Large Enterprise Forum

Managing your information

Managing documentation goes beyond retrieving digitised information to encompass managing time and resources, says Shivani Shinde

L V Sastry Associate Director Xerox Global Services

Managing documents is a major concern for CIOs. Documents comprise material such as invoices, contracts and regulatory-related data. According to research findings, about 610 billion e-mail are sent every year. 20 to 25 percent of e-mail messages are printed, 30 percent have attachments. This translates to every person receiving three attachments per day, and over 900 pages being generated by each person every month. The question is: how can organisations control costs in managing documents, and are there any best practices that they can follow?

Document Costs

Says L V Sastry, Associate Director, Xerox Global Services (XGS), “Every year paper output increases by at least 20 percent. Document costs comprise not less than 20 percent of the IT expenditure of any organisation.” Even though so much money is being spent on documents, many organisations have no system to control or manage these costs.

Handing over the task of document management to a third party is becoming a trend, with the objective being to reduces costs. These external services cover segments such as production, business processes and managing services, and help an organisation to intelligently handle documents and optimise official resources.

Distance Crunching

Janaki Narasimhan Vice-president Hexaware Technologies

With companies having an increasing number of offices across different locations, communicating and accessing information can be a problem. Sharing her experiences, Janaki Narasimhan, Vice-president, Hexaware Technologies, says that prior to her company’s document management implementation, there was the issue of information not being available across locations. She explains: “We had documents in different notebook PCs at different geographical locations. That’s when we decided to apply a document strategy.” During implementation they went in for a departmental approach for their electronic document archiving.

Balwinder Singh Sales Manager Xerox Global Services

Balwinder Singh, Sales Manager, XGS, explains that paper use is increasing day by day, it’s uncontrollable, and so are the costs of managing it. He says that photocopying is considered by an organisation to be a paper cost, and is handled by the administration section, while the cost of printing on the same machine comes under the IT department. Whatever the classification, the paper being used is contributing to rising budgets.

Narasimhan says that the need for a document management strategy arises due to the need for process-centric procedures, a single-source-of-knowledge bank, a virtual team, easy and powerful search facilities, and transparency and collaboration.

Searching Time

Manish Soota General Manager Business Process Services Xerox Global Services

Comments Manish Soota, GM, Business Process Services, XGS, “Though there is digital documentation, the use of paper continues to rise. Developing and optimising solutions that would look at the paperwork in organisations is the need of the hour.” According to the CIOs of a few multinationals, their top two priorities are managing and structuring data, followed by wireless networks.

In any organisation, the time spent searching for information constitutes anything between 10 to 15 percent of the working day. Managing information thus becomes important. But change management is crucial. “It is easy to create a strategy but difficult to execute it,” points out Soota. Xerox makes use of the Xerox Document Assessment (ODA), an enterprise-wide, in-depth analysis using lean Six Sigma methodologies and technology. By analysing uses, processes and the environment, the ODA defines the actual costs, and results in an actionable, documented strategy to achieve measurable cost reductions of around 30 percent or more.

Since the information is digitally archived in a document management system, documents can be retrieved through a single window and one need not run about tracking documents. With increasing workflows and regulatory frameworks in the coming years, managing documents intelligently is becoming crucial. It is just not about saving time and effort, but cutting costs too.