Electronic document management or not worth doing
For several years I have been engaged in the implementation of electronic document management systems (EDMS). He started his professional career in a small IT-company, which employed about 10 people. The company introduced boxed SED solutions in various government bodies. After that, I worked in several other companies, some of them were very serious, with a serious approach to projects and serious budgets. But regardless of the size of the company and the “promotedness” of the platform being introduced, most of my projects were inexpedient.
This does not mean that all projects were unprofitable. Some of them had a feasibility study, and some even corresponded to it, and were really cost-effective. But economic efficiency is not the only value that determines the feasibility of the project.
Here is an example:
At first glance, everything looks great. The project is cost effective. The customer receives real savings, the performer earns good money on this project. Everyone is happy and contented. Only here from what the counted economy develops, as a rule, nobody thinks.
A saving of 250 pieces is the result of various organizational measures, most of which are only indirectly related to the introduction of an electronic document management system. Here are the main ones:
And now about everything in order. I am convinced that all these activities can be carried out without getting involved in a long and expensive project for the automation of workflow. Moreover, any organization can improve the efficiency of working with documents on its own, without resorting to the services of consulting companies. In order to prove my point of view, I propose to consider each item separately:
When automating workflow, an enterprise may have only two sources of physical release of space, namely:
The release of the areas occupied by the operational storage of documents usually occurs as follows: All documents are converted into electronic form, and work is done only with electronic images of documents. This ensures that when working in parallel with a document of several employees, the document is not photocopied, but simply opened on several computers. Fewer photocopies - less storage space for documents.
To solve this problem without scanning, there are several ways, the use of which is not inferior in efficiency, and in many cases exceeds the method described above, not to mention that working with documents in traditional paper form is much more efficient than reading the scanned image from the screen. So, what can be done in order to reduce the area required for the operational storage of documents:
Releasing space by reducing staff is also not the most effective way, not to mention the fact that the introduction of an electronic document management system does not significantly reduce staffing. In addition, there are new responsibilities for scanning documents, administering and maintaining an automated system that someone must fulfill. Despite this, you can always find an alternative, for example:
In some cases, these events provide significant savings in office space.
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A proven way to reduce the cost of copying the creation of a copy office - an organizational unit of the staff engaged in all paper business: copying, scanning, binding, etc. When these issues are dealt with by dedicated people who are qualified in this particular area of ​​knowledge, the highly paid employees of the organization have more time to perform their direct duties, and also access to copy equipment is limited, which reduces the chances of its use for non-production purposes. This reduces the consumption of paper, as well as, no less important, a more dense loading of copying equipment occurs and the risk of its breakage is reduced, since access to it is limited.
If the organization is geographically distributed, there is no other way to significantly reduce the cost of delivering information other than to transfer this information to an electronic form at the time (teleportation has not yet been invented). With this, everything is clear and such organizations most likely will not be able to function effectively without an electronic document management system.
In other organizations, the cost of information delivery is so insignificant that it makes no sense to reduce these costs. Both an employee and a dedicated internal low-paid courier can deliver a document (a stack of documents) from office to office.
Reduction of labor resources: labor resources for copying documents are taken into account in the item “Reducing the cost of copying”. Manpower for the delivery of documents (internal courier) is insignificant - the maintenance of one low-paid courier costs nothing for a large organization, so there is no sense in reducing such labor resources
The reduction in the number of lost documents is often declared by the developers of the SED as one of the benefits of system implementation. In fact, even the possibility of losing documents can be reduced without automation, moreover, it is often not at all connected with automation at all. During my small career, I was present in several organizations in which the loss of a document is impossible in principle, and this is the result of organizational measures that are not related to automation.
I know only two ways to significantly increase productivity:
As for the first item, it is completely unrelated to automation. Business processes of any organization should be optimal and described in detail. Only in this case, you can begin to automate them. Moreover, automation is often just a means of introducing new business processes and does not in itself increase labor productivity. You can significantly increase productivity by automating manual operations, but in terms of office work, this can be difficult, since the main work is intellectual, and as we know it, it is not amenable to automation.
So let's summarize. Indications for implementation in the organization of the electronic document management system can be:
In my practice, there were few projects that would correspond to these diagnoses, to be more precise, just two. Moreover, both projects were in geographically-distributed organizations, and the main effect of their implementation was the ability for employees of remote branches to quickly exchange information in electronic form.
I don’t have examples of when the electronic document management system significantly increased labor productivity. But a huge number of examples, when after the introduction of the SED labor productivity fell, it even happened at times.
In conclusion, I would like to say that this article reflects my personal experience and does not claim to be the last truth. It is up to you to implement EDS in your company or not to implement it. I just want to say that all costs must be justified. It is sometimes easier to get by with cheap, or even free analogs, to avoid a long project load and to get a comparable result.
This does not mean that all projects were unprofitable. Some of them had a feasibility study, and some even corresponded to it, and were really cost-effective. But economic efficiency is not the only value that determines the feasibility of the project.
Here is an example:
- Project cost: $ 500,000
- Implementation term: 6 months.
- Payback project 2 years.
- Accordingly, with the introduction of the system, the company will have to save about $ 250,000.
At first glance, everything looks great. The project is cost effective. The customer receives real savings, the performer earns good money on this project. Everyone is happy and contented. Only here from what the counted economy develops, as a rule, nobody thinks.
