from ideal, now there is a task of maximum specialization and simplification of the user interface to reduce resistance to changes and training costs. This is necessary to implement the concept of "continuous process improvement" which is becoming increasingly in demand. Low-code is also optimal for creating separate application solutions that must undergo certain changes when implemented in a particular organization, taking into account its characteristics.

• Complete rejection of paper. The process is underway, but not all tasks are implemented. Further, it is necessary to solve the problems of long-term storage and the gradual transition to a fully structured document flow.

• Create a single job bus across your organization.

It can be implemented in various ways, but, firstly, the EDMS is the most massive system, and secondly, the task subsystem is most fully implemented in it. In our practice, there are already several projects where EDMS is an aggregator of all user tasks, regardless of which contour or process of tasks are generated, - said Vladimir Andreev.

Senior Executive Director of ID Management Technology Mikhail Egorov also classifies AI as a key technological trend for EDMS.

Analyzing texts and identifying meanings will allow you to correctly route documents and simplify or fully automate the information processing process. This enables organizations to focus on strategic objectives, increasing their competitiveness and adaptability to ever-changing market conditions. The development of this technology becomes the basis for building intelligent document management systems that can completely transform the approach to working with information in the future, he explains.

In the company "Synthellect," in addition to the use of artificial intelligence in the solutions of EDMS and the help of AI in making decisions, there are trends related to the course of the state for digitalization (the use of EP, MCD, EDC in EDMS projects, digital archives of long-term storage documents), as well as the development of document designers.

As a separate technological trend, many experts also call the transition to the Russian technology stack - this factor is now one of the defining EDMS, ECM and CSP for evolution. By the way, one of the important achievements of 2023 is changes in terminology. Andrei Kozlov says that increasingly in the professional community, along with EDMS and ECM, the term CSP (Content Services Platforms) is used. According to the general director of the EOS Group of Companies, this is due, firstly, to the fact that document management systems began to be considered as a platform, a core on the basis of which other tasks that go beyond the framework of classical document processes (for example, management of applications, purchases, contracts, etc.). Secondly, this is due to the fact that developers are changing the concepts of creating products.

I even had to hear opinions that it was worth abandoning the use of the term EDMS, but, in my opinion, it would be premature, - said Andrei Kozlov. - Although many developers (and EOS among them) follow the path of creating their own platforms, on the basis of which various application solutions can be implemented through the low-code toolkit (our "EOS Platform" is an example of such a product), nevertheless, electronic document management is the core of most automated business processes, and in recent years the concept of EDMS has absorbed a very wide range of possibilities, remaining the most common and common.

2023: Main trends in the development of EDMS, ECM and CSP systems

Import substitution remains one of the main trends in the Russian market. The Content Services Platform (CSP) concept, which is gaining popularity among customers, also affects the development of platforms. Additional drivers are legislative initiatives to digitalize certain types of content - personnel electronic document management (CED), machine-readable powers of attorney (MCD), digital duplicate, electronic signature (EP), electronic document storage center (CED).

The main trend is the transition to the Russian stack of technologies, including operating systems, databases, authentication services, office packages. Suppliers of EDMS, ECM, CSP systems are working to realize full compatibility with all these integral components of the digital landscape, "says Vladimir Andreev, President of Docsvision.

According to Vladimir Andreev, we are waiting for a rather difficult transition to a new format of electronic signature and machine-readable powers of attorney (MCD). New requirements will require new functionality from CSP platforms. The transition to paperless personnel document management requires the implementation of new integration mechanisms, including integration with the ESIA, the State Public services portal, the State Key application and other services. The nomenclature of formalized electronic documents that need to be maintained in the platform is constantly expanding. For example, in 2023 we are waiting for the approval of formalized electronic personnel documents. We are waiting for the approval in the State Duma of the laws on the "electronic duplicate" and the publication of the interaction protocols of the CHED, which we implement in the platform.

The main technological trends now are a complete transition to import-substituted system software and the use of web interfaces. The use of electronic signature technologies in EDMS projects has significantly increased. The practical use of AI technologies in automation projects (intelligent classification of texts and routing of documents), as well as the use of chat bots, is growing noticeably, "said Alexey Chernyshev, an expert at Digital Design.

According to Alexei Peregudov, director for work with partners of the EOS company, the tasks of import substitution will overshadow everything for some time and slow down another development, since this will drag out part of the customers' budgets. In general, according to him, it is worth highlighting the topic of the use of artificial intelligence. But, it is possible that in 2023, other areas will be developed, he believes.

Russian vendors do not forget about the global technological trends of the IT market - in addition to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and chat bots, this is a low-code approach and the use of open source solutions. Each of these areas is predicted to have a great future, and now these technologies are more and more requested by customers and penetrate into the functional appearance of Russian platforms.

In the EDMS market, as in other areas, interest in Low-Code tools is growing, with the help of which you can configure and develop the system without programming. In the EDMS THESIS, customers have access to a business process designer, a report designer, a substitution matrix, as well as the ability to customize the main screen of the system, - notes Ilya Zaychikov, product owner of the EDMS THESIS.

In his opinion, the current trends for cross-platform and the use of Open Source technologies for several years continue to develop further due to the request for technological independence. Many companies are exploring the possibility of introducing artificial intelligence into electronic document management systems. The developers of the EDMS THESIS are also actively working in this direction, very soon AI will be available to customers.

Our team is closely monitoring trends. Many technologies that are relevant now have been present in the EDMS THESIS from the very first versions of the product. In addition to this, we strive to play ahead of the curve, - notes Ilya Zaychikov.

In addition to import substitution, TerraLink experts highlight the increased interest of customers in the distribution of a mobile client. If earlier TerraLink provided a mobile client only to customer managers, now a full-fledged mobile solution is available to every user, no matter on which platform the EDMS was originally developed.

Directum products continue to evolve within the framework of the CSP concept. The requirements for services are increasing, they must work efficiently with various types of content, close the tasks of legal significance and easily integrate into other application systems. But if you look closely, content and documentary artifacts appear not on their own, but during the processes. Therefore, you need to look at service platforms more broadly - and add processes there, that is, talk about CPSP - Content & Process Service Platform, process-content service platforms. It is such services that can become a popular standard, - says Konstantin Istomin, executive director of Directum.

According to Konstantin Istomin, now companies are forming the IT landscape in a new way, and it is possible to design the architecture on new principles, use the capabilities of ready-made solutions and strengthen other systems by embedding high-class content and process microservices.

Artificial intelligence went into production: the market received pumping with information, the products matured, cases appeared. Customer requests are growing - there is an expectation to get a working solution out of the box. The availability of intelligent tools acts as a criterion when choosing a system, and is even included in tenders. AI is beneficial both in terms of accelerated processing of data and documents, and in order to hyperautomatize processes. Many processes in companies are already automated, but torn apart, and this does not allow achieving maximum efficiency for business. As a vendor, we focus on embedding intelligence in solutions when implementing an ecosystem on one platform, thus avoiding complex integrations, - notes Konstantin Istomin.

In his opinion, the low-code/no-code layer should be in almost all systems - ERP, ECM, CRM, BPM, SRM, HRM. Since these are basic requirements that help you carry out customization faster. At the same time, you need to balance the flexibility of configuration and scalability of the finished solution. Option - - extension and enhancement of the tuning layer - no-code. This makes it possible to connect analysts and consultants who, without immersion in coding, will configure the necessary business logic of processes and form behavior. And scalability can be achieved by highlighting several levels: no-code - low-code - platform.

This layered concept is supported in the current strategy for the development of the Directum RX system and toolkits, - explains the representative of Directum.

Konstantin Istomin also notes that the classic view of processes and documents ceases to be dogma. We exist in the era of turbulence and the VUCA world. A variety of teamwork tools have already been distributed in companies that offer a different approach to working with content. You can remember Miro, Slack, Jira, Vision and others. Similar domestic products are in demand, which will take into account corporate security requirements. Focusing on the class of EDMS/ECM/CSP or BPM systems means putting blinkers on yourself. Customers are focused on the ultimate goal of digitalization - reducing costs, accelerating the release of new products, expanding production to capture new markets.

If you still look at what will develop "under the hood" of systems, then this is definitely scalability, porting to import-independent platforms and ensuring information security, the expert adds.

From the point of view of functional technologies, it should be noted the support of a larger number of cloud EP providers, the introduction and support of all formats of electronic signatures (UKEP, UNEP, PEP), a large number of boxed (vendor) integrations with various systems, - says Rais Akhkyamov, product owner ELMA365 ECM.

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2022

Top trends

Artificial intelligence ceases to amaze customers, personnel electronic document management becomes a mass history, the need for mobility and multiplatform is growing due to remoteness, and import substitution successfully copes with its key task. Read more about these and other technological trends that are now most relevant for the EDMS/ECM systems market.

Artificial intelligence goes into production

Participants in the domestic market say that in 2021, intelligence in the processing of corporate content went into production: the market received pumping with information, products matured, real cases appeared.

According to Alexander Axelrod, General Director of KORUS Consulting DM, owner of the Sputnik ECM product, electronic assistants of lawyers and accountants appear to help organizations with routine tasks. In addition, more AI is being used in the field of recognizing, classifying and sending documents along routes, in the search and processing of content: for example, it can determine the type of contract and automatically send it for approval.

Directum executive director Konstantin Istomin adds that the attitude towards intelligence has moved from the level of surprise - "What, so it was possible?," To the level of requirements: "How is it, why does AI not work here?"

Customer requests are growing - there is an expectation to get a working solution out of the box. Although in fact, projects are still not so simple and massively implemented. The presence of intellectual tools acts as a criterion when choosing a system, but in many cases as a reserve for the future. Artificial intelligence is beneficial both in terms of accelerated processing of data and documents, and in order to hyperautomatize processes. Many processes in companies are already automated, but torn apart, and this does not allow achieving maximum efficiency for business, "explains Konstantin Istomin.

The need for personnel electronic document management is becoming massive

Among the current trends, it is worth mentioning personnel electronic document management, FEDO. As market participants note, here it is necessary to understand that KEDO is not a replacement for accounting personnel systems, but namely the document flow between the employee and the employer on various aspects of labor relations, where the state is actually a third party. Accordingly, a complex of non-trivial tasks arises that developers of such systems have to solve, including integration with public services and much more.

The demand for KEDO is very high, especially in the conditions of remote work, this is perhaps the most powerful trend for today, - said Alexander Rodionov, director of the department of document management systems "Lanit."

According to Konstantin Istomin, personnel electronic document management allows companies to completely abandon paper and get significant savings.

And this is a massive need, especially since it is now reinforced by the President's signed law on the CEDO. A year ago, we released the HR Pro solution, participated in the experiment of the Ministry of Labor, implemented projects and are ready for new market demands, - explains the executive director of Directum.

Remote increases demand for multi-platform and mobile applications

The massive transition to remote work highlighted the importance of using full-featured web applications and cross-platform solutions, experts say. This means compatibility with different databases, server software, browsers. This provides the ability to quickly organize access from any device without unnecessary costs.

To minimize risks, it is important that cross-platform and web-based application are tested by the time and experience of the projects. So, we have examples of projects with the following combinations of database, server OS and browser: Postgres, Windows 2012, Google Chrome; Microsoft SQL, Windows 2019, Edge; Postgres, Astra Linux, Google Chrome; Oracle, Windows 2021, Internet Explorer 11, - say Haulmont.

Mobile technologies continue to develop, allowing you to work comfortably from a smartphone and tablet. Today, a modern mobile application is vital for everyone who uses EDMS, both business and government agencies.

The experience of our customers and the volume of documents passing through the mobile application show how much it is in demand. For example, in the Government of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the first persons of the region work in the mobile application, hundreds of documents pass through it every day. We also see that it is very important for customers to be able to work offline in a mobile application without an Internet connection, - clarify in Haulmont.

The company "First Form" adds that in mobile applications customers are important for the modern design, aesthetics and ergonomics of interface solutions.

Interestingly, on several of our projects, the mobile application has become the main interface for 90% of users, and only auxiliary processes are carried out in the web interface, "said Denis Seleznev, General Director of First Form.

Import substitution is successful

For obvious reasons, the need to implement import-substituted solutions is quite pronounced among the most solvent segment of the Russian market. And most vendors have already successfully responded to this challenge, in one form or another, bringing their solutions in line with these requirements.

Moreover, the obtained solutions, as a rule, are not inferior to imported analogues in the class of tasks characteristic of Russian business, and accurately exceed them in terms of price/quality, says Dmitry Arefiev, head of automation of business processes at Digital Design.

I am sure that in the class of EDMS/ECM/BRM systems in the Russian market, only domestic software has a future. Based on the experience of real projects, the most objective and significant obstacle to more active use of the concept of import substitution is a significant lack of competencies for working with system-wide software among employees of customer operations services, which has a negative impact on the cost and quality of the entire software and hardware complex using import-substituted technologies, - he explains.

Low-code toolkit is developing and waiting for standardization

Another current trend is the development of Low-Code tools for modifying and configuring systems.

Many manufacturers, and we in particular, strive to ensure that customers can customize the system for their unique tasks as quickly as possible, and most importantly, by the system administrator, not the developers, Haulmont notes.

Directum also speaks about the further development of the No-code/Low-code toolkit, specifying that such principles have been used in the company's products since the 2000s.

The implementation and change of IT systems should go as quickly as possible, keep up with the market and business. Directum RX has a low-code development environment built in, and we understand where there are points of improvement, we will move on. Both giants and the SMB sector have an interest in optimizing and reducing the cost of processes. The ways to achieve this goal, strategy and investment volumes are different. Large companies optimize processes due to maximum adaptation to their specifics. Small and medium-sized companies are ready to accept the new system and adapt to it. They are important for the low price and readiness "in the box," the ability to adjust the processes "on the fly," says Konstantin Istomin.

At the same time, TerraLink is counting on standardization of Low-code/No-code solutions, which will slow down the entry of new players with clearly weak solutions in this area.

Now many companies that declare their involvement in low-code actually just use the buzzword, and produce products with ordinary card and business process designers, TerraLink says.

CSP principles are becoming the norm

The gradual transformation of the customer request from EDMS/ECM to CSP changes the approach to product development. CSPs are based on a microservice architecture, giving the system more mobility and plasticity, and are essentially a set of products or individual applications that synchronize. Applications are provided for various types of content and help solve more business problems.

As Alexey Pesterev, director of the Croc Code Content Management and Document Management business group, notes, CSP solutions are based on such key principles as maximum scalability (Web-scale), Cloud-Native to ensure the "ease" of the solution itself, Low-code to speed up development processes, microservice architecture combined with almost unlimited ability to integrate. And the key is working with any type of content, and with the "ability" to recognize its content, search, sort, etc.

Scalability, integration capability, and the use of code best practices are a priori envisioned in projects by large developers. And more and more customers are aware of the economic benefits of this approach - this allows to significantly extend the life cycle of the system, preserve its plasticity and lay opportunities for the future development of the format of working with content, "says Alexey Pesterev.

Customers need complete functionality

One of the main trends, both in the local and global markets, is the transition from introducing the platform and automating the basic tasks of document management to creating complete functional solutions based on it. These can be both horizontal solutions that are applicable in any organization - for example, the same electronic archives for a tax monitoring system or automation of claims and claims activities - and specific industry tasks - for example, automation of audits for the banking sector in accordance with regulatory requirements.

There are more and more such "contours" of automation based on a single platform, users are beginning to actively use them - there are requirements for scaling the system and increasing platform performance as this grows, "notes Vladimir Andreev, President of Docsvision.

Other trends

It is also worth noting a number of trends mentioned by experts interviewed by TAdviser. Thus, the director of the department of document management systems "Lanit" Alexander Rodionov talks about the wave of migration from a distributed architecture to a centralized one.

The fact is that many customers still operate EDMS, which were implemented 10-15 years ago, when communication channels were expensive, weak and unreliable, so the only possible option was to deploy distributed systems when each department or branch had its own server. The obvious disadvantage of this approach is the need to maintain many local servers. Now, when the communication situation has changed dramatically, a wave of migration to a centralized architecture has begun, the expert explains.

TerraLink includes the development and widespread use of cybersecurity technologies as an important trend. According to the company, among companies, the need to protect content from leaks and conduct investigations after leaks has increased.

The company WSS-Consulting speaks of a tendency to automate internal document management processes using an electronic signature and an external E-DOCUMENT FLOW one with counterparties.

In addition, one of the drivers of the EDMS development turned out to be a pandemic, which required the transfer of employees to a remote format of work. In this regard, the number of users in the EDMS began to increase, therefore, the need for expanding the range of tasks to be solved in the EDMS and the use of tools for processing large amounts of information has increased, "adds Gennady Popov, General Director of WSS-Consulting.

Directions of development of the near future

What to expect from EDMS/ESM systems in the near future and what do the developers of such solutions strive for? With such a question, TAdviser turned to the largest market participants.

