2009 Document Management Study

Posted on Sep 18, 2009 in Records Management News

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS138423+17-Sep-2009+BW20090917

Research and Mar­kets: 2009 Doc­u­ment Man­age­ment Study The Need for Quick Access to Com­plete and Exten­sive Data Sets Con­tin­ues To Grow

DUBLIN–(Business Wire)– Research and Markets(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/906a01/2009_document_mana) has announced the addi­tion of the “2009 Doc­u­ment Man­age­ment Study” report to their offering.

This is the third major sur­vey of doc­u­ment pro­cess­ing pro­fes­sion­als since the year 2000. Many trends we saw or fore­cast from the pre­vi­ous two stud­ies have come to fruition. The growth of image tech­nol­ogy has been sig­nif­i­cant and is now in place in vir­tu­ally every doc­u­ment han­dling process imag­in­able. The automa­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties have increased sub­stan­tially and con­tinue to be enhanced as firms look to drive effi­ciency and qual­ity through­out their operations.

Although many processes have matured, the quest for addi­tional uses and ser­vices never seems to end. We con­tinue to evolve from data entry to data cap­ture, with data min­ing uti­lized more and more in a vari­ety of appli­ca­tions. This is in addi­tion to front end auto clas­si­fi­ca­tion, where doc­u­ments can enter the sys­tem inter­min­gled, and soft­ware logic sorts and routes them into dif­fer­ent processing/handling streams. Even tra­di­tional hard­ware ven­dors are focus­ing more on the entire solu­tion set being deliv­ered, as well as enter­ing into actual pro­cess­ing envi­ron­ments with BPO (busi­ness process out­sourc­ing) operations.

As noted in pre­vi­ous stud­ies, com­pli­ance require­ments due to Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, as well as recent highly pub­li­cized fraud­u­lent and risky ven­tures, have increased the need for secure imag­ing and data gathering/storage sys­tems. The need for quick access to com­plete and exten­sive data sets con­tin­ues to grow.

Study Objec­tives:

This par­tic­u­lar study was mir­rored after the first two, and is intended to pro­vide par­tic­i­pants com­par­a­tive infor­ma­tion cov­er­ing doc­u­ment prep, doc­u­ment imag­ing, recog­ni­tion and key entry, work­flow, archival, retrieval and reten­tion, dis­as­ter recov­ery, and out­sourc­ing and off-shore capa­bil­ity. It may also be uti­lized by a vari­ety of ven­dors to under­stand the var­i­ous types of work being han­dled, vol­ume lev­els, and the range of sophis­ti­ca­tion that exists in the mar­ket­place. The only caveat in draw­ing direct cor­re­la­tions from study to study is the fact that the respon­dents to each sur­vey are not exactly the same.

We were able to gen­er­ate a large num­ber of respon­dents (309), in addi­tion to the user com­mu­ni­ties of our major spon­sors. Nearly half of these respon­dents com­pleted the entire sur­vey. The ver­ti­cal mar­kets rep­re­sented, as well as the range of vol­ume and doc­u­ment types cap­tured is extensive.

Trends and Outlook:

Although cap­ture tech­nol­ogy and automa­tion tech­niques con­tinue to expand, our user base feels the need to uti­lize many of these tools to a greater degree. Aging sys­tems also require upgrades and cap­i­tal expen­di­tures to sim­ply meet mar­ket, com­pli­ance and com­pet­i­tive posi­tions. The real­ity, though, is that inter­nal com­pe­ti­tion for tech­nol­ogy resources and cap­i­tal dol­lars exists in most firms. If the doc­u­ment work­flow in ques­tion is not a key com­po­nent of an over­all firm’s main lines of busi­ness, it does not always get the devel­op­ment dol­lars needed, regard­less of the effi­cien­cies that could be gained. This makes it imper­a­tive that strong solid busi­ness cases are devel­oped, and is an area that ven­dors can pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant assistance.