A saving of 250 pieces is the result of various organizational measures, most of which are only indirectly related to the introduction of an electronic document management system. Here are the main ones:
- Physical release of space.
- Reduced copying costs.
- Reducing the cost of delivering information.
- Reduction of labor resources.
- Reducing the number of irretrievably lost documents
- Increase productivity
And now about everything in order. I am convinced that all these activities can be carried out without getting involved in a long and expensive project for the automation of workflow. Moreover, any organization can improve the efficiency of working with documents on its own, without resorting to the services of consulting companies. In order to prove my point of view, I propose to consider each item separately:
1. Physical release of space
When automating workflow, an enterprise may have only two sources of physical release of space, namely:
- Reduce storage space for paper documents.
- Reduction of space occupied by employees, which should be less after the introduction of electronic document management system.
The release of the areas occupied by the operational storage of documents usually occurs as follows: All documents are converted into electronic form, and work is done only with electronic images of documents. This ensures that when working in parallel with a document of several employees, the document is not photocopied, but simply opened on several computers. Fewer photocopies - less storage space for documents.
To solve this problem without scanning, there are several ways, the use of which is not inferior in efficiency, and in many cases exceeds the method described above, not to mention that working with documents in traditional paper form is much more efficient than reading the scanned image from the screen. So, what can be done in order to reduce the area required for the operational storage of documents:
- To reduce, time of processing of documents: The faster to process documents, the less they lie on the table for each artist. The most effective way to reduce document processing time is to optimize business processes. This will be discussed below.
- Establish more stringent deadlines for writing off closed files to the archive: Firstly, archive documents are kept more compact than documents in use, and secondly, the archive can be moved out of the office, to rooms with cheaper rent. .
- Use innovative technologies for storing documents (automated archival cabinets and racks).
Releasing space by reducing staff is also not the most effective way, not to mention the fact that the introduction of an electronic document management system does not significantly reduce staffing. In addition, there are new responsibilities for scanning documents, administering and maintaining an automated system that someone must fulfill. Despite this, you can always find an alternative, for example:
- Select a separate area for processing documents (printers, copiers, brochure).
- Revise staffing arrangements.
In some cases, these events provide significant savings in office space.
')
2. Reduced copying costs
A proven way to reduce the cost of copying the creation of a copy office - an organizational unit of the staff engaged in all paper business: copying, scanning, binding, etc. When these issues are dealt with by dedicated people who are qualified in this particular area of ​​knowledge, the highly paid employees of the organization have more time to perform their direct duties, and also access to copy equipment is limited, which reduces the chances of its use for non-production purposes. This reduces the consumption of paper, as well as, no less important, a more dense loading of copying equipment occurs and the risk of its breakage is reduced, since access to it is limited.
3. Reducing the cost of information delivery
If the organization is geographically distributed, there is no other way to significantly reduce the cost of delivering information other than to transfer this information to an electronic form at the time (teleportation has not yet been invented). With this, everything is clear and such organizations most likely will not be able to function effectively without an electronic document management system.
In other organizations, the cost of information delivery is so insignificant that it makes no sense to reduce these costs. Both an employee and a dedicated internal low-paid courier can deliver a document (a stack of documents) from office to office.
Reduction of labor resources: labor resources for copying documents are taken into account in the item “Reducing the cost of copying”. Manpower for the delivery of documents (internal courier) is insignificant - the maintenance of one low-paid courier costs nothing for a large organization, so there is no sense in reducing such labor resources
4. Reducing the number of irretrievably lost documents
The reduction in the number of lost documents is often declared by the developers of the SED as one of the benefits of system implementation. In fact, even the possibility of losing documents can be reduced without automation, moreover, it is often not at all connected with automation at all. During my small career, I was present in several organizations in which the loss of a document is impossible in principle, and this is the result of organizational measures that are not related to automation.
5. Increase productivity
I know only two ways to significantly increase productivity:
- Optimization of business processes
- Business Process Automation
As for the first item, it is completely unrelated to automation. Business processes of any organization should be optimal and described in detail. Only in this case, you can begin to automate them. Moreover, automation is often just a means of introducing new business processes and does not in itself increase labor productivity. You can significantly increase productivity by automating manual operations, but in terms of office work, this can be difficult, since the main work is intellectual, and as we know it, it is not amenable to automation.
So let's summarize. Indications for implementation in the organization of the electronic document management system can be:
- The need to reduce the cost of delivering information, if the company has a geographically distributed structure.
- The need to increase productivity, if the organization's business processes are optimized, and the information system can actually significantly reduce manual operations.
In my practice, there were few projects that would correspond to these diagnoses, to be more precise, just two. Moreover, both projects were in geographically-distributed organizations, and the main effect of their implementation was the ability for employees of remote branches to quickly exchange information in electronic form.
I don’t have examples of when the electronic document management system significantly increased labor productivity. But a huge number of examples, when after the introduction of the SED labor productivity fell, it even happened at times.
In conclusion, I would like to say that this article reflects my personal experience and does not claim to be the last truth. It is up to you to implement EDS in your company or not to implement it. I just want to say that all costs must be justified. It is sometimes easier to get by with cheap, or even free analogs, to avoid a long project load and to get a comparable result.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/92888/
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