Electronic document management: how to choose a system and not miss important

Usually we post articles about our platform for developing business applications CUBA , but today we decided to open another topic on Habré related to our other product, the electronic document management system TEIS . We noticed that when choosing a workflow system, customers use different comparison methods, but all of them relate only to the functional characteristics of the systems, while other equally important factors escape their attention. What is generally understandable is that there is not so much objective and accessible information on the Internet about what you should pay attention to when deciding on the choice of EDS, which subtleties and nuances should be taken into account, which pitfalls are avoided, and the developer’s opinion is perceived as biased.

We decided to publish an article by journalist-analyst Stanislav Makarov and his opinion on the problems when choosing an SED or the ECM system. In our opinion, this is interesting information for everyone who selects a system for their organization. This material contains useful tips on how to choose a system, not to lose sight of non-functional benefits that will affect the long-term success of the introduction of the SED.

Disclaimer: in some moments our opinion may differ from the opinion of the author.

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Stanislav Makarov, journalist - analyst, expert in the field of ECM

“Today, the ECM-system is not just an opportunity to declare an innovative approach to doing business, it is an urgent need, and its absence in the enterprise is a sign of insufficient maturity of business processes and a weak culture of working with electronic documents.
Meanwhile, the choice of ECM has become quite difficult for customers: the market is very saturated, vendors vying with each other about their products, promising quick economic benefits and other wonders. But it is not enough just to buy and install some kind of ECM system in order to gain a competitive advantage; It is important that it is used effectively and is still relevant today for at least 5-7 years. So, the cost of mistakes when choosing such an important component of a corporate information system is very high.

The ECM market at the moment has reached the state of functional parity, when the products, according to the technical characteristics of the functional capabilities, became similar to each other. Therefore, factors such as aggressive pricing, a successful advertising campaign, or an administrative resource are often the final argument for choosing a solution.

In fact, all systems are very different, but the real differences between them lie on a different plane - these are the relevance of the technologies used, the quality and convenience of the user interface, the flexibility of the platform, mobility, development opportunities and a number of other factors. It is time to change the approaches to the choice of ECM - multi-page questionnaires on the functions and technical parameters of the systems do not give a definite answer as to which system is better. We need to change the composition of the criteria so as to take into account the realities of a mature market. ”

How to choose ECM in a mature market

The market of electronic document circulation in Russia in 2014 celebrates its 20th anniversary. Over the years, a long way has been traversed from the simplest registration and accounting systems, which copied the traditional methods of office work, to advanced solutions that combine document management, business process and teamwork functions, which we call ECM systems today.

For many organizations, ECM is a critical application, the failure of which can lead to a complete stop of activity, so they are particularly careful in choosing a system. Because their needs are not limited to automating traditional workflow tasks, ECM is responsible for supporting a wide variety of business processes — managing contracts, managing boards of directors and other collegial bodies, managing quality, procurement, tenders, marketing campaigns, regulatory documentation, legal issues and etc.
Perhaps, there is no such field of activity in business and in state administration, where one could do without documents in electronic or paper form - it means that ECM solutions will be in demand everywhere.

EDS and ECM

From a practical point of view, there is no difference between the terms of the SED and ECM; any speculation on this topic is groundless. Just historically, the term SED is more familiar to Russian customers, so domestic developers continue to use it. The contrast between the Western and Russian approaches to document management at the technical and functional level is also unfounded, the differences are more apparent in the technology use scenarios. In this article, the terms EDS and ECM are considered synonymous.

Therefore, the task of choosing ECM for organizations today is of particular relevance - in fact, one has to choose not just one of the application systems, which can easily be replaced if something happens; we are talking about the choice of a very significant component of the IT infrastructure of an enterprise; here the cost of a mistake is very high.

Non-functional spotlight requirements

In terms of the functional parity characteristic of a mature market, a detailed comparison of product capabilities may be useless - the difference will be so small that it will not allow you to make an informed decision. Moreover, in the case of a formal competition, especially when concluding a government contract, evaluating products based on functional differences alone can be the basis for conflicts or even lawsuits from the losing participants, because subjectivity in putting points on them cannot be avoided.