Complete Paper Rejection in Document Flow

In the near future, platform developers will have to implement in their solutions new mechanisms for working with paperless documents: support for machine-readable powers of attorney, mechanisms for creating electronic duplicates of documents and long-term storage of electronic legally significant documents. As noted by the president of Docsvision Vladimir Andreev, as a result, this will allow in the near future to completely abandon paper in document management.

Further development of AI capabilities to eliminate the routine work of employees

The development of robotization and artificial intelligence, the introduction of virtual assistants is an opportunity to free employees from routine work. For example, these can be automatic monitoring using robots, analytics that are prepared by artificial intelligence, intelligent document recognition.

The role of a person is seen as making an ultimate decision based on data prepared by the system, says Denis Seleznev, CEO of First Form.

Speed up configuration and customization of solutions

It is impossible to make an ideal solution that takes into account all the features of each customer's business, but there is a need to get specific final solutions quickly. Here, the Low-Code approach significantly wins in speed, since it does not involve the development and refinement of the system, but its flexible configuration, according to Elma.

According to Alexander Axelrod, General Director of KORUS Consulting DM, owner of the Sputnik ECM product, developers are increasingly paying attention to expanding low-code/no-code tools. The ultimate goal is to create a flexible and easily customizable solution that can quickly adapt and completely repeat the logic of any company.

Striving for the most convenient and intuitive interfaces

Developers strive to make systems as convenient and intuitive as possible, as customers, in addition to technology and functionality, pay attention to design.

The history of the EDMS THESIS has been going on for 11 years, but we maintain the relevance of the design and regularly update it. As a rule, software design is relevant for 5-7 years, after which it already lags behind market requirements. We are playing ahead of the curve, and therefore in 2021 we released EDMS THESIS 5.1, where we modernized the design, although it was only 4 years old. When developing a new design, we took into account feedback from our clients, as well as recommendations from the relevant agency, which conducted a UI/UX study for us, according to Haulmont.

Profit extraction from data accumulated in EDMS

The last thing I wanted to say that I think will define The next few years of the development of electronic document management systems can be determined by process mining technology. The EDMS has accumulated a huge amount of data on the life of the organization, but now they are used exclusively for control and reporting. Organizations do not benefit from them - in terms of improving and optimizing business processes.

With all the obvious idea, this is a rather complex subject area, but we have outlines how to do it. We understand how to analyze this amount of data, but so far we are in a very early phase of developing the appropriate functionality, "says Alexander Rodionov, director of the Lanit document management systems department.

Cloud readiness

Clouds are firmly in life, but so far we are not talking about the use of public clouds or a hybrid model for serious information systems, including EDMS. However, the requirements that the cloud infrastructure imposes on application solutions already have to be taken into account when developing, because this is a matter of the near future, Alexander Rodionov is sure.

2020: Top trends

Moving to Content Services Platform (CSP)

The transformation of the ECM (Enterprise content management) concept into the CSP (Content Services Platform) concept will somehow affect all key players in the Russian market for enterprise content management systems. At the end of 2020, some domestic companies have already presented products updated under the new paradigm, some are talking about similar changes or are in the process of such a transformation.

President of Docsvision Vladimir Andreev in an interview with TAdviser explained that in fact, the CSP concept does not carry anything fundamentally new in comparison with ECM. Only some accents have changed, and the concept has become more stringent, some absurdities have left it.

In short: it was the understanding of CSP as a platform for creating a wide variety of solutions that became clearer (ECM concepts directly listed the types of solutions being implemented). Secondly, the requirement for a platform service organization is clearly indicated (CSP is a set of services that can develop independently). Thirdly, the functionality of group work (management of informal interactions) is clearly indicated as an integral functionality of the CSP platform. Finally, the Low-code toolkit is fixed as an integral element of the concept. It just so happens that the new concept is much more consistent with the description of what we are doing than the previous ECM concept. In general, as it turned out, we constantly created a full-fledged CSP platform. Of course, we are still far from an ideal CSP system, but we are moving in this direction, "he says.

Director of the Department of Document Management Systems LANITAlexander Rodionov, says that organizations that have used monolithic ECM systems for many years naturally encountered the fact that in the late phases of the life cycle, any refinement or modernization of them becomes very difficult and slow.

How I like to talk about such situations: "There are six months to sneeze." And it seems to me that CSP is just the answer to this problem. If we build information systems serving document flows and content in another concept, they, of course, will also be overgrown with improvements, but still later it will be easier to modernize them. CSP is a new approach to the level of autonomy of technological components that allows you to make projects faster. The leaders of the Russian economy have already paid attention to the advantages of using this concept, for example, Tele2 has already created an electronic archive of subscriber contracts at DocsHouse, he says.

Import Dependency Priority

Responding to the need of customers for import substitution, many vendors have accelerated the transfer of their systems to completely import-independent components, including DBMS, server software, etc. If earlier it was a kind of "technical debt," which could be postponed for some time, now the priority of such improvements has grown, says Alexey Pesterev, head of the Content Management and Document Management department of CROC. According to him, almost the entire public sector takes into account the full compliance of import dependence in the requirements for the future system.

So, for example, the new release Docsvision of the 5.5.2 platform supports, in addition, MS SQL Open Source PostgreSQL the professional domestic DBMS Postgres Pro in both versions: Standard and Enterprise. In addition, while continuing to develop the topic of import independence, the company is actively working on OS support. Linux

Vladimir Andreev, president of Docsvision, says that 10 years ago the choice of the entire infrastructure was unambiguous - in 90% of cases Microsoft tools or compatible with them were used. This made it possible to save on development, not to care about the cross-platform of the solution and focus specifically on the Microsoft architecture.

Today's realities are such that we are simply forced to integrate with alternative platforms, primarily import-substituting, domestic OS, database, etc. This process began five years ago, and now you can sum up the interim results. From a fully Microsoft-oriented solution, we almost completely switched to a cross-platform architecture, "he said.

Development of legally significant document flow

In 2020, the pandemic formed a natural trend towards increased demand for the integration of EDMS/ECM with ISDO providers.

In conditions of non-office work, even the most conservative companies joined EDI services and switched to full-fledged contactless document exchange. Moreover, without waiting for high-quality inter-provider roaming, customers assign this mission to the manufacturers of EDMS/ESM platforms, - comments Pavel Kashtanov, General Director of Synthellect.

At the same time, EDO becomes not just a separate tool for the exchange of legally significant documents. There are also tasks for exchanging contracts, letters and other documents.

Elena Piskunovich, director of Microsoft SharePoint at KORUS Consulting Group, notes that it is not enough to simply connect to one or more EDO operators to introduce legally significant document management in large companies: it is necessary to solve the problems of typing, routing documents, forming a single archive (using scanning and bar/QR coding services), create a single entry point and integrate with other IT systems, which will allow working with documents without switching between systems. Therefore, the growth of requests for integration solutions (connectors, buses, data gateways) also adjoins the trend of implementation of SZDO.

According to Alexei Pesterev, head of the Content Management and Document Management department of CROC, the public sector is also moving in this direction. Thus, the Ministry of Transport has started an experiment on the translation into electronic form of transport and commodity-transport consignments, powers of attorney and other documents that are present during cargo transportation. It is also likely that in the coming years there will be other experiments that will speed up the translation of new documents into EDO.

Increasing Interest in Human Resources Workflow Automation

In Russia, interest in the automation of personnel document management has increased. In 2019, the first experiments of the Ministry of Labor began, in 2020 both the public sector and business began to switch to electronic work books, in the future - remote conclusion of employment contracts. In some cases, a citizen can already apply for employment remotely without contacting the employer, which is undoubtedly convenient for remote workers.

According to CROC expert Alexei Pesterev, in 2020 the demand for auditing personnel business processes also increased in order to build a strategy for the development of personnel document management in advance and begin its implementation.

Greater penetration of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence technologies are being used more and more actively in corporate content management systems. This is not surprising: other segments of the ICT market are betting on them, so the interest of the developers of EDMS/ESM systems in AI is logical.

Electronic assistants of lawyers and accountants appear in the systems, which help organizations with routine tasks. More and more AI is used in recognizing, classifying and sending documents along routes, searching and processing content. AI can determine, for example, the type of contract and automatically send it for approval.

Distribution of Low-code tools

More and more attention is paid to the usability of the system and the ability to adapt it to specific requirements. This, of course, gives rise to the development of tools for quick development and configuration of solutions, including Low-code tools. Many domestic vendors of ECM systems rely on such capabilities, and the Low-code toolkit becomes mandatory in modern solutions.

The task of Low-code is to make development faster and higher-level, saving developers from routine tasks, making it more creative, flexible and bringing it closer to the subject area. At the same time, the "correct" Low-code platforms do not limit the developer in the ability to create a wide variety of functions, in particular, the use of low-level tools in some cases. The main task of the Low-code platform is to concentrate on the final functionality and design of the solution, while ensuring the fastest possible delivery of value to end users and prompt response to customer comments. Individual changes in the solution using Low-code tools can be made literally in real time, - says Vladimir Andreev, president of Docsvision.

The global low-code trend is obvious, adds Alexander Rodionov. - The idea of involving business users in the design process and providing them with available tools is extremely attractive.

But this method, according to Rodionov, has its own limitations, there is a class of problems that low-code tools cannot solve.

For example, in modern BPM systems, it is much faster to write a line of code than to make your way through many levels of screens and set some parameters, the values ​ ​ of which still need to be seen in the documentation. I respect low-code, but in practice I would really like to see living customers who used to work in the high-code paradigm in complex corporate information systems, and then began to live in low-code and became much happier from this, "explains the LANIT expert.

Demand for mobile and web applications

The presence of web applications today is mandatory for enterprise solutions. According to Ilya Zaychikov, Product Owner ED THESIS, the pandemic has once again confirmed this, since users can easily work with web applications from any computer, including from home.

The web client provides the user with access to the EDMS/ECM system through a browser, without the need to install additional components at the workplace. Any device (computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone) on any platform (Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android) is suitable for working with it.

Mobile applications of EDMS/ESM systems have long been must have for any vendor. Their capabilities are constantly expanding. This is due to the high level of penetration of smartphones and the mobility needs of users, including due to the development of remote work.

Moreover, if earlier mobile tools for working in EDMS were more in demand by senior managers, now the functionality is necessary for specialists of different levels, - notes Nadezhda Shalimova, head of the EOS marketing department.

Managing Content That Comes from Collaboration

Another interesting trend has become noticeable in connection with the massive transition of companies to remote work and the widespread use of collective work tools. A sharp increase in the number of remote communications and document exchange between employees has created the need to manage content that is born in the process of working together.

Collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams allow you to do this without additional work or special customization, since all documents that users exchange in Microsoft Teams are automatically saved in SharePoint Online, allowing you to find the desired document at any time using the rich search capabilities of SharePoint, - says Sergey Yakimchuk, Director of ECM Development at TerraLink. - Thus, our expert recommendation is that when choosing a corporate communicator, pay attention not only to the basic functionality of the chat/communication platform, but also to what the system has under the hood, and how much you can subsequently manage artifacts of instant communications as part of a general corporate approach to content management.

Other trends

Other trends continue to develop. So, according to Vladimir Andreev, President of Docsvision, the range of tasks that the EDMS/ESM system should solve is expanding - these are various functional archives (financial, technical, etc.), means of automating specific processes for various functional divisions.

According to Sergei Yakimchuk, Director of ECM Development at TerraLink, one of the important trends that became noticeable in 2019 and continued in 2020 was the centralization of various internal service functions in common service centers (SSCs). As you know, SSCs allow you to improve the quality of service and at the same time reduce the cost of performing typical processes in large companies and holdings. Therefore, a number of competitions and projects in 2019 and in 2020 concerned precisely the creation of electronic document management systems for such centers.

Elena Piskunovich, Director of Microsoft SharePoint, Korus Consulting Group, speaks of the strengthening of the trend in the introduction of cloud EDMS/ESM systems (both in SaaS format and in a hybrid version). Russian large business, following the global one, is increasingly aware of the benefits of such decisions, she said.

Going to the clouds has been a good solution for many. So the companies not only ensured the availability of document management systems for employees at the "remote," but also were able to reduce the costs of server software and equipment and maintenance of the entire infrastructure, - confirms Alexey Pesterev, head of the department "Content Management and Document Management" of the company "CROC."

Among the trends, Alexey Pesterev also counts chat bots and personal accounts. For the convenience of working with documents "remotely," companies began to give them to help their employees.

With the help of chat bots or personal accounts, you can, for example, without going into information systems, order everything you need in a couple of actions. Such a chatbot has been working in CROC for several years and has a ready-made set of functions - from ordering 2-NDFL to issuing vacation applications, - explains Alexey Pesterev.

2019: Top trends

Transformation of ECM concept into CSP concept

According to Vladimir Andreev, President of Docsvision, the main event of 2019 is the transformation of the ECM concept into the CSP (Content Service Platform) concept - a revision of the architectural requirements for the platform and the inclusion in the contour of traditional ECM tasks of working with structured data and tools for creating a wide variety of applications that combine work with content, structured data, processes and analytics in a single automation framework.

The main idea of ​ ​ CSP is to abandon monolithic architecture in favor of a platform from a set of services. The fundamental point is that these services are interoperable, they can be assembled into kits, and even if they are products of different vendors, - explains the president of Docsvision.

The second point, according to him, is that, in addition to the classic tasks of BPM and ECM, as well as the Capturing service, the new class of systems supports full work with structured data and the creation of various solutions, as well as the functionality of working groups of various levels: collective document editing, one-time orders, micro-projects.

The most interesting thing is that with the advent of the concept of CSP systems, it became clear that we - those who have worked all our lives on our unique systems that are not similar to Western ones - have been developing the same CSP solutions all our lives! Indeed, if you look at what classes of tasks close our products, these are the most real CSP systems. In them, workflow is only one of those numerous tasks that can be implemented within the platform system. Significant support for reference books and complex structured data is also the functionality of our systems, which was not the case in classic ECM products. And this new market for CPS systems has now begun to develop very actively. In our country, it is clearly clear that there is a revival of the idea of ​ ​ electronic document management in completely new positions, - says Vladimir Andreev.

Growing Demands for Artificial Intelligence Technology

In the EDMS/ECM market, there is a growing need for solutions using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. Such technologies already allow solving problems that are associated with automatic data extraction, classification and search.

According to Dmitry Mervitsky, head of the SER representative office in Russia and the CIS, the experiments began several years ago, but it was in 2019 that real examples of the use of such mechanisms became noticeable.

Konstantin Istomin, executive director of Directum, in turn notes that artificial intelligence in 2019 consolidated the position of the main trend in the digitalization of document flow and business processes.

We talked about the use of AI in ECM back in 2017, at the same time we released and began to integrate Directum Ario intelligent content processing services into business processes. The solution is able to recognize and extract information from unstructured documents, classify and enter them into the system, determine the route of further movement of the document with the appointment of persons responsible and the preparation of draft automatic responses based on historical data from correspondence. AI checks the completeness of documents, compares the item and determines transactions on primary accounting documents, finds version differences, calculates possible risks of contract conditions. His main role is to free a person from performing laborious routine procedures, he says.

Artem Moiseenko, head of the expertise and development department of Logia Business, notes that many organizations have begun to trust artificial intelligence and see it not only as risks, but also as great prospects.

At the moment, ECM with AI services is becoming the standard. Companies see the real financial benefit of transferring routine and not only operations from a person to a machine and are not ready to pay for simply "document accounting systems," he says.

According to Svetlina Savova, Development Director of FTS Russia, more and more suppliers are starting to work towards the development of intellectual capabilities in ECM systems.

Robotization of processes

Another trend is robotic process automation or Robotic Process Automation. On its basis, software robots, the so-called digital workers, are implemented.

The opinions of the Chief information officers of large businesses on RPAs vary. Not all large businesses are ready to use RPA solutions that work through the user interface, since the technology does not seem reliable enough to them, notes Konstantin Istomin.

Low-code Platform Requirement

One of the most important trends is the development of low-code tools for creating applications that provide the ability to radically increase the speed of entering new functionality and its modification, as well as creating and modifying applications in the organization without involving external developers.

We see the so-called Low-code platform as a necessary part of the EDMS system. This is a development environment that allows you to create a solution with minimal effort, without programming, through settings, "says Vladimir Andreev, president of Docsvision.

According to him, the most important property of digital platforms is the ability to make quick changes and increase functionality without involving programmers and related long-term projects.

This is actually the idea of ​ ​ Agile, when you can directly, using low-code tools, quickly make changes to the finished application. Then the path from paper to structured documents and business processes is carried out not in one long step that lasts for years, but through many short cycles in the Agile methodology. EDMS systems have such a specificity that allows it to be organically implemented, - notes Andreev.

Mobile availability

One of the main trends is the increasing spread of mobile technology. The ability to work in EDMS from any device remotely, including without an Internet connection, is in demand among managers, among performers, and in the public sector.

Previously, mobile EDMS applications were available only to a limited number of users, and today in EDMS THESIS The system for managing documents and tasks has the opportunity to purchase unlimited licenses and general mobilization. True, this has not yet become a massive phenomenon on the market, - explains Ilya Zaychikov, Product owner ED THESIS.

