Several Software Vendors state that they can handle all the aspects of content management with just one piece of software.
At VDoc Software, we have a complete different approach which consists in integrating five main modules in one suite.
VDoc Portal provides the underlying services (directory, cache...), collaborative applications (people finder, news, forums...) and a customizable portal user interface. This module is the entry point for all users. It simplifies access to the information and application.
VDoc Process provides a easy and fast way to model and automate all kind of processes. This module allows non-IT employee (managers, business analyst) to model the processes (that they best know) and to generate, without any programming complete Web process-driven applications (purchase process, customer claims...). This module provides the workflow services for the Suite.
VDoc File Center provides a very easy and intuitive way to publish and find documents for all employees, partners or customers. This module has been designed to simplify the use of document publishing and finding features for workers who have basic IT or Documents Process knowledge and don't need all of the sophisticated functions that a Electronic Document Management system typically has.
VDoc Document Management provides very rich document management functionality to streamline and automate complex document processes. This module allows document responsible to create document templates connected to back-office applications (ERP, CRM...) to speed up by more than 10 times obtaining final documents (ex: Technical Specifications, Work instructions...). The final version of the documents can be automatically published in VDoc File Center.
VDoc Easy Site provides a very easy and intuitive way to create web sites and to publish web content. This module also allows publishing within web sites documents or processes that are managed by the other modules of the suite.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Why do Small and Medium Enterprises need Collaborative Suites?
SMEs have to rationalize their processes
Constrained by the competition, Small and Medium Enterprises have to constantly improve the quality of their products or services, whilst reducing time to market by executing more quickly decision making and operational cycles.
Since 1990, at first in the manufacturing organizations, SMEs have had to rationalize their processes in order to obtain quality certification (ISO 9001 V 1994), this effort enabled them to improve the quality of their products by focusing on reducing errors but it was extremely expensive.
Today, in an ISO 9000 V2000 spirit, they want to deliver the same quality but in a more efficient way. They have written their procedures, now they have to gain in productivity and reduce errors during their execution, and the best way to face this challenge is to automate a big part of their processes.
Whilst, their organization has changed, the time when an organization alone was able to deliver a complete added value to the customer is over. Nowadays multiple organizations (internally or externally) have to collaborate (share ideas, documents, structured information and action plans) to constitute a chain of added values.
Information Technology has brought extraordinary benefits through electronic message solutions and internet communication, but SMEs need more. They need to collaborate inside or outside their entity through structured processes.
What are their processes?
Typically, we can subdivide the processes of an organization into three domains:
- The product realization domain includes all the processes that contribute towards the realization of the product (e.g.: selling, product specification, product design, product manufacturing, product delivery).
Generally, all the manufacturing processes are already broadly automated through ERP systems. In this area, organizations especially need to improve the upstream (e.g.: success stories, collect customer needs, proposals, launching of new product) and downstream processes (e.g.: customer support) that are not covered by the ERP systems.
- The Management processes domain includes all the processes that contribute towards the strategy, quality policy, goals definition, budget definition, communication and hiring. Obviously, automating these activities doesn't present an obvious added value as they are singular intellectual tasks with the exception of the hiring and department budget submission processes. For big SMEs, new regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandate that companies implement improved internal controls. Automating processes for internal control validation, audits, issues submission, preventive and corrective actions ensure that the strict defined processes are followed.
- The support processes domain includes all the processes that play a role in human resources management (e.g.: training), purchasing, information system management, accounting and quality control. With the exception of raw materials purchasing and accounting domains, these processes are poorly automated.
The following list gives just a few examples of processes which are poorly automated:
- Quality control: customer claims, non conformity, preventive and corrective actions, audits
- Human resources: CV submission, arrival of new employee, internal employee movement, training requests, holiday requests
- Finance and purchasing: expense validation, extra production purchasing requests
- IT: incident submission, application improvement requests, purchasing requests
How could they automate these processes?
They face to 3 solutions:
Firstly: implement standard software.
It is impossible to find one standard software that covers the entire target processes; they could try to implement for each area a standard product, for instance a CRM for sales and support, a HR management software for Human resources, etc. In this case, they should have a spaghetti of disparate applications too big for the needs, difficult to adapt and integrate in the Information System and, at the end, very expensive.