Other things being equal - that is, when the products are very similar in function, competitive advantages are realized due to the emotional impact on the consumer, pricing, active marketing and other qualities that are not directly related to the workflow - sometimes you can’t even see this smoke screen. product.
It is worth paying more attention to non-functional requirements that can play the role of differentiators, including:

• Ease of use (usability);
• Performance and scalability;
• Availability (reliability) of the system;
• Compliance.

For each of these areas you can make quite clear criteria related to the infrastructure and features of work. For example, if we talk about scalability, it is better to remain within the framework of reality: with 100 users in an organization, it is not necessary for the system to support 100 thousand connections. Availability at the level of "five nines" for the workflow is also not an urgent need - after all, EDS is not a payment system, where every second counts.

There are no standards for ECM / EDS in Russia. Therefore, it is reasonable to be critical of suppliers' statements about “compliance with Russian standards of workflow” - any flexible platform can be configured to meet the functional requirements for working with documents.

Recommendations

• Stay realistic, do not make excessive demands on the system. The safety factor for performance, scalability and availability should be within reasonable limits - taking into account the maximum forecast for the growth of document flow and organization size.
• Usability (usability) is far from being such a subjective thing as it seems at first glance. This area has its own standards and methods that allow for a completely objective assessment. Address to experts.
• It is necessary to distinguish between standards for documents and procedures for their processing, and standards for IT systems class ECM / EDS. In some areas there really are standards, for example, in quality management - the ISO 9000 series. A supplier can offer a turnkey solution that will allow you to pass certification or audit quality management, but this is not a guarantee of the quality of the ECM system itself - take this into account.

More is not always better

In mature markets, as a rule, the winner gets everything - the overwhelming majority of customers begin to use his product. If there are several leaders, then everyone gets their market share and these proportions remain stable for a long time. The mass consumer does not bother with an in-depth analysis of technologies, but buys what others take.

Therefore, one of the most popular marketing techniques in this phase of the market is the demonstration of a large number of clients, confirmed by authoritative figures from analysts. Of course, a wide client base indicates the reliability of the product and the developer’s understanding of the needs of the target audience, but also well-established marketing (which does not always correlate with the quality of the product).

We must be aware that all these figures and achievements relate to the past, and you buy a solution for the future. It is likely that the system has long been morally obsolete, and a large number of customers is the result of a long presence in the market, lobbying the system at the state level or other circumstances. Is this important for your organization? Hardly.

Professional investors have a rule that when deciding on an investment in a particular company, its past successes and money previously invested in it are not taken into account. Only future income is important - how much can you earn tomorrow if you invest in this asset today. This also applies to the situation of choosing an ECM: buying a system, in fact, you invest in your future. When the iPhone appeared, Nokia dominated the mobile phone market. And where is she now?

If in 2007 you made a decision on the development of mobile development in your area, wouldn't it all mean that Symbian users are many times more than iOS users? However, history judged otherwise. By the way, history loves repetition: just as Android walked around the corner of iOS, and those developers who still maintain Apple’s absolute loyalty risk falling out of the mainstream mobile revolution.

Let's go back to ECM. Market maturity is not a sign of its decline. Innovation continues. Perhaps soon, analysts will announce a new ECM reincarnation and the next cycle of technology development will begin. Stability in the IT market is deceptive, no leader can afford to rest on its laurels and the customer base does not guarantee the future well-being of the supplier.

Recommendations

• Exclude sales and market share statistics from your list of criteria.
• As references, rely on relatively new projects comparable in scale to your organization, do not chase after the big names of customers - you are not the press.
• Remember that old services do not guarantee the success of your future project. The converse is also wrong: the complete absence of implementations or the only implementation is not a sign of innovation, choose a reasonable balance.

Planning horizon

The software is not subject to physical wear and theoretically could work forever. However, moral wear remains, which acts relentlessly and mercilessly on software. Everything that was the most advanced a year ago may be outdated today. On the other hand, organizations, unlike private users, cannot afford to frequently replace software. Typically, the life of corporate systems is at least 5 years. Add more time for preliminary study of the project and the choice of the solution, its implementation and trial operation - this is from 1 to 3 years.

