SED: The Way From Easy to Complex / Haulmont Blog

Today’s publication, we are opening a series of materials that allow us to take a fresh look at the use of EDMS for automating corporate business processes. Implementing a BPM strategy using an electronic document management system may seem like a tempting idea - after all, a BPM engine is built into any modern solution. However, the interconnection of the business process and the document in practice is more complicated than it seems in theory. In a series of articles, we, together with expert Stanislav Makarov, will talk about why streamlined automation of document storage and processing is the first step to future BPM automation. In future articles, we plan to demonstrate the relevance of this thought by examples of real business processes, such as budgeting, contractual work, or logistics.

The capabilities of EDMS / ECM systems over the past twenty years - and this is precisely the age of this market - have grown significantly. They can handle any task of automating business processes that are strongly tied to working with documents. Let's make a reservation right away: there is no confrontation with BPM as a methodology. Inside EDMS / ECM solutions, as a rule, modern BPM engines are integrated, and their proper use is on the conscience of customers and implementers. Modern EDMS is a constructor of business objects, and, in general, the automation of workflow with the help of such systems is a special case. Such systems can be entrusted with a very wide class of information management tasks in the enterprise. (Note: hereinafter, as the developers of the TESIS EDMS , we rely primarily on the capabilities of our system)

So, having received a powerful universal tool in your hands, you want to immediately, in one fell swoop, solve all sore issues. Just think, workflow, inbound and outbound! This is yesterday! Let's immediately automate our most complex processes! - For some it is contractual work, for others it is budgeting, for others it is material and technical supply. You cannot immediately guess what is most important - within a large organization, all these decisions can be equally demanded. And worse than that, they are all interconnected. This is where the trap lies in wait: automation of one section will not necessarily give an increase in productivity across the organization as a whole. Because no one unit works in isolation from others, loss of productivity at the joints can negate the effect of implementation.

Productivity Paradox Trap

In a broader context, this phenomenon is known as the “productivity paradox,” formulated by Nobel laureate Robert Solow, which states that “you can see the era of computers everywhere around you, but not in numbers of productivity growth” (Solow, 1987), and it’s a mismatch IT costs obtained results. The statistics have repeatedly confirmed that productivity growth does not correlate with IT costs - the more countries invest in informatization, the more they have the cost of creating and maintaining IT systems themselves, while the overall performance gain is not so great.

However, not everything is so sad, there is hope! The latest studies have shown that at the country level it is possible to overcome this unpleasant tendency when a certain critical volume of investments in IT infrastructure is achieved - that is, when all enterprises and organizations begin to interact with each other in electronic form, business processes go to a new level of efficiency .
Strictly speaking, from a scientific point of view, the Solow paradox is manifested at the national and global levels, and not at the level of an individual enterprise, which can invest in IT with a much greater return than the average for the industry or country. Nevertheless, some analogies can be traced - as we know, “island” automation does not have a big effect.

"Two pennies" from the EDMS - in the common cause

Let the EDMS insert your two pennies here: you cannot build end-to-end, cross-functional business processes in the organization and optimize communication with the outside world - with customers, suppliers and partners, until you create a single information space and a common document repository. EDS is an important part of IT infrastructure. Let not the most expensive and not the most difficult - compared with the implementation of ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) or with a heavy ERP-project. But without a single database of documents stored in the EDMS, many other initiatives simply stall.

They skid because a paper document or even a file, if it is not registered in the system, becomes a “bottleneck” in the business process, causes the time it takes to attach, copy, forward, is often lost, comes in the wrong format, etc. d. etc. In general, if there is no culture and policy of working with documents, then with the growth of informatization, the mess will only intensify.

So, the most correct way to consider the EDMS is not just as another application system, but as an indispensable element of the IT infrastructure, and accordingly to relate to its implementation:

• Plan that over time, access to the system will be needed by all employees of the organization, and not some narrow group of “clerks”;
• Think in advance about integrating EDMS with ERP and your other business applications - because you will definitely need it anyway;
• Start with simple projects, and not rush to conclusions, realizing that full efficiency will come later, when the EDMS “covers” the entire organization.

Practice shows that the gradual complexity approach works

Overview of Major ImplementationsTheSES SED confirms the practical usefulness of this approach - let's call it “start with SED, complex processes later.” For example, the Russian Platinum company needed to automate work with contracts. But before diving into the specifics of contractual work in the organization, it was necessary to provide a workflow infrastructure. Russian Platinum lives in a distributed mode - its head office is in Moscow, and its production units are in Khabarovsk. Therefore, at first it was necessary to develop and implement a solution for synchronizing two sites in order to implement “related processes” - when the participants in the coordination chain are who are in Moscow and who are in Khabarovsk, but at the same time they work in the same system, although there are actually two of them - because a centralized solution would be too dependent on the communication channel and there would be a high risk of downtime.

Alliance also started introducing an EDMS, with the goal of shortening the coordination time and minimizing the risks of losing documents - a common desire of any customer. Since business users did not want to “bend” and adjust their processes to the way it was implemented in the system, the selection criterion was flexibility and the ability to customize processes.
(A small remark: Business consultants can criticize this approach. According to science, it is necessary to reengineer and optimize business processes. Nobody argues, the way it is - only it will not be IT, but a consulting project. The previously selected flexible system can be reconfigured new processes, in accordance with the recommendations of consultants - there is no conflict here, but if you “hardcode” the control system under the old processes, then you just have to throw it away.)

At the first stage, the issue of accelerating the process of agreeing on agreements was especially acute, and this was possible to solve with the help of the EDMS. More is more: after all, the essence of contractual work is not formal document sighting or the capture of legal nuances. The actual task of the coordinator is to decide whether this contract is necessary at all, whether it is possible to conclude it now or whether it is necessary to wait for this contractor to suit us or not. That is, contract management is part of management accounting, which entails a corresponding block of functional requirements. In the end, it turned out that the solution later grew into a complex treasury system that allows you to work with payment documents for contracts, conduct financial planning, check applications for compliance with the budget, etc. Is it EDMS or not? Let theorists rack their brains. And for the customer, this is a system that solves his problems :)

Is the box right for you?

You can answer this question with confidence: “Yes!” At first, the EDMS out of the box (with the necessary settings for implementation, but without deep customization) will perfectly cope with a large amount of typical tasks in any organization. Because the work with organizational and administrative documents is, in principle, the same everywhere. Specificity begins when you invade some business processes, at least in contractual activities. Although the Civil Code is the same for all of us, organizations work with contracts in different ways - because management accounting is a very creative process. Following the agreements, you may also have broader wishes - as it was with NK Alliance and other Haulmont clients.

Is it necessary to immediately set the task of finalizing the system if all organizations are unique? Is not a fact. Having not learned how to use the regular capabilities of the EDMS, you can “customize” it with your requirements in such a way that support will then be very expensive (again, remember the Solow paradox). Start by using standard features, let people get used to working with electronic documents. At the same time, it is possible to conduct research and design of new business processes and refine the system.

The Agile methodology, widely used in software development, is also applicable to business: build functionality gradually, step by step. Plan for system improvement and development - PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle to help you! And you will not notice how you get a system from a standard EDMS that is precisely tuned to the needs of your business.