Secondly: implement a specific development integrated in their intranet
Generally, because they don't have the resources internally, they have to buy a specific development from local integrator. It should be a PHP or ASP development or a Lotus Domino development.
They have the great advantage to obtain an application that fits perfectly their original needs but almost impossible to evolve (extend) without expensive costs. Generally, they automate one or 2 processes but have many difficulties to automate 10 or 20 processes.
Thirdly: implement a workflow solution
In this case, the solution varies from a specific development that uses internally a workflow system (for instance Domino.Workflow) to a simple document workflow (for instance a workflow that describe the routing of document, for instance based on SharePoint Portal) or a Human Workflow product as VDoc Process.
The first implementation is quite identical to the specific development solution.
The second one, based in a single document workflow, brings limited added value. This ensures that each document type (generally a Word form or an excel form) follows the pre-defined route, and this also permits managers to track who and when people act in the process. But because the information is non-structured (document MS office), it is very difficult to adapt the route in function of datas (e.g.: have an expert depending of the nature of the purchase) or to create accurate direction dash boards (for instance, for a support processes, we know that the demand follows the procedure we defined, but we can't know the tendency for a particular product).
The third one is assuredly the best solution if people in place (i.e.: internal or external functional experts associated with very limited IT management resources) can ensure the success of the projects.
To be precise, automating at the end 10 processes (for instance: 3 in the quality management area, 2 in the sales or marketing area, 2 in the design area, 2 in the financial or purchasing area, 1 in the support area) don't have to exceed 3 months delay involving 5 functional experts during 1 day for each, 1 full time IT manager and 10 days for a developer.
In conclusion
SMEs share the same challenges than big ones: improve quality, reduce cycle, improve productivity but they have limited means: small IT team, limited competencies in development (even their traditional IT partners witch are generally focused on implementing infrastructure as messaging system lack development or project management skills) and low budget.
They need packaged processes but highly adapted incorporated in a collaboration platform.
Moreover, some departments of big accounts such as quality departments share the same concern as SMEs.
Our success (600 customers and 450 000 users) confirms that this diagnostic is true : our product (VDoc Process) stands out from others BPM solutions by its capability to be used by non computer scientist to design, adapt and automate processes without programming. The development effort is limited to connecting the processes to the back office.
Constrained by the competition, Small and Medium Enterprises have to constantly improve the quality of their products or services, whilst reducing time to market by executing more quickly decision making and operational cycles.
Since 1990, at first in the manufacturing organizations, SMEs have had to rationalize their processes in order to obtain quality certification (ISO 9001 V 1994), this effort enabled them to improve the quality of their products by focusing on reducing errors but it was extremely expensive.
Today, in an ISO 9000 V2000 spirit, they want to deliver the same quality but in a more efficient way. They have written their procedures, now they have to gain in productivity and reduce errors during their execution, and the best way to face this challenge is to automate a big part of their processes.
Whilst, their organization has changed, the time when an organization alone was able to deliver a complete added value to the customer is over. Nowadays multiple organizations (internally or externally) have to collaborate (share ideas, documents, structured information and action plans) to constitute a chain of added values.
Information Technology has brought extraordinary benefits through electronic message solutions and internet communication, but SMEs need more. They need to collaborate inside or outside their entity through structured processes.
What are their processes?
Typically, we can subdivide the processes of an organization into three domains:
- The product realization domain includes all the processes that contribute towards the realization of the product (e.g.: selling, product specification, product design, product manufacturing, product delivery).
Generally, all the manufacturing processes are already broadly automated through ERP systems. In this area, organizations especially need to improve the upstream (e.g.: success stories, collect customer needs, proposals, launching of new product) and downstream processes (e.g.: customer support) that are not covered by the ERP systems.
- The Management processes domain includes all the processes that contribute towards the strategy, quality policy, goals definition, budget definition, communication and hiring. Obviously, automating these activities doesn't present an obvious added value as they are singular intellectual tasks with the exception of the hiring and department budget submission processes. For big SMEs, new regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandate that companies implement improved internal controls. Automating processes for internal control validation, audits, issues submission, preventive and corrective actions ensure that the strict defined processes are followed.