Thus, it turns out that the planning horizon should be at least 7 years old. That is, today you are choosing a system, which you can part with only after this time. Can you imagine how much new things can happen! Of course, it is impossible to take into account and foresee everything, so you have to make a choice, to some extent, intuitively.

Recommendations

• Learn what phase of the life cycle are key technologies used in the product. If they are close to their sunset, then such a product is not worth taking.
• The same applies to the ECM system itself - you need to assess what phase of its life cycle it is at. You must have confidence that the chosen solution will exist on the market within your planning horizon.
  You need to look not at the company, not at the brand, but at the product itself - how long it lives on the market in its current architecture. The version number is deceptive, sometimes the versions one from the other are very different internal device.
• See how often the product versions are released. The system should be updated regularly, because the environment is constantly evolving and users today are not ready to wait from release to release to get new features.
  For a sample, you can take the Google model: new features are introduced into the product as they become available. The update should be as smooth as possible for users and companies so that this does not turn into a separate IT project.

ECM in the organization's IT landscape

When choosing clothes or furniture, you think about how it will be combined with other things and fit your style. Likewise with ECM: it should become part of your IT landscape, fit into it.

New ECM in most cases does not come to empty space, but replaces some inherited systems. Agree, it hardly makes sense to change the old system to exactly the same in its capabilities a new one. Most likely, the emergence in the organization of a new ECM will lead to the redistribution of areas of responsibility between several applications. For example, you had a system of registration and accounting of documents in the office and separately - document management systems in personnel, in marketing and in the contract department. It will be logical if all of them are replaced by a single ECM platform.

There are situations that are more complicated: let's say you are undergoing ECM implementation and at the same time there is a global project to automate business processes based on a BPMS. Since all modern ECMs have built-in business process management capabilities, you will have to choose what to use to automate workflow processes — the capabilities of the ECM itself or universal tools based on the BPM engine.

Recommendations

• Decide which of the old systems will be decommissioned after the introduction of the new ECM;
• Resolve the issue of data migration, if required; (Not all old things are worth taking with you to the new life - it is not at all necessary to transfer all the historical data to the new system, but only those that are necessary for business.)
• Where will our ECM system receive master data? If an organization does not have a unified master data management system, it may be a good time to think about it.
• If some functions of decommissioned systems cannot be covered by a new ECM, then two issues need to be addressed: a) are these functions necessary? b) if so, what systems can cover them.

Security

Perhaps security is given more attention than all other issues combined, including the functionality of the systems. Indeed, threats are growing, information leaks occur. On the other hand, the information security industry is also evolving and is able to respond to all the challenges of today.

Only it is necessary to protect not a single system (in our case, ECM), but the entire information infrastructure of the organization. You should not overload the application system with non-core tasks, it is better to solve the security problem at the enterprise architecture level.

It should also be said that the main threats to ECM are internal. Leaks most often occur due to the fault of employees admitted to the documents, intentionally or through negligence. Therefore, more attention should be paid to organizational measures, rather than “tightening the screws” by complicating access control.

Unfortunately, the approach is often practiced when access to a document is given to an employee only for the duration of the task. For simple operations, it still comes down, but when the contractor is required to analyze and perform some intellectual functions, for example, prepare a draft contract, he needs to turn to past experience, not only his own, but also his colleagues. Is it reasonable in such a situation to restrict access, allowing you to see only current documents?

In general, the main thesis, which should be adhered to, is that the information protection system should not interfere with the normal operation of users with reasonable control of risks and threats.

Recommendations

• Beware of excessive safety requirements! This may unnecessarily increase the cost of the project and cut off many interesting solutions.
• Approach security in a comprehensive way: the most secure ECM will be useless if confidential documents are on a shared disk.
• Electronic signature is needed only where it is required by law. Everything else is from the evil one; it is not necessary to sign an EDS for each official note.
• Find out in detail what access control model is implemented in the system (discretionary, mandatory, role), and how it is configured. This may affect the complexity of the implementation of your requirements for access control.
• If you continue to use paper documents, consider this in your security requirements: it does not make sense to make a strict distinction between access to electronic documents, if paper copies are free to go from hand to hand.