Elena Piskunovich, head of the portal solutions department of Korus Consulting Group, adds that the use of electronic document management systems from mobile devices primarily concerns the most frequently performed operations: searching, viewing and coordinating documents, making adjustments, entering an agreement or counterparty into the system. For these purposes, the business uses a variety of IT tools: the Lazy Approval function for mail services, chat bots in instant messengers and mobile applications.

Steady interest in clouds

According to Dmitry Mervitsky, head of the SER representative office in Russia and the CIS, during 2019 his company observed a steady interest in the implementation of solutions in the cloud infrastructure.

It should be noted that cloud implementation has been of stable interest to customers over the past few years, in 2019 we signed partnership agreements with several data centers in Russia and some of our customers preferred such solutions to their usual installations based on their own infrastructure, he says.

Alexey Pesterev, Head of Content Management Practice (ECM) at the CROC IT company, notes a tendency to transfer certain functions of the content management system to the clouds, for example, the process of issuing advance reports. So the client gets a modern lightweight tool that is easy to integrate with corporate document management systems. And it could be more than a boxed solution. Such cloud-based, highly specialized services can be modified and scaled to flexibly evolve the system.

In general, the public sector and business began to trust their data more in the clouds, including thanks to the growing reputation of cloud providers that ensure the security and safety of data, says Pesterev.

Interest in highly specialized services

Customers from different industries are increasingly interested in highly specialized services. For example, for managing design and technical documents.

In 2014, we introduced such a system in a large energy company, and this project was one of the first on the Russian market. Now such systems are in demand in construction, oil and gas, metallurgical, energy companies that want to safely build and operate facilities and equipment. We see this, including in demand for a technical document management system based on KSED 3.0 from the register of Russian software, "says Alexey Pesterev, head of content management practice (ECM) at the CROC IT company.

Elena Piskunovich, head of the portal solutions department of Korus Consulting Group, adds that now customers often implement individual EDMS modules as independent solutions for applied business problems. As a result, in a short time they receive IT tools that are tailored to specific business processes.

Blitz introductions

The growth in the volume of standard implementations, without a customization project and project consulting, is another trend that will be relevant in the coming years.

In such projects, customers adjust their processes to those that are already implemented in the system, and not vice versa. This opens the way to blitz implementations lasting per week, as well as to real Solutions SaaS, according to LANIT.

At the same time, it is important that the standard solution is implemented on the platform - then, outside the standard solution implemented in two weeks, there will be prospects for a fairly prompt refinement of the system for new tasks, - clarifies, Alexander Rodionov director of the document management department, head of the Innovation Center. LANIT

Distribution of HR-tech

The boom in automation of HR processes continues. If earlier companies introduced accounting personnel systems in which only HR, HRD worked, and the rest of the users worked outside the system on paper or by e-mail, now chatbots or self-service terminals help employees send applications for vacations, get acquainted with personnel, organizational documents. Or, for example, an employee in the workshop confirms the fact of familiarizing himself with the order using a simple electronic signature by sending SMS from a personal mobile phone.

Piloting smart contracts

The CROC company notes a tendency to pilot smart contracts in typical internal corporate document management processes, for example, in mutual settlements within holdings and in cooperation with contractors.

According to Alexei Pesterev, this is a kind of prototype of the functionality of BPM systems plus the ability to reduce the cost of routine operations, eliminate forgery and increase confidence in information. This is especially true when it comes to data from accounting systems or financial documents (primary financial documentation or informal documents).

Generate documents according to specified rules

Another trend in the development of EDMS, which is gaining momentum, is due to the fact that increasingly such systems are used not only to store and route ready-made documents, but also to create these documents.

Already today, most documents in the organization are generated according to some templates, which can be more or less formalized. The idea is that the methods of filling out documents in an organization in most cases can be described by some formal rules. And we see a significant increase in interest in systems that allow you to massively generate documents according to given rules. Because this significantly reduces the likelihood of error and increases the performance of operations. We recently completed an interesting project of this kind at Rosgosstrakh. OSAGO policies are now generated immediately in electronic form on the basis of the client's card. All the necessary data are inside the ECM perimeter: not every individual IT system forms its own documents, but this is done centrally by the ECM system, "says Alexander Rodionov, Director of Document Management, Head of the LANIT Innovation Center.

Using Semantic Search

When a document is created by means of the EDMS platform and lies in the repository, it can be found not only using full-text search tools, but also using semantic search.

It means that at the request of "chipping" you will find a document that says "defect," because chipping is a defect, but you will not find "Skolkovo." Because the system understands that this is, firstly, a proper name, and, secondly, is not a declension of the original word "chipped." This is another direction of expanding the boundaries of the ECM system, "says LANIT expert Alexander Rodionov.

According to him, the market has suitable products in this area, for example, ABBYY solutions. At the same time, LANIT partially uses both ready-made models of this company and joint developments with it.

One of the key problems in semantic search is the description of ontologies.

Now ABBYY specialists are very close to resolving it, that is, turning the description of ontologies from something like art into a technological tool. Then we can teach partners with this skill, and they will also be involved in the process of creating ontologies for new subject areas. It seems to me that this is a task of the very near future. I expect that this will be an urgent task next year, judging by the level of technology development, - notes Rodionov.

Other trends

Experts list other trends they noticed in 2019, and which will be relevant in the near future.

Elena Piskunovich talks about the trend associated with the creation of a single ecosystem of the company and the expansion of the capabilities of classic EDMS with applied functions.

These functions may include: management of changes, applications and powers of attorney, budget control, claim and claim work, verification of the trustworthiness of the counterparty and others. Thanks to such modules in the EDMS, users do not need to move from one system to another: all tasks are performed in a "single window," she notes.

Denis Seleznev, General Director of First Form, notes an active increase in demand for solutions with proactive preparation of information for making a decision on the document (auto-check in SPARK, etc.). In addition, among the trends, he emphasizes the importance for customers of indicators of the speed of reaction of the system - users have become very demanding in this regard, even a 5-second wait is often dissatisfied.

Natalia Mikhalcheva, Marketing Director of Galactica Corporation, lists several other market trends - integration with state information systems, introduction of containerization technologies, wider use of freely distributed server and client platforms, information security.

Vadim Ipatov, Deputy General Director of InterTrust for Business Development, believes that the main trends in EDMS are associated with an increase in complexity and an increase in the number of document management participants:

This puts forward the requirements of increased power and guaranteed operability of EDMS systems. This is followed by technological trends - ensuring operation in high load conditions and proactive monitoring of the infrastructure in which the system and functional availability of EDMS are deployed. The requirement of import substitution forces manufacturers to transfer EDMS to SPO technologies. Requirements for the integration capabilities of EDMS are also growing.

Evgeny Kuchiyash, Director of ECM Development at TerraLink, notes that the most progressive domestic customers confirm the trend of growth and demand for two technological components of ECM systems - the use of knowledge graphs and natural language processing capabilities.

TerraLink already has competencies in this area, and is ready to apply this experience in Russia, he adds.

Sergey Poltev, Head of Modern ECM Solutions at EOS, identifies five common market trends:

• Expanding the loop of systems and integrating various solutions, moving from automation of individual tasks to continuous digital flow.
• Integration of various solutions, organization of a single entry point.
• Growing requirements for information security and fault tolerance.
• Application of artificial intelligence technologies in certain areas of work (heading, classification, search by synonyms).
• Cross-platform, web technologies, mobility.

Dmitry Arefiev, head of automation of business processes at Digital Design, believes that rational choice has recently ruled the market. The customer is increasingly paying attention to such system criteria as high performance, scalability, advanced services for operation in a complex corporate IT infrastructure. From relatively new trends, he notices an increase in the number of requests for PostgreSQL or Linux support.

Ilya Zaychikov, Product owner ED THESIS, ranks the use of open source solutions as trends that can be developed by its own IT departments.

Many customers strive for maximum independence from vendors, so they are increasing the competencies necessary for development, he says.

Alexey Pesterev from the CROC company attributes the separation of operational and archival document management to trends. In this case, the user works in a single system, but the documents are distributed among isolated electronic archives and are automatically moved according to the specified rules, the list of cases and the procedure for writing off documents to the archive after the expiration of the retention period. The effect achieved is compliance with all rules for maintaining archival workflow, restriction of access to documents, examination of the value of documents and preservation of the legal force of electronic documents.

Another trend, he said, is related to the use of digital twins not only in modeling and optimizing production processes, but also in automating corporate content management processes.

This allows you to test hypotheses in a digital environment, where built-in analytics tools will help determine the potential effect of changes. Such requests from the market are already appearing, "he says.

According to Artem Moiseenko, head of the expertise and development department of Logica Business, at the current level of technology development and the legislative framework, the trend is the transition from unstructured information exchange to structured.

Electronic documents that duplicate paper documents have already survived their format. It will be much more convenient to turn to the desired software service using a certain protocol, transfer to it a number of structured fields signed by the EP, and get the required service than exchange unstructured paper and electronic documents, attracting a large number of intermediaries for this. In this matter, software manufacturers rely on legislative support from the state, he adds.

In addition, according to him, the Internet of Things is gaining momentum, 5G is on the way. As a result, autonomous devices (robotic document storage systems, peripherals, sensors, etc.) will become more and more participants in the general production process. It is possible to minimize the human factor when transmitting information, which opens up new prospects both for automation and process optimization.

Now the solutions are paying less and less attention to the width of the communication channel, which is steadily growing every year, but at the same time more emphasis is placed on the ability of certain services and devices to work offline to ensure the overall stability of centralized solutions, he says.

Also in trend, according to Artem Moiseenko, there are digital assistants who, at the right time, using augmented reality (voice or visual) based on AI and prepared data, provide the brief information necessary at the moment.

2018: Top Trends

Market trends

Market consolidation

The market is undergoing a significant restructuring of demand, which requires a corresponding change in supply. With the traditional perception of EDMS as a means of solving the problems of classical workflow, coordination and control of the execution of documents and tasks, there is a massive demand for more complex and complex tasks. For example, centralized and specialized electronic archives, which, in addition to solving traditional ECM tasks, include the functionality of paperless document management (taking into account Russian specifics), solving horizontal and industry problems.

As an example, specialized solutions for managing claims and claims, archives of primary accounting documents, management of the technological archive of logistics documents can also be cited. Such extended requirements for the EDMS platform, which were previously piece-by-piece, are now becoming typical in almost any large project. Accordingly, the EDMS platform is subject to requirements not previously so often in demand - the availability of process control tools; Low-code development tools; mechanisms for managing EP, integration with EDM operators and support for working with structured documents; support for mobile workplaces. All this was present in advanced EDMS platforms before, but recently began to be used in large numbers in projects.

Many large companies have outlined their plans to centralize disparate loosely connected EDMS and individual applications into single centrally managed complex EDMS. This positioning bias leads to a significant increase in the requirements for scaling - both in terms of the total number of users and in the volume of documents and processes; development of integration tools and EDMS service architecture.

An important factor in the changes in the market was the fact that the key customer of the system is increasingly not only IT services and those responsible for workflow, but also heads of functional divisions for which processes are automated - production divisions, accountants and financiers, lawyers, etc.

To put it thesis: the main trend of the Russian EDMS/ECM market consists in its consolidation from four more or less independent markets: EDMS - classic electronic document management systems (applications and platforms) that automate the operation of the management apparatus, ECM - content management platforms, electronic archives, centralized repositories of all enterprise documents, both informal and formalized, BPM - BPM platforms in terms of content management and workflow, EDO/EDI - operators of external legally significant electronic document management. The integration of these markets is connected with the use of technologies "shared" by them, "says Vladimir Andreev, President of Docsvision.

At the same time, he notes that the ECM and EDO/EDI markets are growing, and the markets of classic EDM and BPM are actually stagnating.

This will aggravate the struggle of vendors and give advantages to those who are more ready to take a place in growing markets, "Andreev said.

Import substitution stability

One of the main trends of recent years is preserved - import substitution. But now it manifests itself not in acute dynamics, but in stable demand for Russian products from large companies. Domestic solutions are becoming more mature, and new developments are even more adapted to the domestic specifics of document management.

We assess this both by the overall picture of the market and by the demand for our own comprehensive electronic document management system of the new version - KSED 3.0. It is now under consideration for inclusion in the Unified Register of Russian Programs for Computers and Databases. In the central office of Rosenergoatom and the branches of the concern, a technical document management system was built on the basis of one of the versions of this solution. The task of the product is to manage documents at the stage of operation of nuclear power plants, - says Sergey Plaunov, head of BPM and ECM at CROC.

According to Konstantin Istomin, executive director of Directum, import substitution covers not only government agencies, but also large businesses. Sanctions and related cases of companies disconnecting from the support of Western vendors increase the priority of this topic for customers. Large organizations, especially state corporations, are gradually moving from words to deeds and introducing domestic systems that have passed the necessary certification.

Many companies are completing a 5-8 year cycle of using EDMS/ECM systems, they need to be updated. Replacing working systems is an expensive and painful process. Therefore, customers expect to receive qualitatively new products along with the replacement. In general, government programs and initiatives, including an active focus on import substitution and digitalization of the economy, are a serious driver for the entire automation systems market, he says.

Georgy Podbutsky, commercial director of Logia Business, adds that a number of products that have historically been tied to foreign platforms have gone a serious technological path towards alienation from them, independent full-fledged products have been brought to the market, which no longer depend on foreign partners. The Russian ECM market, according to him, like the entire IT market, is becoming truly Russian.

According to the Alexandra Rodionova director of the department of document management systems, LANIT the widespread belief that Russian ECM platforms are inferior to Western solutions in terms of performance and scalability is no longer true.

Perhaps this was true several years ago, but now the ECM platforms of the main Russian players in practical terms differ very little from Western ones in terms of scalability, the ability to support high-load processes. And in any case, even if this gap takes place, in recent years it has narrowed very seriously. Therefore, over time, it will be more and more difficult to find customer requirements, for the implementation of which the Russian solution would not be suitable only because of the scale of the data and performance requirements, says the LANIT expert.

Demand for legally significant electronic document management

The growing confidence in electronic document management systems contributes to the fact that more and more customers are ready to automate not only internal document management processes, but also processes for exchanging legally significant documents with their counterparties. Customers are beginning to understand that automation of electronic content exchange processes allows them to save time and resources on manual processing of documentation, its coordination and transfer. They can spend their time on other tasks that contribute to improving business efficiency.

According to our estimates, this trend will continue and in the near future we will witness a complete rejection of paper document management between companies and significant changes in the legislative framework that contribute to this process, - says Roman Konovalov, General Director of ID Management Technology.

A similar opinion is shared by Georgy Podbutsky, commercial director of Logia Business. According to him, it will be possible to talk about completely paperless document management within some sectors of the economy in the future for five years.

Alexander Nazarov, Sales Director of ED Thesis (Haulmont (Houlmont)), notes that companies are increasingly found driven by the goal of switching to paperless document management.

As a rule, these are organizations that have already received significant advantages from the automation of major business processes and are striving to fully optimize their activities with the help of EDMS and SZDO, he says.

Artem Permyakov, R&D Director of Directum, also declares the wider use of legally significant electronic document management (SZDO).

For example, one of the last such cases among our clients is Kaliningradnefteprodukt, which has translated into an electronic and legally significant form the full cycle of work with a whole range of documents: interchangeable reports, commodity reports (TORG-29), consignment notes, calculation cards, acts of acceptance of petroleum products and other types of internal acts, - he says.

According to forecasts, Elena Ivanova the marketing director, the EOS role of legally significant electronic document management will increase, since the rejection of paper documents will progress at the level of government agencies, and in business, and in private life. In this regard, in her opinion, the issues of regulating processes related to electronic archives are especially acute.

Popularity of electronic archives

Market participants note the popularity of projects to create electronic data warehouses, or electronic archives. When implementing such an archive, the business user actually receives a single database for storing all the papers and corporate data of the organization, which is structured for the convenience of searching for specific documents and has a distinction of access rights in accordance with the positions of employees in the company.

Already, business is saving huge funds thanks to the introduction of such electronic archives, especially in those areas where "tons" of documents have to be regularly processed: for example, the economic effect of VTB's retail business over the past 5 years from the introduction of an electronic archive for 130 TB of client and internal documents amounted to about a billion rubles, - notes Roman Konovalov, General Director of ID Management Technology.

According to Artem Permyakov, R&D Director of Directum, the trend of creating long-term document storage systems is developing intensively in connection with the new initiatives of Rosarchiv. He notes that the organization of an effective SZDO is directly related to the development of such systems. They allow you to organize archival storage of electronic documents, apply the rules of archival workflow to them, use the necessary tools to maintain legal significance and ensure the destruction of documents.

At the same time, the growing number of sources, number and volume of documents have already led to a gap between traditional archival institutions and the needs of the economy. In the current conditions and traditions (including with current funding), archives cannot cope with the storage of an increasing volume of documents.

According to Elena Ivanova, marketing director, EOS this leads to the fact that archives are already expanding sources of acquisition, and storage rules are changing. In addition, this requires a change in the regulatory framework associated with archival businesses.

