Being Content With ECM In India

Enterprise Content Management has evolved into a complex tool encompassing various dimensions over the years. The market for enterprise content management (ECM) licence software is predicted to exceed $4 billion in the next 2-3 years according to various analysts. A Forrester report had even forecasted that ECM will outpace the overall software market with a 19 percent CAGR. Large enterprises recognising and investing in ECM for managing their compliance, governance, and process efficiency needs will bring about the growth. In India, verticals like BFSI, manufacturing, media and government generate a huge amount of data and would form a huge market. Document Management, Document Imaging, Records Management, Workflow, Web Content Management are all the part of a rising need in these sectors.

AIIM – The Enterprise Content Management Association has forecasted some major trends for 2008, which also reflect CIO concerns with regard to ECM. According to them, the market is exploding in two directions - across large organisations and into the mid-sized market. With the former, the objectives are related to standardising and integrating the system, whereas in the latter, it is more about finding a better solution to paper or network drives. Another interesting factor to note will be the push and pull between control and access. John Mancini, president, AIIM declared in the recently held AIIM expo, “These will be exacerbated by the heightened power of search tools and the entry of younger workers into the workforce. The pendulum has been on the ‘control’ side for a while; it’s now swinging toward access issues.” Experts have noted other trends like social media trickling into the enterprise user’s system and finding its way into Content Management Systems (CMS) as well. The need for quantifiable process standardisation is likely to emerge as an issue as well.

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India may no doubt follow these trends, but it is inevitable that it’ll throw up some unique peculiarities in terms of challenges and opportunities. While large companies are embracing ECM with full gusto and their challenges largely deal with homogenising various existing systems, SMEs have some uncontrollable infrastructural factors to face. With basic needs like fluctuating electricity supplies and system failures and constant pressure from sales and marketing teams of software companies dissuade a lot of them from looking at a non-paper based CMS. They may experience a need, but may not find enough quantifiable benefits to justify change and RoI. Although a CMS is an advanced tool that would be considered at a stage after basic ERP and CRM implementations are well underway, it may be an opportunity to change mindset and tap this market early.

Another concern that comes up in India is with regard to languages. A lot of places allow the use of regional languages in official documents. The sophistication of translation tools, superior back-end capabilities like document processing or search, document editing or Web content management in another language are crucial aspects, which are hard to find in a lot of solutions.

The Government of Maharashtra showed some initiative with its e-governance project in spite of the language challenge. Various e-governance projects including Land Records Management System, Treasury Management System, Document Journey Management System, and Computerisation of Citizen Facility Centre were implemented last year on open source software, resulting in satisfied taxpayers. The initiative provided payment gateways for services rendered by government organisations, computerisation of land records, Government to Citizen Programmes that help citizens monitor the progress of their applications for government services, collection of sales tax etc. A Web-based workflow system was planned as well. Computerisation has enabled the monitoring of service delivery. Citizens can now track the progress of their applications online more quickly and easily than before.

Government initiatives always come under scrutiny of critical citizens, who are already bogged down by bureaucracy. But the Maharashtra Government has managed to pull off a successful CMS that has performed satisfactorily and set a positive precedent for other e-governance initiatives by making some smart choices. With this being a priority for a lot of governments across India, better systems and better services for citizens will be well appreciated.

With global warming and environmental issues coming into focus, a reduction in use of paper is not just a very attractive market positioning strategy, but paperless processes are a real need for companies. Time and space are equal to money for small and large enterprises alike. Karnataka Bank felt the need to streamline their forex division last year and cut down on the physical movement of files between its 30 branches. A cheque truncation system integrated with the core banking system ensured that logistical and paper related costs like printing and courier, transport, etc are reduced drastically.

Kuoni Travel Group implemented a Document Management System (DMS) in the process of creating a shared service centre so they could centralise and detach the finance function from the businesses. They were able to convert a large storage space consisting of old files in the Shared Service Centre offices into a recreational area that included gymnasiums and TV rooms. Freeing up expensive office space was a highly tangible benefit they experienced by creating paperless transactions. Thus, reducing paper usage led to reduction of cost, space as well as time all translating into more money and satisfaction. It also means fewer people needed to process and analyse the data resulting in further optimisation of resources.

With the unit of measurement of data having evolved from reams to terabytes, ECM is a reality that is hard to ignore and the market, especially in India is waiting to be tapped. While some companies are emerging as early adopters, a large SME market is waiting to be tapped. Reports on its growth are many, but a more accurate understanding of SME concerns is the need of the hour.