Platform or boxed product?

Perhaps, the time of boxed solutions is irretrievably gone. The adaptability of the product to the changing conditions of the business environment is a key requirement for all corporate systems.

A “box”, that is, a finished closed product, even with a broad configuration, focused on the maximum coverage of a particular subject area, still loses because “an expert is like a flux, because its fullness is one-sided,” as Kozma Prutkov said.

In business, there are less and less isolated areas where narrow specialists with the help of specialized systems are engaged only in their work. Cross-cutting business processes, the work of project teams, access to related markets - this requires employees to master new functions and working methods. For example, a bank sells insurance products, a retail business issues loans, etc.

ECM-system should support many business processes, providing services for working with documents to different specialists, so a flexible platform will definitely be the winner.

It is also worth considering the likelihood of mergers or acquisitions - with all the benefits to the business, for IT it is usually a lot of stress. Because it is necessary to adjust the interaction of different systems in a short time, and the unified document management system has a high priority here. A flexible ECM platform gives IT a better chance of fulfilling shareholder requirements in this situation.

Recommendations

• Find out the limits of flexibility and customization options for your product. Moreover, it is better to immediately look at the root - to understand the principles on which the product is built and its architecture, and not to waste time on small details.
• Pay attention to other applications of the platform, not only on the workflow. It is possible that you will be able to solve a wider range of tasks with a single tool, and in the aggregate this will provide savings.
• Open source is an advantage. You may never think about changing something in the source code, but it gives you the opportunity to understand more deeply how the system you are going to implement is structured.

Integration

Speaking of platforms, we have already touched on the topic of ECM integration with other applications and systems. We called the need to support a variety of business processes when ECM is used in conjunction with other business applications — one of the driving factors — for example, it helps to work with a financial primary directly in ERP.

Another factor is the need to synchronize master data (or regulatory information, the NSI), including user accounts, organizational structure of the company, product catalogs, counterparty directories, address register and much more. To work in concert, all corporate applications must use the same reference data, and for this system must be able to share this data.

We should not forget about the interaction with the outside world. When introducing ECM in the public sector, integration with SMEV and MEDO is needed, in other tasks you may need to work with e-mail, if you participate in electronic trading, exchange documents with a trading platform, etc.

Therefore, the availability of advanced integration capabilities should be considered a mandatory requirement for ECM, and this should be taken into account when choosing.

Recommendations

• Check the availability of a documented API for the proposed product. Closed systems today have no chance of surviving in a corporate environment.
• Learn about other ways to integrate ECM with external data sources — ready gateways, the ability to use partner solutions, etc. It is not necessary to solve each integration task manually using an API.

Mobility

Sales of smartphones and tablets as early as 2013 exceeded PC sales, and soon mobile devices will surpass PCs and in number — these are today's realities. Corporate users also widely use mobile devices at work, reading mail from them, claiming transactions, giving instructions and performing all other actions that previously required the use of a desktop computer.

Today, mobile technology is not a special IT subdivision, but this is the IT of the future. Therefore, when designing any business application, it is necessary to take into account the mobility factor - this applies to all aspects: architecture, usability, support for various client devices, security, capabilities in the cloud, etc. So ECM without a mobile client should not even be considered - work with documents must be mobile, and this should be available not only to managers, but also to all employees. The concept of “iPad only and for the manager” is no longer modern.

The mobile world is multi-polar, there is no monopolist on it (with all due respect to the Apple company, which opened this market for us). The ECM you are offered should support all popular mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Windows. Moreover, the development of individual native applications for each platform is hardly a reasonable way - both from an economic point of view, since we will have to keep several development teams, and from the point of view of user experience unification (user experience). For mobile business applications, it seems more logical to use MEAP platforms or HTML5 solutions that allow you to centrally design business logic and automatically adapt the user interface to a specific form factor of the device and its operating system.