However, this trend is likely to have a delayed impact, because technological solutions that would unequivocally provide the needs of both business and the state do not yet exist. But work in this direction is already underway in all developed countries, and Russia is no exception, "says Elena Ivanova.

Partly cloudy

The development of cloud EDMS is no longer a question of system building technology, it is a question of customers' readiness to place their data in the "cloud."

Undoubtedly, the segment of cloud EDMS is the fastest growing in recent years, since these technologies provide advantages: the speed of deployment of workplaces, the convenience of interaction between distributed divisions, the ability to work remotely, control confidential information, etc. There are companies that are willing to do this and understand that this gives them the opportunity to reduce costs and increase business efficiency. And there are companies that are afraid of losing data in the "cloud" or simply do not understand how to build business processes between geographically distributed branches. But the transition to the "cloud" is not a panacea, but a matter of consulting on a case-by-case basis, "says Dmitry Livshits, CEO of Digital Design.

Alexey Semidetnov, CEO of Conteq, adds that the trend of migration of solutions to the clouds is growing.

This allows customers to get a ready-to-use solution with minimal financial costs. Probably, this is not so relevant for those who need to increase capital expenditures to increase the cost of business, but for everyone else, clouds are a real cost optimization tool, he explains.

Platform approach

Another market trend is a platform approach when choosing ECM solutions. It is true for both customers and developers. In order not to start development again every time, you need to work with a universal tool, a kind of ECM designer (platform), with which you can configure and put into operation the required business functionality.

A single ESM platform is the right way to achieve a balanced IT ecosystem that allows you to effectively manage corporate IT services. In addition, the platform allows you to develop application solutions much faster, which is why we observed the tendency to abandon long transaction and implementation cycles, "says Georgy Podbutsky, Commercial Director of Logic Business.

Technological trends

Expansion of EDMS/ESM system functionality

EDMSECM Functionality/-systems cover more and more business processes beyond the classical workflow. These solutions have already "pulled over" some functions of other IT systems, and in the future this trend will continue.

For example, we see a demand for project management functionality in EDMS. In this regard, we plan in the near future to launch an option to support document-oriented processes within the framework of project management for state authorities, which are extremely important precisely for the documentation component directly related to the EDMS. At the first stage, the option will be added to the EDMS "Delo," and in the future it will be integrated into our other platforms. We also already have a counterparty audit solution that allows you to dynamically track changes by automatically requesting data from unified integrated directories. This avoids risks - both commercial and tax, including timely informing about the emergence or change in the degree of risks. Another innovative tool is aimed at automating interaction - this is a chatbot that is integrated with EDMS and allows you to configure interaction within the company or with external participants in the process. The chatbot collects information in stages, which allows you not to lose information, transfer it to the EDMS for processing and send it back, "says Elena Ivanova, EOS Marketing Director.

Vadim Ipatov, Deputy General Director of InterTrust for Business Development, speaks of the possibility of deep customization of the system functionality according to customer requirements without releasing a special version of the software. According to him, EDMS become not only ready-made solutions, but also platforms for creating specialized document-oriented applications, thereby expanding the boundaries of document automation.

Alexey Semidetnov, CEO of Conteq, also notes the trend of shifting decisions from the field of clean document management and office automation towards a broader understanding in the context of ECM - content management and business processes of the enterprise.

Mikhail Haskelberg, executive director of the First Form company, believes that the fusion of EDMS/ESM and BPM systems is the main market trend.

We have practically no projects where only the introduction of electronic document management would be in demand, without automation of related business processes. EDMS automation is often the first step towards deploying a full-fledged BPM system. When choosing an EDMS, customers necessarily analyze the presence and quality of the BPM engine, and platforms that do not have it are immediately excluded from consideration, he explains.

Dmitry Livshits, General Director of Digital Design, also believes that the EDMS should be flexible and allow setting up new business processes as quickly as possible.

EDMS continues to capture the territory of BPM systems. Today, leading EDMSs already have a BPM engine, since the requirements for systems are changing - now they must not only provide the ability to model business processes, analytics and planning tools are also needed. Systems that do not cope with the growing volume of new tasks are replaced by new ones, in the portfolio of which there are dozens of solutions for various business processes that provide end-to-end automation. Therefore, systems that were leaders 5 years ago risk disappearing from this market in 3-4 years if they do not radically change, he said.

Alexander Rodionov, Director of the Department of Document Management Systems "Lanit," among the main trends in the technological development of the EDMS/ESM emphasizes the automation of specific business processes and the convenience of working with information.

Our customers are increasingly using Workflow in Russian EDMS: Continuous improvement of Workflow process management to optimize work in specific business areas: acceptance of applications and requests, procurement management, management of contracts with external counterparties. Based on these requirements, the functionality of routing and business process management is actively developing. At the same time, the processes for most customers begin and end outside the EDMS, for example, applications come from your personal account, and the procurement documentation package is laid out on the portal or trading platform. Therefore, the second most important, after the development of Workflow, is the technological trend, I highlight the integrability of information systems for data exchange, "he says.

Affordable mobility

The world is moving towards a multi-channel interaction - this is what customers want, and the manufacturers of EDMS and ECM will have to adapt to this. Modern solutions must work with any device and on any operating systems.

At the same time, even mobile solutions must be fully functional, and interfaces must be unified. We realized this trend a long time ago and are already going this way, - said Elena Ivanova.

Alexander Nazarov, Sales Director of EDMS "Thesis," recalls that the issue of developing mobile EDMS applications has been relevant for several years. Vendors strive to ensure that work from a mobile device is available to every employee, and not just company leaders. This requires technologies that allow you to create an inexpensive application for both customers and developers, which will be functional and convenient.

The EDMS "Thesis" mobile application was developed using the React Native framework. It allows you to create applications simultaneously for iOS and Android, quickly transfer modifications of the main system to a mobile application and save them when switching to a new version, "he explained.

Roman Konovalov from iDi - Management Technologies added that since the mobile platform allows you to access data anywhere and at any time, this greatly simplifies the life of departments such as sales and marketing.

Today, all leading ECM providers are developing ways to create extensions and add-ons for transferring ECM to mobile, he said.

System Intelligence

One of the key trends that can be fixed in 2018 is the intelligence of the EDMS. Customers are increasingly tasked with implementing intelligent search, automatic classification, and automated data extraction from unstructured documents.

Of course, these are not new inventions of their kind, but if earlier the basic mechanism for digitizing documents and automation of processes was put at the forefront, now the tasks of efficient processing and search for information are a priority, "says Sergey Plaunov, head of BPM and ECM at CROC.

Vadim Ipatov from InterTrust adds that the functionality of AI will perform a significant part of routine operations automatically, for example, automatically filling in the document details in the EDMS for the file content of the document, autoclassifying citizens' appeals, automating the life cycle of the regulatory document and many other processes.

We took the first steps towards the introduction of machine learning algorithms in the Priority SDU based on Docsvision to automate various document management tasks. Recently, our joint project in the Government of the Ivanovo Region received an award at the PROF-IT.2018 competition as the Best Project for the Introduction of Innovative Technologies. Only the first stage has been completed - data analysis and the development of automation scenarios, a huge amount of work is ahead, but it is already clear that this experiment will bring the EDMS functions to a new level. The trend on data science forces EDMS developers to change the organizational structure - to implement such projects, you need to have in your team people who professionally own ML algorithms - data scientist, and subject analysts who are well versed in data stored in EDMS and business processes, - says Dmitry Livshits, CEO of Digital Design.

Messengers

One of the main trends in the market is. messengers The business actively uses WhatsApp other messengers for sales, joint work on projects, discussions with suppliers and buyers of transaction details, etc. Users want to work as it suits them - and EDMSECM solution providers/must adapt to demand.

"First Form" implemented chats on mobile platforms many years ago, and now we are glad that these communication technologies are actively perceived by the market. Each leader wants to make decisions "anywhere," receive quick feedback from subordinates at any time of the day or night, promptly discuss working issues with partners with the same ease with which members of the WhatsApp group of parents of school students discuss the amount of contributions for classroom repairs, - notes Denis Seleznev, General Director of the company "First Form."

According to Vadim Ipatov from InterTrust, with the help of the messenger it will also be possible to solve a number of interesting problems: use bots that will perform certain functions on command, use the messenger as a center for notifications, transmitting multimedia content, etc.

Quality interfaces

The quality of interfaces and usability is becoming one of the significant competitive advantages. Businesses and organizations want users to be able to work with the system without lengthy training. With continuous digital business transformation, ensuring systems are simple and intuitive is key.

This applies to both traditional fixed processes and automation tools for unstructured and poorly formalized tasks. The task is not new, but it is not yet possible to say that a satisfactory result has been achieved on it. In 2019, we planned a lot of innovations in this direction, - said Vladimir Andreev, President of Docsvision.

New solutions should be intuitive, convenient, be able to personalize - all this must be taken into account when releasing new solutions and new versions, "added Elena Ivanova from EOS.

According to Alexander Nazarov, Sales Director of the Thesis EDMS, in the modern world, the first thing to pay attention to when choosing a system is how well-developed and convenient the interface of a specific solution is. Therefore, the developers pay great attention to the detailed study of UX/UI.

If we talk about the ED "Thesis," then in 2019 the system will switch to a new version of the CUBA platform, which contains almost unlimited possibilities for working on usability, "he explained.

Security tools

At the same time, the increase in the number of documents processed in the EDMS and the popularization of the BYOD concept, when employees use personal devices to solve work tasks, increase customer concerns about the safety of confidential corporate data. ECMs are classified as business critical systems, so business users have increased requirements for information security tools and data privacy.

In this regard, vendors are improving cyber defense algorithms, ensuring close integration of ECM with cybersecurity tools, or even "sewing" security modules developed using the latest encryption methods directly into systems. Moreover, new technologies are completely changing approaches to information security: according to Cisco's global cybersecurity report for 2018, 39% of organizations depend on automation, 34% on machine learning, and 32% on artificial intelligence in the fight against cyber threats, explains Roman Konovalov, CEO of ID Management Technology.

2016-2017: Top Trends

Application of blockchain technology

Blockchain technology has undoubtedly gained very wide popularity. It is used in a wide variety of fields. The sphere of electronic document management is no exception. So, according to Artur Ishkhanyan, senior executive director of ID Management Technology, prototypes of EDMS are already appearing on the basis of distributed register (blockchain) technology .

Sergey Plaunov, head of BPM&ECM at CROC, notes that despite the fact that some companies want to build a document flow within their organization on the basis of a blockchain platform, interorganization has much greater potential. For example, maintaining a distributed database for document management can be supplemented with the ability to automate the execution of smart contracts, in particular, on the accrual of penalties in case of violation of deadlines in procurement contracts.

As an example, he cites the project of the retailer M.Video, which, together with Sberbank Factoring and Alfa-Bank, announced the use of a blockchain platform for factoring operations.

We are talking about billions of rubles and tens of thousands of invoices, which were previously processed using e-mail and paper document management. The use of blockchain made it possible to automate the reconciliation of shipping documentation, reduce operating costs and reduce the risks of fraud, - said Sergey Plaunov.

Victor Weinstein, CEO of Logic Business, believes that blockchain technology has at least one positive aspect: it allows you to create ECM class systems for the secure exchange of documents outside the organization based on a distributed electronic signature. Without the use of a single trust center that is easier to compromise. Potentially, this can help establish a trusting exchange of information between a large number of organizations that initially do not trust each other, even compete fiercely, but at the same time are forced to exchange information with each other.

We already have the first pilot projects on which we test a bundle of ECM solutions and blockchain technologies. We assume that the first commercial projects will appear over the next year, "he adds.

At the same time, Alexey Trefilov, director of ELMA, believes that such significant trends in recent years as Big Data and blockchain are still far from practice.

In fact, the real mass customer, alas, will not reach such technologies soon. All serious participants in the ECM/EDMS market still have a lot of work to do to educate the market, or even form it, "he says.

Import substitution and requirement of fully domestic infrastructure

The document management systems market in Russia is an established and mature market, and changes in it are taking place slowly, but the past year has brought several tangible changes. First of all, this is a significant revival in state authorities on the issue of switching to domestic software: a plan for transferring office software to domestic platforms has been approved, specific deadlines and fairly clear requirements have been spelled out.

As Vladimir Andreev, President of Docsvision, notes, all this forces manufacturers of domestic platforms to implement the performance of their systems in a completely domestic infrastructure, from operating systems and databases to working with domestic office packages.

Vladimir Kokhan, commercial director of Digital Design, adds that there is a real demand on the market of state authorities not just for "import substitution" or for domestic solutions that work on foreign basic software, but for specific solutions based entirely on domestic software products.

According to Alexander Nazarov, sales director of Haulmont (Houlmont), over the past two years, the trend for import substitution has significantly intensified. Customers are increasingly interested in open source technologies and are striving for independence from third-party commercial software in areas where possible. For government agencies, ensuring import independence remains the main trend.

The EDMS THESIS and the CUBA platform on which it is based are completely open source, we pass all the sources to a client who can adapt the system for his needs both independently and with the help of us or third-party integrators, says Nazarov.

Viktor Weinstein notes that the state is consistently striving for the register of domestic software to work in full force.

There is increasing pressure on companies that neglect the register. As a result, more and more organizations are starting to use domestic ECM systems. I note that solutions from the registry already have adequate value for business, because the licensing policy of Western companies has practically not changed, he says.

Pavel Kashtanov, General Director of Synthellect, notes that despite the fact that the import substitution trend should be considered only in the context of organizations with state participation, there is a tendency to extend it to private companies.

On the one hand, the trend aroused some interest and an increase in the number of projects to replace Western software with Russian analogues, on the other hand, forced Russian EDMS manufacturers to invest in improving systems in order to support free server software and DBMS. TESSA is a fully Russian platform, is included in the register of Russian software of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications and has a number of successful implementations in state organizations, including defense industry enterprises. To support the import substitution trend (and not only), this year we added support for PostgreSQL DBMS to TESSA. By the middle of next year, it is planned to release a version of TESSA with support for application server components based on Linux operating systems, "says the CEO of Synthellect.

Vasily Babintsev, director of marketing at Directum, adds that import substitution is not a quick process, and more time is needed to evaluate the results:

I think that we will return to the discussion of this trend more than once.

Scale implementations

Some market participants notice a trend towards scaling previously implemented systems. So, in 2017, Docsvision faced a similar task, which requires the centralization of large distributed implementations.

Organizations have matured before the creation of unified centralized electronic archives, all this happens against the background of import substitution and replacement of Western ECM systems - and this imposes new requirements for scaling to domestic platforms, - notes Vladimir Andreev.

Vladimir Kohan, Commercial Director of Digital Design, also records the transition of a number of companies from decentralized to centralized installations. At the same time, according to him, the trend of enlargement of systems is traced, in particular, the creation of industry solutions.

Paperless document management

One of the most long-awaited trends is the transition of a number of companies to a completely paperless document flow, including legally significant.

According to Artur Ishkhanyan, senior executive director of ID Management Technology, despite the fact that the legal basis for the transition has been ready for a long time, until recently, customers' concerns about the safety of confidential data served as an obstacle to the transition to a fully electronic exchange of documents with counterparties.

Nevertheless, with the development of technologies for protecting corporate information, for example, cryptographic encryption, the market has shown its readiness for innovations. So far, these are mainly large network companies, but in the next year or two we will see how paper media will disappear from most large holding structures, - said the representative of ID Management Technology.

Vladimir Andreev, president of Docsvision, believes that real projects on paperless document management have appeared thanks to the active work of the state to formalize the regulatory framework and stimulate the transition to paperless technologies.

This is a fairly new topic for the EDMS/ESM platforms, and a number of additional functions are required to implement the entire set of tasks of abandoning paper from the platform, "says Andreev.

Victor Weinstein, CEO of Logic of Business, also notes that business is increasingly moving into the digital sphere in terms of document management and moving away from using paper as a storage medium.

"Business logic" increasingly "stops" paper on the way to the company: all documents are numbered at the lowest level, after which they fall into the company's circulation in electronic form, "he says.

Vasily Babintsev, director of marketing at Directum, considers the potential for a transition to completely paperless work within the company to be high. According to him, real cases appear, as it can be implemented. For example, the project for the introduction of paperless document management based on Directum in the LokoTech Group of Companies, where the automation of business processes has already reached 90%.

Chat boats

A small but interesting novelty of recent times was the appearance of chat bots for various messengers.

As noted by Alexander Nevinchany, Deputy General Director of the Korus Consulting Group of Companies, they help to quickly receive data from the EDMS in the interface familiar to users.

Sergey Plunov, head of the BPM&ECM company CROC"," also notes an increase in demand for chat bots. In his opinion, now this is a popular channel for "communication" with corporate IT systems, including the document management system.

Enhancement of functionality

Many market participants notice the needs of customers to expand the functionality of EDMS/ESM systems. Gradually, opportunities from solutions of other classes penetrate into them.