- The support processes domain includes all the processes that play a role in human resources management (e.g.: training), purchasing, information system management, accounting and quality control. With the exception of raw materials purchasing and accounting domains, these processes are poorly automated.
The following list gives just a few examples of processes which are poorly automated:
- Quality control: customer claims, non conformity, preventive and corrective actions, audits
- Human resources: CV submission, arrival of new employee, internal employee movement, training requests, holiday requests
- Finance and purchasing: expense validation, extra production purchasing requests
- IT: incident submission, application improvement requests, purchasing requests
How could they automate these processes?
They face to 3 solutions:
Firstly: implement standard software.
It is impossible to find one standard software that covers the entire target processes; they could try to implement for each area a standard product, for instance a CRM for sales and support, a HR management software for Human resources, etc. In this case, they should have a spaghetti of disparate applications too big for the needs, difficult to adapt and integrate in the Information System and, at the end, very expensive.
Secondly: implement a specific development integrated in their intranet
Generally, because they don't have the resources internally, they have to buy a specific development from local integrator. It should be a PHP or ASP development or a Lotus Domino development.
They have the great advantage to obtain an application that fits perfectly their original needs but almost impossible to evolve (extend) without expensive costs. Generally, they automate one or 2 processes but have many difficulties to automate 10 or 20 processes.
Thirdly: implement a workflow solution
In this case, the solution varies from a specific development that uses internally a workflow system (for instance Domino.Workflow) to a simple document workflow (for instance a workflow that describe the routing of document, for instance based on SharePoint Portal) or a Human Workflow product as VDoc Process.
The first implementation is quite identical to the specific development solution.
The second one, based in a single document workflow, brings limited added value. This ensures that each document type (generally a Word form or an excel form) follows the pre-defined route, and this also permits managers to track who and when people act in the process. But because the information is non-structured (document MS office), it is very difficult to adapt the route in function of datas (e.g.: have an expert depending of the nature of the purchase) or to create accurate direction dash boards (for instance, for a support processes, we know that the demand follows the procedure we defined, but we can't know the tendency for a particular product).
The third one is assuredly the best solution if people in place (i.e.: internal or external functional experts associated with very limited IT management resources) can ensure the success of the projects.
To be precise, automating at the end 10 processes (for instance: 3 in the quality management area, 2 in the sales or marketing area, 2 in the design area, 2 in the financial or purchasing area, 1 in the support area) don't have to exceed 3 months delay involving 5 functional experts during 1 day for each, 1 full time IT manager and 10 days for a developer.
In conclusion
SMEs share the same challenges than big ones: improve quality, reduce cycle, improve productivity but they have limited means: small IT team, limited competencies in development (even their traditional IT partners witch are generally focused on implementing infrastructure as messaging system lack development or project management skills) and low budget.
They need packaged processes but highly adapted incorporated in a collaboration platform.
Moreover, some departments of big accounts such as quality departments share the same concern as SMEs.
Our success (600 customers and 450 000 users) confirms that this diagnostic is true : our product (VDoc Process) stands out from others BPM solutions by its capability to be used by non computer scientist to design, adapt and automate processes without programming. The development effort is limited to connecting the processes to the back office.
zCore Business Solutions uses VDoc Easy Site to manage its Web Site
zCore Business Solutions, a US VDoc Partner, uses now VDoc Easy Site to manage its Web Site.
http://www.zcorebusiness.com
http://www.zcorebusiness.com
Become a VDoc Partner
With more than 600 customers and a 100% Indirect Sales Strategy, VDoc Software is your best choice to enrich your portfolio in BPM and collaborative areas.
Get in Action - enter the Collaborative & BPM market (IT Fastest growing market) by joining forces with VDoc Software, a dominant industry player and fill out our VDoc Partner Program Request form to receive information on strategic partnerships with VDoc Software.
VDoc Partner Program Request
Get in Action - enter the Collaborative & BPM market (IT Fastest growing market) by joining forces with VDoc Software, a dominant industry player and fill out our VDoc Partner Program Request form to receive information on strategic partnerships with VDoc Software.
VDoc Partner Program Request
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