Major ven­dors con­tinue to bring cap­ture and con­tent man­age­ment tools to the table. This is evi­denced by the sur­vey responses to the use of sys­tems like Microsoft Share­Point, which appear to be expe­ri­enc­ing enterprise-wide accep­tance in more and more firms. We may see more and more over­all solu­tions being intro­duced in the work­place, which will bridge data con­tent across var­i­ous lines of busi­ness and dis­ci­plines within firms, includ­ing sales, prod­uct devel­op­ment, mar­ket­ing, billing, accounts receiv­ables, com­pli­ance, etc.

Merg­ers and Acquisitions:

This is an area that has shown sig­nif­i­cant move­ment since our last sur­vey and does not appear to be slow­ing down any­time soon. Whether it is on the ven­dor side or the indus­try ver­ti­cals they sup­port, con­sol­i­da­tion will con­tinue. The obvi­ous dri­ver is cost reduc­tion, but increased ser­vice level offer­ings, and lever­ag­ing the global nature of most indus­tries is also preva­lent. More and more for­eign firms are invest­ing in the U.S., while Amer­i­can firms con­tinue to look for over­seas oppor­tu­ni­ties. The real­ity of all this con­sol­i­da­tion should be enhanced prod­uct deliv­ery and capa­bil­ity, as well as a grow­ing appetite for work­flow solu­tions and/or BPO (busi­ness process out­sourc­ing) oppor­tu­ni­ties. Cost/benefit analy­ses will drive solu­tions more than ever before, and will be more pro­nounced in these times of eco­nomic uncer­tainty. Merg­ers such as EMC and Cap­tiva, and Kodak with Bell and How­ell, appear to have resulted in stronger com­bined enti­ties, but the over­all impact to end users is still not cer­tain. Are the prod­uct offer­ings much stronger, ser­vice lev­els much higher, and price points more com­pet­i­tive to the end users? These will be the ques­tions to answer for all of the pre­vi­ous merger activ­i­ties, as well as those that will surely occur in the near future.

Com­pli­ance:

Reg­u­la­tory com­pli­ance, sim­i­lar to Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, will increase. The preva­lent view that lack of over­sight con­tributed to recent mar­ket declines, and highly vis­i­ble fraud­u­lent oper­a­tions have been allowed to exist unabated, will result in fur­ther over­sight. Although much of this may be viewed as pos­i­tive steps, vir­tu­ally every indus­try will be affected and required to strengthen their risk con­trols is one form or another. Sys­tem and solu­tion providers, as well as users, will both need to stay abreast of the reg­u­la­tory envi­ron­ment and be in a posi­tion to react to what­ever changes lie ahead.

In addi­tion, the whole topic of lit­i­ga­tion pre­pared­ness has sur­faced and resulted in numer­ous eDis­cov­ery solu­tions enter­ing the mar­ket­place. Regard­less if a firm’s objec­tive is to be pre­pared for poten­tial lit­i­ga­tion or sim­ply to pro­vide effi­cient client ser­vices, any sys­tem solu­tion that is put in place needs to have a robust and man­age­able archive retrieval mech­a­nism. Users need to assess risks with their legal coun­sel and deter­mine their readi­ness to pull together infor­ma­tion and records in quick order. Whether firms call them “eDis­cov­ery” solu­tions or not, a strat­egy for access­ing data is imper­a­tive and can­not sim­ply be a reac­tive approach as sit­u­a­tions arise.

Need for Education:

The cur­rent eco­nomic land­scape high­lights the need to stay informed about tech­nol­ogy advance­ments. Often times, knee jerk reac­tions result in bud­get cuts around edu­ca­tion, train­ing, and mar­ket research. The real­ity, though, is that cost effi­cien­cies and rev­enue growth are para­mount, and enhanc­ing the knowl­edge base of a firm’s employ­ees is the only way for them to suc­ceed. Short term pull backs on edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties end up neg­a­tively impact­ing firm’s abil­i­ties to grow and pros­per. The con­fer­ences, case stud­ies, webi­nars, white papers and research stud­ies are exactly what firms need, espe­cially in today’s com­pet­i­tive marketplace.