This, in particular, says Alexander Nevinchany, Deputy General Director of the Korus Consulting Group of Companies. According to him, the functionality of ECM systems begins to include the functions of systems of other classes, thus making the EDMS one of the reference systems in any IT infrastructure.

This trend leads to the fact that a single information space is created on the basis of EDMS, which helps to avoid duplication of information and speeds up business processes related to data exchange and document coordination. In the end, such systems have a positive effect on the effectiveness of the organization, as they contribute to more prompt decision-making, "he says.

Sergey Plunov from CROC records the penetration of the BPM and Case Management functions into the EDMS.

Dmitry Golosovsky, head of marketing at InterTrust, notes that customers are interested in the capabilities of systems to expand the functionality and coverage of business processes using settings, workflow and case management, as well as tools for quickly developing application solutions based on the ECM platform and supporting project management.

Vladimir Andreev, President of Docsvision, notes the use of EDMS/ESM to automate various processes that are not traditional for EDMS.

Their nomenclature is very diverse, it can be typical industry tasks and processes of various functional divisions that are not typical for EDMS: for example, financial managers, lawyers, etc. become customers of processes that are implemented in EDMS. This opens up new prospects for the use of systems in organizations that have already implemented EDMS, says Andreev.

Alexander Rodionov, Director of Document Management Systems, LANIT says that the company's customers, using the existing ECM platform, on the basis of which the EDMS has already been implemented, want to automate processes that were not previously covered by the implementation. As a result, the company notes an increase in the number of projects based on the LanDocs Routing workflow engine, which can solve not only local tasks within the system, electronic document management but also integrate into the business processes of the organization, optimize them through integration with other information systems, manage data and events. Automation of new processes, in turn, increases the number of users who need access to the system outside the perimeter of the corporate network using devices at hand (BYOD), which creates additional requirements for. information security

Strong integration component of EDMS/ECM projects

There are practically no stand-alone implementations today. Modern projects often require complex and deep integration.

According to Mikhail Haskelberg, executive director of First Form, about 80% of projects have a strong integration component.

It is important to be able to implement sufficiently complex integration schemes to fit the system into the existing IT landscape and adapt to the tasks of a particular client, he notes.

According to ESM Group Pro, three out of ten projects require solutions in which the integration component implemented on the basis of ESM occupies a good half of the functionality.

For example, in several of our projects in the financial sector, ECM acts both as a repository of data received from front-office systems, and as an engine for distributing metadata and files to related AIS (in accordance with business procedures), the company says.

Vladimir Kokhan, commercial director of Digital Design, calls omnichannality one of the requirements for ensuring the convenience of working with EDMS.

Creating a single information space throughout the company, closely integrating all information systems and ensuring "continuity" of processes are trends that should not be overlooked by market participants, he says.

According to Elena Ivanova, Marketing Director of Electronic Office Systems (EOS), interaction with the interdepartmental electronic document management system ( MEDO) and with the STU portal (Network Reference Telephone Node) is in demand among government agencies. In addition, customers need the integration of EDMS with social networks, chat bots, instant messengers and video conferencing.

Mobility for All

The developers ECM have been actively talking about mobility as a trend for a long time. But, as Vasily Babintsev, director of marketing at Directum, notes, over the past two years, the "mobility for all" trend has become truly massive and confirmed by real numbers.

If we talk about our products, then the new generation of mobile applications Directum Solo and Directum Jazz appeared back in 2014. But it was in 2016 that a surge in interest in them led to a multiple (more than 10 times) increase in license sales. Over the three quarters of 2017, we were already 15% ahead of the figure for the whole of 2016 in terms of the implementation of licenses for mobile solutions, and the growth was noticeable both in the segment of large customers and in the SMB segment, as well as among government agencies. Sales of Directum Jazz, developed primarily for ordinary employees, are growing, says Babintsev.

Alexander Nazarov, sales director at Haulmont (Houlmont), adds that until recently, providing the opportunity to use a mobile client to all employees of the company was costly, not to mention adapting a typical mobile client to changes in the main system.

We have quite successfully solved the problem of the availability of a mobile client for all users by implementing a mobile version with an adapted web interface and significantly reducing its cost. Currently, following new technological trends, we are developing a new mobile version of our EDMS THESIS Document and Task Management System based on the React Native framework. Its release is expected in early 2018, "he added.

Alexander Nevinchany from Korus Consulting talks about the popularity of mobile EDMS among ordinary employees.

If a few years ago the use of mobile EDMS functions was limited to a top manager, now all employees of the company are increasingly gaining access to the exchange and coordination of documents from mobile devices. This trend predetermines an increase in demand dynamics and an acceleration in the development of functionality of mobile versions of EDMS. This is also due to the fact that the variety of mobile devices requires the constant development of new versions, he notes.

Elena Ivanova adds that the functionality of mobile EOS applications has grown significantly, since not only the bosses, but also the middle link actively uses them every day. At the same time, in her opinion, the most relevant now are the issues of security of work on mobile applications and work with an electronic signature (EP).

Increased focus on safety

One of the main features in the EDMS market remains increased attention to system security issues. It is critical for businesses whose employees work with lots of sensitive business data that they remain confident that this information will remain secure.

54% of the data are "merged" by the employees of the enterprises themselves, the developers of security systems for EDMS calculated. If earlier cybersecurity in the EDMS was limited to protection against third-party system hacks, now they are actively protecting themselves from internal threats, "says Artur Ishkhanyan, senior executive director of ID Management Technology. In particular, data protection and intellectual property technologies are being improved, both at the hardware level (computers, servers and network devices) and at the level of individual files. DLP (Data Loss Prevention) tools, for example, allow you to control incoming and outgoing network traffic or data transfer from a PC to disk drives. You can track what data leaves the corporate network, and detect intruders from tagged files.

Artur Ishkhanyan also notes an interesting trend in the field of EDMS security in 2017 - an increase in the number of systems that protect paper media.

Many companies still have hybrid electronic-paper document management systems, and it is through paper media that up to 20% of leaks occur. The developers of corporate security systems presented solutions that allow you to reliably establish the source of confidential data leakage: to detect an intruder, it is enough to launch a "decoy" file into the system and wait until it is with competitors or the media. The bottom line is that a unique copy is created for each confidential file, which, in the event of a leak, will allow you to set the date of a particular user, the expert explains.

Analytical tools

A number of experts note an increase in demand for EDMS analytical tools. According to Dmitry Golosovsky, head of marketing at InterTrust, they allow you to look at the data contained in the EDMS from different angles in real time.

In addition, he notices the emergence of interest in the direction of "intelligent EDMS" - a system that maintains communication between documents through cross-links, capable of independently determining the type of document and content, by details and its content and performing appropriate operations with it.

Vladimir Kokhan, Commercial Director of Digital Design, adds that system modules that provide decision support are becoming more and more in demand. He also sees an increasing interest in the practical use of machine learning technologies in EDMS - "a number of pilot projects have already been carried out, real implementations are beginning."

Demand for cloud-based EDMS

Flexible configuration and deployment solutions are popular. In particular, the demand for cloud EDMS is growing.

As Arthur Ishkhanyan from ID Management Technology notes, connecting document flow to the cloud does not require capital investments in the creation and support of IT infrastructure, which significantly reduces the cost of system ownership. Moreover, you can increase capacity in the cloud with the growth of business needs. Therefore, this option is ideal for SMB customers or large companies who want to test the new system on one or more departments.

Reduced demand for boxed products

Mikhail Haskelberg, executive director of First Form, notes a drop in demand for boxed products. According to him, the "box," as a rule, solves too common problems and does it in a strictly certain way, in accordance with the methodology sewn in it. Customers have to adjust their processes to some standard scenarios, which are usually presented as "best industry practices." Of course, the use of a "box" reduces the cost of implementation, but the effectiveness of such a system is lower than a deeply customized solution, he says.

Abstract "best practices" do not always help a specific business, in most cases the company captures the market precisely due to its uniqueness. Therefore, of the two options - "cheap and angrily" or more expensive, but more efficiently - customers today more often choose the second option, - notes Mikhail Haskelberg.

In his opinion, there are certainly "best practices," but in the heads of consultants, and not in boxed solutions. And each implementation of such practices is strongly tied to the specifics of the business processes of a particular company. Therefore, customers prefer to work not with automators, but with expert consultants.

Effective implementers not only create a system according to the customer's requirements, but along with the customer participate in the formation of these requirements, helping to get the most out of the system. We see that there are large development companies on the market, whose solutions are used by thousands of companies, but which do not have a business analysis stage at all. They are initially focused on the implementation of typed solutions, on mechanistic implementation, which does not provide for in-depth analysis and optimization of the customer's business processes. Today, such developers are faced with the problem of sales development, since their customers do not have an understanding of how to develop already implemented systems, the expert explains.

Greater use of free software

Sergey Evsikov, director of the Design ASCON System, calls the wider use of free software by both vendors and customers as one of the recent trends.

This implies the use of solutions based on open code - either integral, complete EDMS solutions, or components of free software. There is also a downside here. Many are worried about an open source infrastructure where system components lie in an open repository - yes, they are free and accessible, but cannot be on warranty support. The customer is not used to this, although the topic is promising and has long been used in the world, says Evsikov.

Victor Weinstein, CEO of Logic of Business, said in an interview with TAdviser that his company is actively striving to increase the share of EDMS based on SPO.

Just the other day (November 2017, approx. TAdviser) signed a contract that will be the largest in the implementation of a software system for managing corporate content in Russia, he added.

ROI approach

The most important trend, according to Mikhail Haskelberg from the company "First Form," is the focus on performance for business. According to him, projects that are made for general philosophical reasons have practically disappeared - only because someone decided to have a EDMS\ESM system.

Today, if a company initiates a project for the implementation of EDMS\ESM, then it clearly understands why it needs it and calculates the potential financial effect. In the "First Form" we call it the ROI approach, and in our practice of such projects at least 90%. All major implementations that started over the past year were obtained thanks to the preparation of a transparent and convincing economic justification for the project, says Mikhail Haskelberg.

Increasing interest in legally relevant document management

An important trend of recent times has been an increase in the interest of companies in legally significant document management.

As noted in Korus Consulting, an increasing number of Russian companies, realizing that there is a legal framework for the use of South Kazakhstan, recognize the effectiveness of this solution and are moving or planning to switch to South Kazakhstan.

Pavel Kashtanov, General Director of Synthellect, adds that every second project is now associated with YUZDO in one way or another. Moreover, customers began to be interested in this topic a long time ago, but the real legally supported base and widespread use of this technology have appeared literally in recent years.

In this regard, we immediately built into our platform an integration link with one of the most popular providers - the Diadoc service (SKB Kontur), i.e. it does not even need to be purchased separately, it is already in the basic supply of the TESSA platform, says Pavel Kashtanov.

Sergey Evsikov, director of ASCON System, notes a massive transition to the exchange of electronic documents, as well as an increasingly loyal attitude to the use of electronic signatures. The term legally significant document management, in his opinion, becomes everyday.

On the other hand, he notes that the demand for solutions and their real use are different things:

For example, an electronic signature in our project organization management system Pilot-ICE was implemented in the first version, but two years after its release, we could not restrain the pressure of customers who said: "Yes, we understand that EDS is great, but give us the opportunity to put a signature facsimile next to us." So there is progress, but it is not as rapid as it seems after reading the news about the total transition to numbers - so far people are only trying to get used to the fact that they no longer need a pen.

Migrating from Legacy Systems

Another trend that market participants are talking about is the migration of large companies to new, modern ECM systems and platforms.

Vasily Babintsev, Director of Marketing at Directum, speaks about this trend, in particular:

Developments established years ago are becoming obsolete. In addition, large customers themselves are developing, their needs are growing, there is a need to introduce new tools (for example, mobile applications, expanding the range of business solutions). And for vendors and integrators, the task of transferring historical data from different systems is becoming urgent.

Intelligent Recognition

Smart EDMSECM image recognition tools have good prospects in/. According to Arthur Ishkhanyan, Senior Executive Director of ID Management Technology, in 2-3 years paper documents will be photographed and instantly, unmistakably decrypted by the system.

In the company "ECM Group Pro" the possibilities of streaming input, automatic typing, recognition and further distribution of documents in the ECM circuit are called a tangible advantage for banks and retail.

Reducing the processing time of paper originals, giving legal importance to digital images of documents - all this reduces costs. And our customers understand this well, "- noted in the" ESM Group Pro. "

2015-2016: Top Trends

Expansion of EDMS/ECM functionality

The requirements of companies for electronic document management systems are changing. Modern solutions of this class should have not only traditional capabilities, but also solve a wider range of problems.

So, according to Elena Ivanova, head of marketing at EOS, commercial companies need far from just EDMS and even ECM, the system should close many other everyday tasks - for example, project management, meetings, corporate portals. "Such capabilities as intelligent quick search, comparison of document versions, video conferencing capabilities are important," she said.

Recently, some organizations have been betting on EDMS as a management tool. This is mainly used by highly regulated organizations, for example, government agencies or large holdings, where a strong vertical of power is built, and the EDMS becomes, first of all, an instrument of hierarchical management and control.

In this case, the system is subject to increased requirements for the availability of planning functionality, monitoring the execution of orders, administrative documents, etc., - says Sergey Plaunov, Head of BPM and ECM at CROC.

Vladimir Andreev, President of Docsvision, speaks of the emerging demand for ready-made modules within the framework of the EDMS, which close individual functional horizontal ones (for example, managing meetings, pretentious activities, etc.) and specific industry tasks (managing a client's dossier at a bank, contacting citizens to government agencies, etc.).

Increasingly, there is a need to automate paperless document management tasks - both specific (for example, working with invoices) and general (contract process, general management), says Andreev.

Alexander Nazarov, Sales Director of EDMS THESIS of Haulmont, adds that now customers have a need to combine the functions of various systems in a single (state or commercial) information space for the organization.

Of course, it is convenient to be able to send a document signed by the EP to the counterparty (or receive it from the counterparty) from the internal document management system, post information on the internal portal or receive requests from the company's website without leaving the EDMS interface. Therefore, ready-made integration gateways are increasingly in demand, allowing the exchange of EDMS data with systems of another class, says Nazarov.

Interest in the clouds

Experts of the Russian EDMSECM market/see an increase in the interest of companies in cloud services and systems. However, most market participants stipulate that this trend primarily concerns companies in the SMB segment. The main plus for them is obvious - this is savings.

Interest in the clouds is growing in the segment of medium-sized companies. Cloud infrastructure is one of the ways to save some money on your own IT budgets, says Elena Ivanova.

Alexander Nevinchany, director of the portal solutions department of KORUS Consulting Group, agrees with her. According to him, the use of cloud services allows you to launch EDMS with minimal costs.

Svetlin Savov, Development Director of FTS Russia, adheres to the same opinion: "Small and medium-sized companies are interested in cloud technologies, automation of business processes allows them to significantly save and cope with the crisis."

At the same time, according to the representative of FTS Russia, a certain interest in the EDMS/ECM has emerged in hybrid clouds that allow you to distribute data and use local and cloud resources at the same time.

Corporate social networks

Commercial companies are gradually moving to collaborative and document storage environments similar to social networks, where you can freely communicate and effectively structure information within a specific context. With gamification elements, such spaces become even more attractive to use.

The demand for such systems is now actively growing, says Sergey Plunov.

For example, in the CROC company, we have been using the CROC Live corporate social network for several years, which replaces us with quite a few internal services - an internal corporate portal, a knowledge base, specialized content management systems, a media portal. The system allowed us to organize and integrate a number of business processes related to communications, knowledge exchange, information, allowing us to store documents, discuss them, work together on them, assign statuses, quickly view files in a browser without downloading them. With the help of our social network, you can also open, edit and save documents from all office programs at once without entering the system itself, "says Plunov.

Import substitution

Import substitution is certainly one of the most discussed trends, which also affects the EDMSECM market/systems.

Speaking about import substitution, Docsvision, for example, notes a more active interest of customers in domestic systems in the context of ECM functionality, in particular, an increase in the requirements for scalability and support of cross-platform solutions.

Oleg Pashinin, director of ECM practice AT Consulting, due to the growth of the dollar exchange rate and an increased trend towards import substitution, there is a decrease in demand for ECM platforms of the world's leading manufacturers.

Alexander Nevinchany from Korus Consulting says that thanks to the import substitution policy, many state organizations, including large state corporations, now choose Russian developments as an ECM platform, even if they previously worked with Western systems.

Viktor Weinstein, General Director of Logia Business (AiTi Group of Companies), believes that the regulatory design of the import substitution trend in IT in the form of a register of Russian software had a great impact on the market.

After all, the presence or absence of the company's products in the register of Russian software has become a serious market differentiator. If the company does not have its own products at all. tenders. So the register and its presence in the tender documentation serves as both a barrier and a business driver for those IT companies that have their own products included in the register. That is, as already mentioned, a market differentiator, says Weinstein.

You can find out more about the impact of the import movement process on the Russian EDMS/ESM market here.

