The potential of compliance
Document management is changing
Document management is changing and the compliance sell is growing in importance as regulations become commonplace, writes Steven Pearce.
Traditionally, vendors have encouraged channel partners to sell Electronic Document Management (EDM) systems as a means of increasing productivity. But recent developments in corporate governance and compliance mean that this argument has become dated and no longer falls in line with the current trends in document management.
The compliance sell is growing in importance as the level and variety of regulations to which businesses are subjected continues to increase. The high-profile scandals at WorldCom and Enron in the US acted as the catalyst for a number of major regulatory changes now starting to affect UK businesses. The Data Protection Act and the Companies Bill already influence businesses across all industries and Basel II, a European initiative focusing on minimising a company’s exposure to risk, will require all companies in the financial services sector to demonstrate comprehensive risk management practices by 2006.
Legislative changes are primarily intended to persuade organisations to tighten control over financial reporting and disclosure, as well as encouraging businesses to adopt and develop policies for the monitoring, reporting and archiving of business processes, including email and instant messaging. As such, the argument for a comprehensive EDM solution not only applies to companies subjected to legislation, but can also help non-regulated organisations to carry out best practice and support them in their corporate governance strategy.
Financial audits across all industries are becoming more common. Consequently, organisations need to improve their reporting processes and organise, maintain and manage all documentation to make available information that may be scattered across the enterprise. Arguably, this means that EDM resellers can make a more compelling argument for the enterprise solution sale than ever before.
The evolution of compliance and governance are also strengthening the case for platform standardisation, bolstering the potential for additional revenue generation for the channel by opening the doors to consolidated IT support, training and development.
The reach of compliance is likely to grow over the next few years, affecting different market sectors and sizes of business in a variety of ways, and creating numerous specialist EDM opportunities for VARs. Regardless of how this evolution manifests itself, it is clearly an area with great potential.
Steven Pearce is solutions product manager at Ricoh UK.