The concept of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has already been accepted by many organizations that have realized that the business benefits of employees using their own smartphones and tablets are much greater than the risks (often quite hypothetical), because in the field of mobile security there appeared quite mature solutions that reduce these risks are minimized.

Recommendations

• Start exploring the ECM system from a mobile client. If he satisfies you, you can move on. The main criterion is that it should be convenient to work with the system, everything should be clear without reading the documentation, which mobile users are used to. It may be partly subjective, but the first impression is very important.
• Specify exactly how mobile cross-platform is implemented, that is, support for different mobile platforms. (The fact that this is necessary is not even discussed. You cannot get far on one iPad.)
• Pay attention to the support of various form factors - for the tablet and smartphone you need different interfaces. Of course, it is hardly convenient to read documents from a smartphone, but quickly answering a question, redirecting an order, reading a notification of an urgent task - all these things can also be done from a small screen.
• Pricing for mobile versions is a great indicator of the ECM developer’s understanding of the mobility paradigm. Mobile ECM is not a premium product, but a working tool that every user needs.

Economy

Of course, the customer wants a better solution for less money. But a direct comparison of commercial offers from different suppliers may not give the final answer, which one is more profitable.

There are several reasons for this. First, suppliers try to create a more favorable impression and offer a lower price at the start of the project, and you shouldn’t blame them for it. Secondly, there are things that do not depend on the ECM provider in any way - for example, the state of your infrastructure and the required amount of investment for the system to work normally. Plus, there is a factor of unpredictability in the behavior of complex systems, so it is impossible to calculate in advance what other costs will have to be incurred.

Everyone who did repairs in the apartment would agree with this - despite the most thorough preparation and detailed calculations, in life everything turns out differently.
The popular ROI (return on investment) is poorly applicable to automation systems for knowledge workers, including ECM. Acceleration of work with documents in itself does not give a direct economic effect. Suppose your employees will find the necessary documents faster and save 1 hour a day - this does not mean that you will reduce their salary by 1/8? The impact of ECM on business is more indirect in nature, and it is not always that these relationships can be identified and compared with quantitative indicators. Quality improvements, such as improving the convenience of working with documents, also have a positive effect on business, although they are not measured in millions of dollars.

Recommendations

• Evaluate the proposals of suppliers based not on the purchase price, but on the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the system for the period of its planned operation, that is, in the interval of 5-7 years.
• Identify all hidden costs not included by the supplier in the commercial offer. ECM may require additional equipment (servers, scanners, printers, barcode technology), additional personnel, training, upgrading communication channels, updating system software, purchasing additional software, obtaining licenses and certificates from the regulator, and so on. . Do not hesitate to ask - it is better to find out all the nuances at the start of the project.
• Forget about ROI calculations based on time savings. Either find clearer criteria, for example, payroll savings, if you are planning to reduce staff, or rely on qualitative improvements.
• Another point: implementing ECM is not required to give you direct savings. The cost of document automation is logical to include in the total costs of doing business. ECM today is as necessary as e-mail and Internet access.

Do not "sit on the needle" vendor

Lifetime provisioning with ECM developer orders is not in your plans, is it? Your goal is to ensure competitiveness and development of your enterprise. As long as the selected ECM copes with all the tasks assigned to it, you will support and update it, acquire additional licenses. But as soon as it becomes clear that your organization has outgrown the capabilities of the system, it will have to be changed.

There is also another situation: the system completely satisfies the users, but the developer company suddenly leaves the market due to unfavorable conditions or due to unfriendly takeovers. Nobody is insured against this - neither large western vendors, nor domestic developers.

Therefore, when making your choice in favor of one or another ECM, you need to evaluate not only the quality and availability of technical support, but also be ready to accompany the system yourself or replace it with another one.

Recommendations

• Avoid too exotic technologies; Avoid outdated technologies that are in the final stages of the life cycle - a shortage of specialists can be a critical factor;
• Analyze the financial position of the supplier, especially for domestic developers.
• Once again about open source: perhaps this is your lifeline if something happens to the supplier.

Other articles of the author on the topic of workflow can be found in the blog PRO SED .