Penetration of BPM ideas into EDMS

Another trend is associated with penetration into EDMS ideas and techniques, BPM for example, case management functionality. More and more new standards are emerging in this area. For example, BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) notation is already practically defacto supported by different platforms, especially new systems. As for CMMN (Case Management Model and Notation), so far it has not received such a latitude, but it is slowly penetrating systems almost on a par with DMN (Decision management notification). This, in particular, says Sergey Plunov, head of BPM ECM and CROC.

According to him, CROC is developing its new version of the Corporate Electronic Document Management System (KSED 3.0) using all these standards.

"This version of the system is a completely Russian product, which is based on the experience and experience of the CROC in the field of building large automated systems, and can be used by Russian state customers for the purpose of import substitution," says Plunov.

Vladimir Andreev, President of Docsvision, notes that the main typical tasks of EDMS in Russian realities are automation of documentation management processes and various coordination processes in most organizations have already been closed, so EDMS go beyond the boundaries of traditional tasks. First of all, it is the automation of various administrative processes outside the Pig Trap Area. "In this direction, more flexible systems for configuring and automating processes are required from the EDMS, for example, the presence of a BPM subsystem," the president of Docsvision believes.

Strengthen OpenText

A number of experts notice the strengthening of the position ECM of the platform. OpenText So, according to the Alexandra Bader director of the company's ECM department, TerraLink in the ECM market there is a noticeable increase in the recognition of OpenText as a supplier of industrial solutions, as well as OpenText's unconditional dominance in the market for business document management systems in the context of use. SAP ERP

On the other hand, the TerraLink representative notes a decrease in Dell the authority/and EMC Documentum demand for it, which reflects the global trend in the field of mutual positioning of these systems. All this culminated in the logical acquisition of Documentum by OpenText. Although this fact took a lot of people by surprise, including OpenText partners, notes Alexander Bader.

Oleg Pashinin, director of ECM practice AT Consulting, also talks about strengthening the position of the OpenText ECM platform in relation to the Documentum and IBM FileNet platforms.

EDS mobilization

The current trend, of course, is mobility. EDMS systems should provide not only operational access to data, but also the ability to work with documents at any time and without the need to be in the office. Mobile access to the system allows you to optimize the internal business processes of the company, providing, for example, the opportunity to familiarize yourself with documents through a phone or tablet.

"Gadgets will soon become the main tool for accessing corporate content, so the trend towards mobility will only intensify," believes Alexander Nevinchany, director of the portal solutions department at Korus Consulting Group.

Artem Andreev, a leading designer of corporate mobile applications at EOS, notes the fairly high demand for mobile solutions in government agencies and in large commercial companies, where the systematic development and expansion of EDMS/ESM systems is underway. Such customers not only buy boxed solutions, but also order specialized mobile applications.

The middle commercial segment is now rather eyeing mobile applications from the position of acquisition next year.

If we talk about the portrait of consumers, then mobile applications have been used for a long time not just by managers, but also by medium management, and ordinary employees. This predetermines more dynamic demand and rapid development of functionality.

Now we see the development of mobile applications in our market in two directions: increasing functionality in the field of document management (for example, full-text search throughout the database, viewing related documents, etc.) and new functional modules that will be designed to optimize work in the field of meeting management, monitor the control of the performing discipline (analytics), subscribe to news channels, etc. Thus, we are already talking about a kind of control panel that accumulates various information and allows you to work with it in different sections. For example, some government agencies would like to have a news block within our mobile application in order to immediately create initiative instructions for some especially important news. Or, for example, see your instructions in the calendar along with other events and meetings, which will allow the user to effectively manage his time, "says Artem Andreev.

At the same time, various organizations have different dynamics of the spread of such mobilization. If in some - the mobile version of the document management system is must-have, then in others on the contrary - internal corporate information security policies to some extent still prevent the introduction of the mobile version of the EDMS. Although according to experts, there are no restrictions on the technical side.

Tools have already appeared that allow you to encrypt data on mobile devices, or store the electronic signature key on a special device that can be connected to a smartphone or tablet in a safe way, "explains Sergey Plaunov from CROC.

Legally relevant document flow

An important trend is the transition to a completely paperless document flow, especially in terms of financial legally significant documents.

According to Ruslan Shakirov, CEO of MayTek, this trend is actively supported at the legislative level and many companies are already using it in their work, understanding the effectiveness and feeling real cost savings.

Our company is no exception. By our own example, we show potential and current partners the advantage of working with legally significant documents (contracts, acts, invoices, etc.) in electronic form, using enhanced EP and support our views with real performance indicators, says Shakirov.

Oleg Nazarko, Head of the SYNTHELLECT Development and Implementation Team, Chief Architect of the TESSA EDMS, adds that the request for legally significant electronic document management is already present in almost every project, however, it is really relevant, implemented and used, unlike the situation 3-5 years earlier, when presales actively asked about EDS and legal significance, but as a rule, this was not used in real activities.

Alexander Nevinchany also speaks about the relevance of this trend. According to his observations, more and more clients, realizing that there is a legal framework for using the SZDO, recognize the effectiveness of this decision and move or plan to switch to the SZDO.

Alexander Bader from TerraLink notes the expansion of the scope of inter-corporate legally significant document management.

"Smart Systems"

The information market requires modern systems to be "smart," they must independently determine the essence of the problem and solve it in a matter of seconds, that is, in fact, have artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence, based on its "experience" and the principle of self-learning, should help the manager make the right management decisions.

According to Ruslan Shakirov, "smart systems" − the key direction of the development of the IT industry in the near future.

Let's take the situation with the incoming document. Classically, the letters go to the clerk or secretary, who previews them, registers them and sends them to the manager for consideration. Further, the manager issues a resolution and forms an order to the contractor/s. Several people are involved in the work and a lot of manual work, - says Shakirov. - "Smart" EDMS will reduce part of the links, for example, close a number of functions of secretaries and speed up the routine of operations.

How does it work? When receiving an email, the "smart" EDMS itself analyzes the document, registers, forms a resolution and sends it to the executor. The manager is connected only at the stage of issuing resolutions, and the work of the secretaries is completely excluded.

"Or another example is the procedure for agreeing on a contract document. In the target model, the system itself must conduct an initial legal examination of the content of the document, that is, subtract and "understand" the text, intellectually process it and issue recommendations to the expert lawyer. The same with accounting expertise, financial and so on, - explains the general director of MayTek. "We understand that such technologies are the future and are already actively developing a new solution that will organically close all customer needs for smart ECM, ERP and other similar systems.

Creating Full Electronic Archives

Among other trends that experts of the Russian EDMS market talk about, the process of creating full-fledged electronic archives is mentioned. This, in particular, says Elena Ivanova, head of marketing at EOS. According to her observations, large companies have accumulated large volumes of electronic documents and now they need to be stored correctly.

Replacement of outdated EDMS

The replacement of old electronic document management systems also remains relevant. Companies continue to replace outdated platforms and early versions of EDMS from Russian manufacturers.

Large and fast-growing companies are investing in IT in order to optimize costs, replace outdated systems in the wake of the global transition of business to the digital environment, - said Svetlin Savov, Development Director of FTS Russia.

Oleg Nazarko from the company "SYNTHELLECT" calls the replacement of previously introduced systems one of the main trends of recent times.

It is substitution in general, and not just import substitution. The market is increasingly showing not only replacements of Western outdated technologies, like Lotus, but also, for example, quite often quite domestic, quite modern (early and mid-2000s) platforms are replaced, which no longer meet modern expectations, says Nazarko.

2014-2015: Top Trends

Import substitution

One of the most popular trends regarding both EDMS/ESM and other types of corporate software is import substitution. It is possible or impossible to replace foreign decisions with domestic ones, and whether it is worth doing it or not, many say now, but there is no unequivocal opinion here. In any case, legislative initiatives will speed up the process of replacing foreign solutions in the public sector, while the financial component will play a large role in the commercial sector. The fall in the exchange rate ruble made foreign systems more expensive, so when introducing new solutions, customers will pay even more attention to Russian developments, as well as to software solutions.

The opinions of the participants of the EDMS/ECM market on import substitution were divided. Some companies have not yet noticed the manifestation of this trend. A number of companies believe that such replacements are not possible due to the large technological gap between solutions or due to the loss of investment that has already been invested in the initially implemented system. Some companies positively assess the new trend, believing that domestic solutions can replace foreign ones and increase their share.

For example, Tatyana Milyaeva, Deputy Director of ECM Practice AT Consulting (ATI Consulting Group), believes that in connection with the import substitution law, there is a chance that Russian EDMS/ESM solutions will begin to actively develop and become worthy rivals for foreign systems that have taken a strong position in large Russian companies thanks to functional and high-performance capabilities.

"In turn, this will entail changes in foreign platforms - they will be forced to look for ways to reduce value without reducing quality and become more flexible in order to remain on the Russian market," adds Milyaeva.

Andrey Chernogorov, CEO of Cognitive Technologies, notes that in the context of import substitution and the task of additionally ensuring the information security of his company from external influences, great attention is now focused on open source mobile applications and with fully domestic components.

"In the EDMS segment today, Western solutions of companies are EMC IBM SAP being successfully replaced with Russian products from Cognitive (" Ye1 Euphrates")," "and 1C". " And Docsvision Western mobile business applications Google of the Keep, Slack, Trello and Basecamp level are on "," Megaplan Ye1 and "Plan-Fix." The described trend within the business application market is also supported by a nationwide agenda, "says the CEO of Cognitive Technologies.

The same position is held by the Sergey Plaunov BPM head of the department/ECM of the company "." CROC In his opinion, state policy aimed at import substitution has led to additional demand for Russian EDMS tools, as well as open source solutions.

"In particular, automation of document flow is possible using solutions based on open-source products Alfresco and JBoss, as well as using" purely "domestic developments such as Directum, DocsVision, etc. We use these solutions in our projects. For example, on the basis of the Alfresco ECM platform, we implemented a project for a government agency, with about 250 people using the system. In addition, we are developing our own corporate electronic document management system "CROC" based on open-source technologies. Such a software solution can also become an option for import substitution, Plunov believes.

This trend is also noticed at Haulmont.

"The trend of" import substitution "is really becoming more and more tangible in the EDMS market. More and more of our customers pay attention to the fact that the THESIS system is a completely Russian product created on the Russian platform by a Russian developer company. Customers are especially interested in open source, the ability to run the system on software, independence from third-party commercial software (DBMS and server OS), "says Alexander Nazarov, head of sales at Haulmont.

Dmitry Shmailov, head of the ECM department of ELAR Corporation, also speaks about SPO and competitive domestic products.

"Russian companies support the promotion of import substitution, use SPO for development, etc. Mature suppliers of the domestic market who have been successfully working on this field for 15-20 years have experience, are in constant dialogue with the customer, create their own ECM solutions. These decisions, in particular, are not inferior to Western counterparts in terms of scaling capabilities for the implementation of projects in large holding structures, "the ELAR representative said.

Softline notes an increase in the number of requests for replacing foreign solutions in the public sector.

"In the

public sector, there is an increase in the number of requests for migration from previously implemented systems to domestic and SPO platforms," says Tatyana Povolotskaya, Director of Business Solutions and Custom Development at Softline.

Dmitry Novikov, technical director of Novacom (part of Softline Group of Companies), adds that import substitution is dictated by both economic factors - the growth of the dollar and euro, and technological ones - the maturity of Russian EDMS systems already allows us to fight Western counterparts on equal terms.

Alexander Nevinchany, head of the department of basic technologies at Microsoft, KORUS Consulting Group of Companies, also says that the increase in prices for foreign software against the background of a political course towards replacing imports has already led to the migration of some organizations from the public sector to domestic analogues of EDMS. However, in his opinion, it is impossible to completely replace the infrastructure with domestic vendors, but increasingly the state customer is considering the possibility of purchasing software products developed by Russian developers based on open source system software.

The fact that import substitution already affects the market of EDMS/ESM systems is also said in the development companies of domestic electronic document management systems Docsvision, EOS and DIRECTUM.

"Yes, import substitution policy has begun to affect the market. But expected, first of all, and mainly on the public sector. Commercial companies are not yet in such a volume that this is already a trend. The public sector is actively showing interest and is looking for solutions. But until the exact list of software manufacturers is determined, the situation is not entirely clear and the market is waiting for clearer information and explanations from the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications. So far, the question of the list of OS and DBMS recommended at the state level is open. If a list of server and client platforms recommended for implementation as part of import substitution is finally formed, we are ready to prepare the appropriate releases of our systems as soon as possible.
The architecture of our EDMS is initially such that it allows porting to other DBMSs as soon as possible. Moreover, our company has experience in porting, as well as experience in migrating from other systems to EOS solutions. To date, more than 100 customers have switched from other EDMS to our products, while about 40 companies have switched from Western EDMS platforms (Documentum, Alfresco, Lotus), "says Elena Ivanova, EOS Marketing Director.

According to Vasily Babintsev, Director of Marketing at DIRECTUM, import substitution is a reason to think about developing the quality of products and services in the long term.

"For example, the electronic document management market in our country has been in active development for more than 20 years. Domestic solutions during this time reached a high level of quality. And the topic of import substitution has become only a catalyst for the natural attention of customers to updating application systems built on Western platforms to domestic ones, "Babintsev said

.

Vladimir Andreev, president of Docsvision, adds that the import substitution process is difficult, long and costly, but this trend will not fade away.

The SoftBalance company notes that the term "import substitution" has become so popular that even some well-known Western brands are starting to say that they are actually Russian.

"It is important

to understand that the functionality of Russian and Western systems is very similar. Accordingly, the selection of the product is usually carried out according to the same criteria as before: 1. Functionality, 2. Customizable for your own business processes, 3. Cost of licenses and support, 4. Cost of implementation, 5. Availability of specialists in the market.
If the company faced a choice between "equal" products of Russian and Western production, then "import substitution" can arouse feelings of patriotism and tip the scales in favor of the Russian developer. If we talk about the public sector, then here patriotic rhetoric is observed to a greater extent. And the manufacturer's country can become a limiting criterion for participation in the tender, "according to SoftBalance.

Development Director of ECM TerraLink Alexander Bader believes that in many cases, Russian solutions can be much more useful to customers, especially if they take into account the peculiarities of Russian legislation and industry regulation. At the same time, in his opinion, understanding the habits and thinking of customers is a very important factor in the success of any product.

"As for the total and global replacement of Western Russian solutions, a full-fledged replacement of either short-term or medium-term solutions does not seem real to me, due to the large technological gap between these solutions.
Alas, while still large customers will continue to focus on industrial Western solutions. Or maybe you should not especially grieve about this? Isolationism has never brought real benefits to anyone, "says Alexander Bader

.

According to Vadim Ipatov, Deputy General Director of InterTrust for Business Development, at the moment the call for import substitution has remained a call - customers are in no hurry to switch to Russian software, and this applies not only to EDMS/ECM, a similar situation with all corporate software.

"As for the possibility of replacing foreign solutions with Russian ones, the principal answer is yes, it is possible. But here the question arises, what solutions can be considered Russian?
The term "import substitution" itself is not entirely correct, but since it has taken root in the market, they will have to operate. Developers in any country in the world use some common tools - be it Java, GWT or other development tools. And whatever such software is free or proprietary, it is not Russian in any case. Therefore, strictly speaking, no 100% "Russian" solutions exist in principle - neither in the EDMS/ECM sector, nor in any other IT sector. In this sense, there are no completely "American" or "European" solutions. But there are American and European vendors that produce proprietary software. With their systems, a number of customers may have, and some have already had certain problems - in the form of refusing to support existing solutions or selling new licenses.
If we are talking about this risk, then yes - Russian EDMS/ESM developers can certainly eliminate it, provided that their applied software product is developed without the use of proprietary foreign software. That is, if a domestic developer creates its own solutions based on Microsoft SQL, then the risk remains - the application part there is really Russian, but licenses from a foreign manufacturer will still have to be purchased. This means that the customer will remain dependent on the licensing, technological and pricing policy of the foreign vendor. It's natural. There is a second option - the development of Russian EDMS/ESM solutions based on SPO and open standards. There is not the same licensed component. But in this case, it is logical to talk not about import substitution, but about import independence - independence from a specific vendor, "says Vadim Ipatov

.

According to him, the real state of affairs today is such that most customers who have already implemented EDMS do not want to change it. And the point here is not in Russian software.

"Can you imagine that, say, a large bank, whose Oracle DBMS has been a corporate standard for many years, suddenly took and simultaneously switched to PostgreSQL? This is the loss of investment, the loss of competencies, the need to develop new ones "from scratch," etc. But the main risk arises for the continuity of business processes, and this is money - the opportunity to earn it and remain competitive. The situation with the EDMS is similar - they refuse the existing systems not at the call of the state, but if something in them does not fundamentally suit the customer. And not in favor of Russian developments, but in favor of the system that more closely meets the requirements of this customer, "- said the deputy general director of InterTrust.

Speaking about the topic of import substitution, the general director of Logic of Business Viktor Weinstein spoke about discussions on the development of criteria for determining domestic software.