Key Top­ics Covered:

* Exec­u­tive Sum­mary * List of Fig­ures * Methodology/Study Demo­graph­ics * Doc­u­ment Types Processed * Doc­u­ment Prepa­ra­tion Meth­ods * Scan­ner Sta­tis­tics * Imag­ing Pro­duc­tion Rates * Dis­trib­uted Cap­ture * Cap­ture Soft­ware * Auto­mated Recog­ni­tion Usage * Key-entry Pro­duc­tion Rates * Ver­i­fy­ing Data Accu­racy * Image Qual­ity Check­ing * Image Repos­i­to­ries * Back-end Data­bases * Reten­tion * Off­shore Pro­cess­ing * Dis­as­ter Recov­ery Plans * Microsoft Share­Point Uti­liza­tion * Conclusions

List of Appendixes

* Appen­dix 1: Types of Doc­u­ments Being Processed * Appen­dix 2: Glos­sary of Terms Used * Appen­dix 3: Entire 2009 Doc­u­ment Man­age­ment Study Ques­tion­naire * Appen­dix 4: About the Sponsors

List of Figures:

* Fig­ure 1: Respon­dents’ Ver­ti­cal Mar­kets * Fig­ure 2: Respon­dents’ Posi­tion Titles * Fig­ure 3: Num­ber of Doc­u­ments Processed Per Day * Fig­ure 4: Types of Forms Processed * Fig­ure 5: Tech­nol­ogy and Pro­ce­dures Used for Pre-Sorting * Fig­ure 6: Num­ber of Doc­u­ment Prepa­ra­tion Meth­ods Used * Fig­ure 7: Total Scan­ners Used by Scan Speed * Fig­ure 8: Per­cent­age of Respon­dents Using Scan­ners (by Scan Speed) * Fig­ure 9: Per­cent­age of Users by Scan­ner Man­u­fac­turer * Fig­ure 10: Scan­ner Sat­is­fac­tion Rates * Fig­ure 11: Imag­ing Pro­duc­tion Rates * Fig­ure 12: Dis­trib­uted Scan­ning Capa­bil­ity (All) * Fig­ure 13: Dis­trib­uted Scan­ning (Large Vol­ume Proces­sors) * Fig­ure 14: Total Per­cent­age Using Iden­ti­fi­able Stan­dard Cap­ture Soft­ware * Fig­ure 15: Cap­ture Soft­ware Usage (by Provider) * Fig­ure 16: Cap­ture Soft­ware Sat­is­fac­tion Rates * Fig­ure 17: Recog­ni­tion Tech­nol­ogy Usage * Fig­ure 18: Num­ber of Recog­ni­tion Engines Used * Fig­ure 19: Key Entry Pro­duc­tion Rates * Fig­ure 20: Meth­ods of Ver­i­fy­ing Data Accu­racy * Fig­ure 21: Meth­ods of Con­trol­ling Image Qual­ity * Fig­ure 22: Image Repos­i­tory Sys­tems * Fig­ure 23: Back-end Data­bases * Fig­ure 24: Source Doc­u­ment Han­dling (Post-Process) * Fig­ure 25: Doc­u­ment Reten­tion Poli­cies in Place * Fig­ure 26: Soft­ware Dri­ven Doc­u­ment Reten­tion * Fig­ure 27: Func­tions Per­formed Off­shore * Fig­ure 28: Planned Future Change in Off­shore Vol­umes * Fig­ure 29: Is an American-owned Com­pany Impor­tant for Out­sourc­ing? * Fig­ure 30: Microsoft Share­Point Utilization

For more infor­ma­tion visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/906a01/2009_document_mana

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Cary