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DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT - COMPLEMENTARY
TECHNOLOGIES
 There
is large number of complementary technologies, which has emerged
over the time. But we will discuss few of these technologies that
have been well accepted by" the market.
* Workflow
* COLD
* ERP
Workflow is a technology that operates on basic
imaging and work as. an electronic office boy carrying around
document images to perform business processes.
Workflow software allows administrators to design flows in logical
order of processing, also allow functions such as rendezvous,
broadcast and escalation etc. To discuss these in little more
detail rendezvous function will wait for one or more documents
to reach a certain stage before proceeding. This is similar to
keeping a pending folder on hold until some documents arrive from
other department or person. Broadcast is a function that allows
one document to be send to many at the same time and can be converged
to one again when the relevant people add their knowledge on it.
A good example is that a CEO will distribute a copy of competitors
marketing campaign for finance, marketing and human resource to
respond with their own ideas. The escalation process means what
is says, if a required action is not taken due to absence of the
process owner, a task can be diverted or escalated to a different
person based on rules. As an example a credit application can
be diverted to a different authorization officer, if the assigned
on is on leave.
In workflow it is important to understand that a successful solution cannot be implemented without solid business rules and one hundred percent automation within the process, requiring everyone involve having PC's, network connections, bandwidths and training. Also important is the culture of the organization to accept new process.
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COLD
(Computer output to Laser Disc) is not a new technology; it
is as old as Electronic Document Imaging. This technology
is used to archive, manage and distribute large amount of
computer printed reports such as daily transaction log of
banks, telecommunication log sheets etc. If all the reports
and logs generated by large banks and other similar organizations
they must need to archive huge amount of documents in paper
form. So to cut short the process of printing computer data
to paper and archiving paper, this method allows all computer
generated reports to be sent to a Magneto Optic Media for
archival.
The challenge here is not sending the data to Magneto Optic
Media, but sending the data in the same look and feel of the
paper based report. Also important is to index the content
based on certain criteria's for future reference. The COLD
software sitting in between the computer printing program
and the Magneto Optic Media does the magic. To make the look
and feel of the reports these software allow forms overlaying,
a functionality that can be used to display report in the
paper. Also these software support full text indexing or content
indexing providing facilities to search reports by its content.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools
represented with the acronym ERP are not directly related
to document management. But looking at carefully one can see
that ERP solutions allow an organization to manage all its
resources in a single software solution thus bringing together
all operations systems, suppliers etc. The trends towards
image enabling ERP solutions are in the rise. This seems to
be the ultimate paperless office concept. But unfortunately
things are not easy as they seem when you analyze the financial
and other resource commitments required for achieving such
goals.
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