"At first it went in a constructive direction, but now a struggle has begun: some lobby for open source, others propose to limit themselves only to the requirement that the main profit from the sale of the program remain in the country. This is an important issue that will have a significant impact on the market, since starting from January 1, 2016, the law will oblige state customers to justify their choice of software in favor of foreign software if Russian analogues are present in a specially created register of domestic software. Such state support will have a beneficial effect on the activities of Logic of Business, "notes Viktor Weinstein

.

Scale or re-implement systems

Another trend of the Russian EDMSECM market/is associated with the scaling of already implemented systems or their replacement with new ones. Customers need new functionality, such as analytical or mobile capabilities, and the ability to automate new tasks.

Dmitry Shushkin, Deputy General Director of ABBYY Russia, believes that the need to scale or re-implement systems arises for most companies that have already implemented EDMS.

"This trend is dictated by the fact that companies need to use additional functionality of systems. Customers are interested not only in EDMS and ECM systems in the classic form, the need for data analytics and mobile access is clearly visible, "Shushkin believes

.

Vladimir Andreev, president of Docsvision, adheres to a similar point of view.

"Analysts today unanimously note the transition of the EDMS/ECM market in Russia to the stage of consolidation. The primary demand for systems of this class is already satisfied today, and in companies in which projects for the implementation of EDMS have already been implemented, new tasks are being scaled up and automated, including automation of specific business processes, paperless document flow with counterparties, automation of common management tasks, situational management, automation of cases and micro-projects, as well as increased personal productivity. If the task of contractual document management is already sufficiently automated, then departments such as legal services, procurement departments and other specialized services are currently actively automating their document management. The management culture of customers is growing - more and more projects are associated with migration from the "old" EDMS to the new one. Projects are becoming more typical and less risky, especially for systems already well known in the market, "says Andreev

.

The needs of customers in replacing old systems are also seen by Letograf CEO Gleb Lukin:

"Currently, the situation in the electronic document management systems market is quite stable. Most customers have already installed some kind of EDMS, most often their choice was made many years ago. Now we see a growing need to replace these systems. "

Vasily Babintsev, director of marketing at DIRECTUM, also sees a similar trend.

"Now customers are faced with a choice: develop solutions based on the capabilities of current systems or switch to a new one. For example, in terms of scalability, many "old" solutions remain niche, and cannot support the work of several thousand simultaneously working users. Or not so flexible, and cannot cover new business tasks, "says a DIRECTUM representative

.

Elena Ivanova, Marketing Director, also speaks about the needs for expanding the functionality of systems. EOS

"Now there is a process of rather not increasing the number of users and workplaces, if we talk about ECM, but - processes of high-quality use and expansion of functionality. I.e. customers strive to use all the functionality of the system and buy options. For example, such as scanning, EP. I.e. processes are underway to optimize the costs and costs of documentary support of the organization's activities, "says the EOS Marketing Director

.

The general director of Logic of Business Viktor Weinstein agrees with her:

"Now there is a change in the generations of systems being implemented: the previous systems are complemented by new functions that were not previously in them, and the general direction of development is ECM (enterprise content management) functionality."

Vadim Ipatov, Deputy General Director of InterTrust for Business Development, adds:

"We see that customers who already have a EDMS/ECM solution in their fleet of systems are interested in automating related business processes, especially if these processes affect the organization's ability to make money or save money."

Intuitive interfaces

Electronic document management systems cease to be systems only for clerks who register incoming and outgoing correspondence of the organization. Increasingly, EDMS/ECM systems provide a single information space for all structural units, allowing you to quickly exchange information, make decisions and coordinate vital documents for the company with employees located throughout the country and abroad in a short time. And since not only office workers work in the EDMS, the requirements for systems are changing. Customers need simple and easy-to-understand interfaces that allow anyone in the organization to work in the system.

"Increasingly, EDMS solutions want to be similar to social networks - that is, simplicity and convenience in working, so that any employee can use the system without problems, quickly pouring into the workflow without additional training. Therefore, one of the trends in the Russian EDMS/ESM market will be beautiful and intuitive interfaces, "said Tatyana Milyaeva, Deputy Director of ECM Practice AT Consulting (ATI Consulting Group).

Gleb Lukin, General Director of Letograf, adds that EDMS is most often required to have the most convenient interface, allows computers and laptops to display maximum information on the screen, and on mobile devices show the most important information, thereby minimizing the number of clicks in both cases to access the required system functions, and wherein the mobile version must provide all EDMS functions without limiting the user's capabilities.

Mobility

Mobility has been among the main trends in the market for several years. Modern EDMS/ESM systems should provide the ability to work with documents anywhere and at any time without reference to the workplace and device, so mobile access applications today are an important addition to the system.

"Mobile access will increase the efficiency of not only ordinary personnel and line managers of divisions, but also top management. It will also allow management to control all processes in the organization online, "explains Georgy Ivanov, head of the First BIT - Paveletskaya project office.

According to representatives of the SoftBalance company, in recent years, all serious EDMS have offered users mobile applications that allow users to work in the system from anywhere in the world.

Andrey Chernogorov, CEO of Cognitive Technologies, adds that technologies used in modern mobile clients for corporate EDMS are increasingly borrowing from the user product environment, and then adapting to their own way.

Vladimir Andreev, President of Docsvision, believes that mobile interfaces are finally realized by the market: customers understand what they are needed for and what they should do in real practice.

Alexander Nazarov, head of sales at Haulmont, also speaks about the demand for mobile interfaces.

"Mobile versions of EDMS are now used not only by company leaders: each employee has his own tablet or at least a smartphone, and it is convenient for them to quickly set and perform tasks, familiarize themselves with documents and make decisions online through a mobile interface. "General mobilization" has long passed. Therefore, we have reduced prices for the mobile version of the THESIS system Document and Task Management System by 4 times, "Nazarov says

.

Customers today perceive the use of mobile devices in EDMS as a mandatory element of the system that does not require special development and adaptation, says Viktor Weinstein, CEO of Business Logic.

"We are developing the mobility function in our solutions in two directions: mobility friendly, which implies the same convenience of working in the system both on desktops and through mobile gadgets. Basically, this comes down to the transition to adaptive design in applications. The second direction is associated with the possibility of deep customization of mobile solutions: we attract partners who integrate our solutions into all common mobile platforms, taking into account the requirements of a particular customer, "adds Weinstein

.

An interesting feature is noticed by Elena Ivanova, marketing director. EOS According to her, today customers are increasingly choosing first mobile applications, and then the system itself. ECM

Dmitry Shushkin, Deputy General Director of ABBYY Russia, believes that soon the mobile device will become the main tool for accessing corporate content.

"There

are more personal mobile devices than computers in the world, so this trend will only intensify. Everything goes to the fact that in the near future the main tool for accessing corporate content will be a tablet, smartphone or combination of one with another. The corresponding software solutions that help to implement this in practice are already on the market, "says Shushkin

.

DIRECTUM Marketing Director Vasily Babintsev notes that along with the change in the generation of users, the traditional understanding of the workspace is changing from "computer + room" to "computer only."

"Mobility becomes the norm of time, and a paper document becomes archaism. People get used to consuming content from smartphones and tablets, and creating content from more mobile laptops. They are increasingly using mobile Internet (even for our long country this is not a problem), "says a DIRECTUM representative

.

EDMS flexibility

Another trend in the Russian EDMS/ECM market is system flexibility. If earlier everything was strictly regulated and did not change for years, now electronic document management systems must provide the opportunity to modify following the requirements of the law and keep up with the rapidly changing business requirements.

"SEDs can no longer remain hulking, hard-to-change systems. They are expected to be flexible and able to adjust. EDMS/ESM systems that allow you to quickly rebuild processes without additional improvements, turn on the necessary and turn off unnecessary functionality, are becoming more and more popular and will actively develop, "said Tatyana Milyaeva, Deputy Director of ECM Practice AT Consulting

.

Integration with other systems

The work of the EDMS is inextricably linked with business activities, therefore, the issue of integration is an important aspect. It is convenient for the user to work in a single information space. Accordingly, the main market players offer various mechanisms for seamless integration.

"For example, seamless integration" 1C:ERP. Enterprise Management 2.0 "and" 1C: Document Flow 8 KORP "are implemented using special services. This approach allows you to optimize licensing costs and not lose performance, "- noted in SoftBalance.

Georgy Ivanov, head of the project office "First BIT - Paveletskaya," adds that only with a seamless combination of the entire software infrastructure, the organization receives the maximum return in improving efficiency when using EDMS/ECM.

According to Dmitry Shushkin, Deputy General Director of ABBYY Russia, in recent years there has been an increase in interest in integrating traditional EDMS with BPM solutions, intelligent search systems and business analytics.

Cloud EDMS/ECM

The difficult economic situation in the country forces customers to look for ways to save money. And in this regard, cloud/-systems EDMSECM will come in handy. It is more cost-effective to place and protect the system in the cloud than to ensure security and compliance with legislation at each installation.

Vladimir Andreev, President of Docsvision, notes that the EDMS cloud market in Russia has started and there are sales on it.

"According to our estimates, it will take three years for the EDMS clouds to occupy 20-30% of the market. During these years, cloud products will be planned and unprofitable for suppliers, these solutions will be in demand by small and medium-sized enterprises, cloud tariffs are initially low, and in order to reach profitability, mass sales will be needed, "explains Andreev

.

Vasily Babintsev, director of marketing at DIRECTUM, also believes that cloud EDMS will be of interest to SMB companies.

"They (" clouds, "note TAdviser) allow small and medium-sized businesses that do not have the opportunity to make one-time serious investments in the IT infrastructure and their powerful IT staff to quickly start introducing a scalable electronic document management system," says Babintsev

.

The growing trend in the use of cloud electronic document management systems is noticed by Alexander Nevinchany, head of the department of basic technologies at Microsoft Corus Consulting Group. According to him, trends in mobility and business continuity play an important role in choosing cloud EDMS .

Gleb Lukin, General Director of Letograf, also sees an increase in demand for Solution SaaS. According to him, the future lies with applications that fully provide work with documents in the cloud.

"And an even greater advantage will be for suppliers providing a customizable cloud (in fact, a virtual machine on which the organization's EDMS is built in full accordance with the requirements of business processes)," the CEO of Letograf believes.

Automation of procurement based on EDMS/ECM

Automation of procurement activities on the EDMSECM basis/is in demand in large companies with a large share of state participation and in authorities. These are those organizations that conduct purchases in accordance with federal laws No. 223-FZ and No. 44-FZ, but private large businesses are also interested in such software solutions.

According to Vadim Ipatov, Deputy General Director of InterTrust for Business Development, the reasons for interest are obvious, because optimization of procurement processes is a direct way to save money in an economic downturn.

"At the same time, procurement activities are, on the one hand, a large amount of documents (internal applications, tender documents, contracts, etc.), and on the other hand, the need for the joint work of several departments, many users of different professional specializations. And almost all these users, including senior management, lawyers, the finance department and procurement experts, one way or another already work in the EDMS/ECM. Therefore, EDMS/ECM is a reasonable choice to optimize procurement processes. "

"Procurement automation is a manifestation of the overall trend for combining content and related processes. EDMS/ECM allows you to solve such problems in several ways. Most systems in this class have built-in BPM engines, but there are also alternative process control technologies. One is adaptive case management (ACM). This approach combines content and dynamically changing processes - those in which exceptions are often found and adaptation is necessary "on the fly." Instead of giving responsibility for developing the process to a business analyst who models and tests the process before executing it, ACM allows qualified employees to create the process themselves and execute it at the same time. In ACM, there is virtually no separation between development and execution of the process, and this is one of its advantages - you do not need to spend months launching. There is a place for events and rules, as in traditional BPM, but ACM gives decision-making to those who really should make them - business people, not IT professionals. For the case, - and this can be a purchase, and the provision of public services, and the issuance of a corporate loan - the necessary environment is created in the EDMS/ECM. This environment combines content storage, teamwork, timelines and checklists - what is needed to solve complex, often cross-functional problems. In 2014-2015, our company carried out the first projects using ACM tools, and we look forward to further development in this direction - there is interest in ACM in several industries, including the banking sector, authorities and construction companies, "adds Vadim Ipatov

.

Andrey Chernogorov, CEO of Cognitive Technologies, notes that with five million electronic procurement procedures a year, Russia has become the only country in the world with such a high level of development of online tenders.

"In the

country following us in this indicator, the UK, the result is only about hundreds of thousands of procedures annually. And this is the point of growth that will give the mobile business application market an impetus for development in subsequent years. A niche that requires active development is mobile applications for assisting procurement procedures. Some of the existing mobile developments will be adapted and exist, as it were, at the junction of two consumer groups - users of mobile EDMS clients and users of complexes of procurement management systems of the company, "says Chernogorov

.

Analytics

The trend of the last two years can also be considered the use of analytical tools - built-in EDMSECM in/or external. Perhaps this is also because during downturns, many companies begin to look for tools to identify bottlenecks, minimize risks and improve efficiency.

"The simplest example is the analysis of the performing discipline in the process of processing client requests, which in many companies are registered in the EDMS. Systems of the EDMS/ESM class are often used to process client requests in various areas of business - from construction orders to processing loan applications in banks. This is an area of ​ ​ business interests, where the degree of satisfaction and loyalty of consumers, and therefore the competitiveness of the company, directly depends on the executive discipline of employees. In addition, such analytics are used to improve the motivation system. The speed and quality of processing client requests are the indicators to which, as a rule, the bonus system is tied. The tools for solving this problem are already in the basic functionality of the modern EDMS/ESM, "says Vadim Ipatov, deputy general director of InterTrust.

According to him, for a deeper immersion in corporate content, the built-in capabilities of the system may not be enough. There is a large selection of BI class systems that can be integrated with EDMS/ECM.

"In medium and large organizations, such systems are already widely used, which means that we are not talking about their implementation" from scratch. " One example of more advanced analytics is a comprehensive control of the timing of the approval of financial and contractual documentation. Time control directly affects the profitability of companies. In-depth analytics allows you to identify the causes of delay, identify those responsible and in the future avoid difficulties in the movement of funds, and therefore direct financial costs, "explains Ipatov

.

Dmitry Shushkin, Deputy General Director of ABBYY Russia, adds that integration with BI modules is especially promising, because the EDMS contains a huge amount of information, and for the most part - unstructured. Therefore, systems with business intelligence modules that can work with unstructured content today come to the fore.

SPO and open source

Another trend is the growing popularity of SPO-based solutions. Despite the fact that a fairly large number of companies use or plan to use such solutions, the market lacks full-fledged "open" systems that can be used without significant improvements.

Sergey Plunov, Head BPMECM of Department/Company, "" CROC comments on this trend:

"Customers have begun to pay less attention to the brand, strive to get a quick economic effect and appreciate those suppliers that have already proven themselves in the market, have several successful implementations."

The trend of the transition to open source is partly related to another trend - import substitution. However, this "bundle" manifests itself more in the public sector, where there is a need to relieve dependence on a particular foreign vendor.

The problems of switching to SPO are primarily associated with the lack of the necessary number of qualified specialists who can deal with such solutions. In addition, there is a lack of established practices on open source solutions in the market.

According to Viktor Weinstein, CEO of Business Logic, there is no fundamental difference between proprietary products and open source systems.

"The code is really open only when the customer has a repository in the public domain, development tools and established contact with the developer community. All this together. Otherwise, there is no point in open source. For the use of open source software to be effective, first of all, it is necessary to have a community formed around it, with which the customer can actively interact. If the customer receives the source code and begins to make changes to it privately, then support and support of the system is under threat: an inexperienced owner of the code can cause damage that no one will prevent. But there is another side that complements the developer community - a fairly large user community. Otherwise, the SPO solution will not receive financial support for development. There is also a general principle: the availability of source code is a guarantee of customer peace of mind in case of force majeure. For this reason, we are actively promoting the Alfresco system, the development community of which adheres to this paradigm, "says the CEO of Business Logic

Letograf CEO Gleb Lukin notes that many organizations are now seriously thinking about using open source software. However, in his opinion, applied commercial solutions have a number of advantages.

"Applied commercial solutions still have an undoubted advantage - they incorporate the experience, competencies and unique developments accumulated by the developer during the implementation of projects, while individual application systems developed on open source software do not become available to the community and, thus, do not contribute to the gradual development of the solution. In fact, in choosing open source or commercial software, it all comes down to the issue of initial costs and the availability of mandatory paid technical support when operating the system, "explains Lukin.

Alexander Nazarov, Head of Sales at Haulmont, spoke about the open code of SADTEZIS Document and Task Management System.

"Open source is one of the advantages of our EDMS, which is quite in demand today. We transfer to customers all the sources of the document management system, we do not have a closed kernel, the system has a completely open source code - in fact, like the platform on which it is based. Therefore, on the one hand, you can always see what is inside, and on the other hand, develop the system in-house, or involve other integrators or developers to modify your system, "Nazarov says

.

Stand-alone ECM-based solutions

The market is in demand for independent solutions based on ECM to fulfill tasks related to document management, since there is only more content every year.

"The systems allow you to organize paperless work, at least within the organization, and issue paper only to the outside. Without the implementation of ECM, it is problematic, for example, the creation of Joint Service Centers (CSCs), which provide an opportunity to reduce labor costs, reduce the cost of documenting support for the organization's activities, and optimize the staff. Effectively used ECMs imply a qualitative change in the very approach to implementation: more and more often we are not talking about the automation of previously existing processes, but about the implementation of full-fledged projects with reengineering of the organization's structural activities, "said Dmitry Shmailov, Head of ECM at ELAR Corporation.

Another question is how are such projects implemented in the context of significant budgetary limitations of the project, the need for rapid integration with the customer's information systems and the start of entering documents into the systems in a very short time?

"When creating a CSC, when the most urgent task is to maximize the acceleration of document processing processes, the" fast start "technology is used. It is based on the maximum use of previously developed software code and the practice of implementing similar projects. The concept of "quick start" is similar to automating the processing of primary accounting documents with integration with the accounting system (1C ). ELAR used this technology when introducing SEA in the PhosAgro SSC: in 1.5 months the basic functionality of the system was implemented, initial training was carried out and documents were entered into the electronic archive. Thanks to this, the stage of stabilization of the CCR of the PhosAgro group was completed in four months. As a rule, such projects last up to a year and a half, "adds Shmailov.

High qualification of the customer

Some market participants among the main trends also name the advanced training of customers who are already well versed in systems and know what they really need.

Docsvision President Vladimir Andreev, in particular, notes that the EDMS market in Russia is at a stage of such maturity when the "qualification" of the customer himself is high: he understands well what he needs and what it costs.

"A big role is played by the customer's readiness in terms of management culture - how formalized the types of documents are, whether there are stable regulations for working with them, whether they are described," says Andreev.

Dmitry Shmailov, head of the ECM department of ELAR Corporation, adds that it is from customers, and not from system developers or market theorists today that the main directions in the development of the EDMS/ECM market depend.

"The customer wants, firstly, to solve quite practical problems, and not be in a certain abstract" trend, "and secondly, he is quite well versed in the capabilities of the systems," explains the representative of ELAR

.

2013-2014: Top Trends

Automation Outside the Office

Participants in the Russian EDMSECM market/note that the market continues to shift customer interest from clearly formalized management document management processes (which, to one extent or another, are automated in most large companies) to supporting new processes that were not previously automated and not well regulated.

As Sergey Sofronov, an expert at Parma-Telecom (ITPS), explained, this includes such areas as joint work with expert documents from various functional disciplines (Collaboration); mass exchange and coordination of documents with the organizations-designers (Transmittal management); Exchange of information between various capital construction projects (Interface management). As well as document management as project results (Deliverables management) and the process of processing project documentation "As Built" at the time of delivery of the built object and organization of integration of accumulated documentation with the operation support system (EAM).

In addition to the above-mentioned project document management tools to support capital construction projects, there is clearly an increase in interest in documentation support for production and management processes, the automation of which traditionally belongs to the field of ERP systems. In particular, this is the processing of operational and design documentation in the context of production facilities in operation processes, or, for example, a more common document flow in the field of primary accounting documentation (incoming certificates and invoices).

Developing ECM-Based Business Applications

Direction Development Director, ECM TerraLink Member of the Docflow Expert Council Alexander Bader , as a significant trend, notes the continued development of business applications based on ECM technologies. These are those applications that are currently being developed directly in order to increase business efficiency: management of supplier account processing, automation of contractual work, management of design estimates and executive documentation, processes for coordinating insurance payments, credit pipelines, legally significant document management, and many, many others.

"They will be developed by improving the performance, quality, reliability and security of the software used, by strengthening integration with production transactional systems (for example, ERP for industry, ABS for banks). A prime example is SAP Business Suite by OpenText, a set of applications focused on documenting big business. We are witnessing not only sustainable constant development, but also an expansion of the composition of the applications of this package, "the expert said

.

Terralink also monitors the development of document management tools for domestic 1C, and examples from other areas - medicine, social sphere, public sector, in accordance with their possibilities for financing such innovations.

Keyes-management

Experts note that recently the concept of case management has become more and more famous and popular. Its implementation allows you to structure documents in the company, providing a holistic picture of the process or state of affairs of the client. For example, information about the counterparty using this approach is formed in the form of related blocks of letters, contracts, tasks. This approach, on the one hand, allows you to systematize and rethink the purpose of traditional EDMS functions. On the other hand, it sets a trend in the development of systems, taking into account the new level of flexibility and depth of support for the operational activities of managers and officials of most levels of management.

Oleg Beilezon, Chief ECM Architect of Business Logic, also confirms this trend. "The

implementation of collective work with information on the principles of Case Management looks quite promising: the distribution of responsibility for the result of work on several performers without a tightly structured execution route," he said.

According to the expert, a "social" approach is promising - the organization of a kind of social networks of employees intended not for entertainment, but for optimizing collective activities. These approaches will first be tested on the first bold customers, after which it will be possible to talk about industrial use scenarios.

Flexibility of interfaces

Now customers are paying more and more attention to the possibility of flexible configuration of tools for building user interfaces. The modern user is used to the simple and understandable interfaces of popular systems. Therefore, it is important to ensure the user's work in the system in the simplest and most understandable interface, counting on the minimum level of user knowledge, believes Alexey Budin, CEO of ELMA.

According to him, most Russian EDMS are still guided by the standards of yesterday - the classical office. However, the trend of organizing document management by means of business process management systems is growing, because this ensures a guaranteed full contour of working with the document.

"This approach allows you to comprehensively approach the issue of working with the document and provide a working tool for both the performer and the manager, and not only ensure the operational activities of the end performers as in the classic office. The document in the system must live, "the expert concluded

.

Electronic digital signature (EDS)

The use of digitally signed document management is also promising - this opportunity will become a necessity over time. At the moment, our legislation has not fully regulated the digital signature, but the first steps have already been taken. This opportunity is still quite expensive. For information, only in the system of state orders for July 2012, about 1 million EDS were issued, for submitting reports to the tax authorities - more than 1.5 million EDS, another approximately 500 thousand were issued to legal entities to participate in commercial tenders and for reporting to pension funds.

Mobile and Cloud Solutions

EDMS users increasingly need to be able to access correspondence, documents, regardless of location. This implies the use of not only mobile solutions, but the introduction and use of cloud data storage. Such solutions (the use of cloud technologies) are not massive at the moment, but there are trends towards an increase in interest.

There are very few projects for using cloud versions of EDMS, and mobility in conjunction with EDMS is distributed primarily through automated mobile workplaces for managers, attracting top managers to the ranks of active users of the system. "

"At the moment, the overwhelming number of managers of different levels have switched to working completely on mobile devices, and for effective data management they need a modern interface and additional functionality adapted to the" small forms "of mobile devices," commented Gleb Lukin, General Director of Letograf.

The expert will also mention cloud services that allow you to start working in EDMS very quickly, without delaying the implementation process, configuring the cloud system in accordance with your tasks. These services are ideal for small and medium-sized businesses that are not ready for serious investments in the IT infrastructure, but have long been "ripe" for the use of EDMS, he believes.

Vladimir Andreev, President of DocsVision, also believes that the need to create specialized workplaces focused on simple use cases stimulates the fact that popular EDMS functions are embedded in applications already familiar to users, such as Microsoft Outlook and other office applications, portal solutions - for example, based on Microsoft SharePoint, etc. "We

implemented the latest trend in a set of integration components, the concept of which we call Docsvision Invisible," he added

.

Electronic archives

Market participants admit that the demand for electronic archives has grown very much in recent years. This is due to the fact that in many industries there is a legislative stimulation of this process. A document in electronic form is recognized as the equivalent of an official paper document. " In addition, competition is growing, and organizations need to improve efficiency. And the presence of an electronic archive with design, financial or client documentation allows you to work more efficiently with data within the organization - both in terms of the speed of access to information, the cost of storing data, and, ultimately, improving the quality of the organization's services.

Document digitization

Vladimir Andreev believes that tools related to the translation of paper documents into electronic form are also in great demand, that is, streaming scanning and document recognition tools are traditional, but still actively used subsystems. Recently, according to him, almost 100% of projects have also used business process management tools, electronic form processing tools, specialized input and data processing interfaces, reference book management tools, reporting and other system configuration tools that allow you to create specialized applications.

Big Data and Forward-Looking Trends

Vladimir Andreev also believes that there are a number of trends on the Russian EDMS market that are actively discussed in the specialized press, but are not yet very in demand in specific projects.

These in DocsVision include support for working with large volumes of data accumulated in the EDMS (the so-called Big Data), including complex search, extraction of patterns, knowledge management tasks. Obviously, this task will become relevant a little later, when a sufficient amount of information for such analysis will accumulate in domestic systems.

The issue of situational management or support for Case-Management tasks has also been vigorously discussed recently, despite the fact that so far few end consumers have encountered this problem. So far, the consumer has the hope that with the help of the existing directive (PTA) and process (BPM) management tools, he will have to close all corporate governance tasks.

Director for Development of the Direction, ECM TerraLink member of the Docflow Expert Council Alexander Bader notes that the most popular tool is a tool for calculating the economic efficiency and payback periods of ECM systems. "Currently,

such calculations are based either on the art of an integrator, or provided by suppliers of ECM systems in the form of a ready-made standard calculator. That is, they are either exclusive or closed, "he explained.

"Thus, there is no generally recognized methodology, and the objectivity of the integrator's proposal regarding the ECM system proposed for implementation or a solution based on it is extremely difficult for the customer to assess. Such a toolkit seems to me the most in demand, and its appearance may contribute to a wider, or at least more responsible, implementation of ECM systems in the Russian market, "added Alexander Bader

.

Another topic discussed is the saturation of EDMS functions with tools for "socialization" and group interactions in the development of WEB 2.0 ideas. This is an unconditional trend, which will be all the more in demand as the tasks of corporate governance transition to a generation brought up on the use of these tools in everyday life.

2012: ECM Usage Statistics

The survey was conducted on the official website of the Docflow project, as well as among visitors to the Docflow 2012 conference-exhibition. Moscow The total number of respondents was 1,041 people from all sectors of the economy.

Number of employees in the organization
<img src="http://www.docflow.ru/images/analitycs/ecm12_1.jpg" alt="Российский рынок ECM "title =" Russian ECM Market

">

Areas of activity

Business Unit

Position held

42% are employees of large organizations, with a number of 500 to 1000 or more jobs.
25% are representatives of medium-sized businesses. The rest are related to small organizations up to 100 jobs.

At the same time, half of the respondents hold leadership positions. Of these, 47% are heads of departments, departments and 4% of respondents are heads of organizations. 44% of the survey participants are middle managers related to document management and business-relevant information.

Document flow is a strategically important element

Most companies consider document management as the basic, "framework" element of the organization's activity: improving business efficiency as the main goal EDMS of implementation/ECM, a third of respondents (30%) are allocated. In second place in the hierarchy of goals (27%) is optimization, in business processes third place is the ability to bring data into compliance with legislative and regulatory requirements (13%).

The most important business factor for choosing a solution in the field of EDMS

The importance of corporate content management for business efficiency is confirmed by the respondents' answers to the question of who is delegated responsibility for the choice and implementation of EDMS. In a third of organizations (33%), it is taken over by the first person - the director or president. In every fourth company (24%), the Chief information officer is responsible for the process, and in 14% - a specialist in the Pig Trap Area.

Person responsible for selection and implementation of EDMS

But despite the fact that in at least a third of companies the issue of choosing and implementing EDMS is considered strategically important and is managed by the first person of the company, there are still organizations where document management issues are not yet relevant to anyone (11%).

When choosing a system for solving document management problems, companies are primarily focused on usability: usability leads by a wide margin as a software choice factor (the overwhelming majority of votes were cast for ease of use of the ECM system and satisfaction with existing applications - 569).

Impact of ECM aspects on new product selection

Note that organizations are not yet clearly ready to receive EDMS/ESM from the "cloud": when choosing a system, only 35 specialists drew attention to its availability using SaaS technology. Most organizations (78%) do not use or plan to use document management systems based on cloud computing technology, such as Google Docs or MS Azure; of these, 52% of respondents do not intend to do this, and another 26% doubt that they will ever resort to them.

Using "Cloud Technology"

And

CMIS technologies (a package of standards offered by leading manufacturers, consisting of a set of web services for sharing information stored in unrelated content repositories) are still out of sight of most organizations at all. A third of respondents (30%) reported that they had not heard anything before about CMIS, another third (30%) noted that they had no information on this issue. A fifth of respondents (19%) know about the existence of CMIS, but do not plan to use them.

ECM Payback

Another confirmation that information is considered as a valuable corporate resource is in the estimates of the payback of EDMS/ECM systems. More than half of respondents (59%) believe that the actual return on investment in the enterprise's document management system or information environment is quite high, and 14% believe it is very high.

Document or Information Environment Management Payback

But in

assessing indirect advantages, respondents are almost unanimous: 90% believe that these expectations from the implementation of ECM systems are met, in some cases even with an excess.

More than half of the survey participants (59%) noted that the return on investment in ECM technologies is comparable to the return on investment in other significant information technologies.

Assess the indirect benefits of implementing ECM systems

Via thorns to ECM

The main problems of document management are shifted from the technological plane to the organizational one. The greatest efforts in the formation of document management processes require the involvement of organization employees in the use of the solution, that is, the fight against weak user support (35%), planning and management of implementation (18%) and understanding/defining requirements (16%).

The most common data management issue

Directly deciding on the implementation of the ECM system mainly constrains the long process of understanding and determining the requirements for the system (49%), as well as the difficulty in justifying investments that arises in every third organization (35%).

Root Cause of Implementation Decision Delays

Time to collect content

A single information space is becoming truly unified: organizations strive to get quick access to all corporate information, to transfer data from paper to electronic format. According to the study, the costs of industrial scanners, multifunctional printers and MFPs, and the introduction of document management technologies are increasing. In particular, a tangible increase in spending on portal technologies, content security and business analytics is visible.

Scanning and Electronic Document Conversion

Information Recognition and Retrieval (OCR/ICR)

The majority of respondents (42%) identified the portal as the highest priority approach to providing employees with a single point of access to repositories. A fifth of respondents (20%) assume to use a single ECM system as a single point of access to repositories. Interestingly, only 7% of organizations for this task will use a specialized corporate search mechanism - despite the fact that the main problem associated with content management is the difficulty of finding the necessary information and documents (29%).

Data and

Document Search Type

By the way, more than half of the participants (60%) noted that information is easier for them to find on the Internet than in the company's internal information systems, and only 9%, on the contrary, reported ease of search in internal systems. 31% believe that the search is equally convenient there and there. It can be assumed that in the near future manufacturers will determine the convenience of searching one of the priority areas for the development of systems.

Information Search Convenience Assessment

Strategically, most organizations seek to move away from a "patchwork" approach to the formation of a single information space and are aimed at building a new, unified ECM system based on technologies provided by one vendor (21%). Equally (15% each), respondents noted the migration and replacement of existing systems with a new ECM platform of one vendor and selective update/replacement/migration of existing systems at the level of individual departments.

ECM and Document Management Strategy

The need for data analysis varies depending on their type: the most popular is the analytics of information contained in different data stores, in the ECM system and e-mail content. The growing need for analysis of external social resources (blogs, social networks) is clearly visible.

Would like to have analysis tools, but do not use them yet

The EDS is in demand, but so far in a narrow niche of the exchange of legally significant financial documents with external counterparties (39% use, 28% plan). In the internal document management, the electronic digital signature is not yet widely used (57% are not used, 26% are still planning).

Use of EDS (electronic digital signature)

Organizations are

still somewhat cautious about innovative Enterprise 2.0 technologies: the largest number of respondents (316 people) noted that they use Enterprise 2.0 technologies only for collaboration with documents and files, and in 381 organizations they do not use Enterprise 2.0 technologies at all.

Enterprise 2.0 Technology Used

The vast majority of respondents (681 votes) noted that their companies are not going to outsource ECM functions.

Outsource of ECM functions

Overcoming chaos

Organizations not only realize the importance of content as a valuable corporate resource, but also strive to master it, to find the opportunity to extract valuable information "here and now" from "content deposits." It is this tendency that manifests itself in ranking content management issues.

The main problem of data management, according to employees, is the uncertainty of business processes (28%). Other serious problems include the difficulty of finding the necessary information and documents (27%), the impossibility of convenient teamwork (18%), the inability to track the movement of information in an organization (8%) and duplication of information (8%). Interestingly, uncontrolled web content is still practically not considered as an obstacle in working with corporate information: only 4% of respondents paid attention to this problem.

The most common data management issue

See also

• EDMS (more)
• ECM – Enterprise Content Management
• EDMS (Software Technologies)
• EDMS (implementation methodology)
• ECM (Global Market)
• ECM Top Trends
• EDMS (Russian market)
• EDMS in Russia: industry specifics
• Geography of EDMS/ESM projects
• EDMS in SaaS format
• EDI - Electronic Data Exchange