by Tom Beasley

It has many different names - application service provider, software-as-a-service, web-based, on-demand - but regardless of what you call it, the premise of the solution is the same. A "hosted" solution is one in which users access a software application typically using a browser-based interface. The information technology infrastructure - most hardware and software - are not installed onsite at the user's location. The user simply accesses the solution over the Internet.

One of the most successful and, thus, well-known hosted applications is Salesforce.com. In the case of this customer relationship management application, users log into Salesforce.com to manage their customer data. But the application, the database populated with customer data, the storage equipment, etc. are all contained in data center facilities owned by Salesforce.com.

Did you know this type of solution is available for document management, too? We offer solutions from leading vendors that enable our customers to manage their documents in this hosted manner, with document images and data hosted on offsite servers.

Why would a business choose a hosted document management solution? The reasons are varied and many. One primary advantage is that these types of solutions lower the barrier to entry for companies, especially small to mid-sized businesses that either don't have the infrastructure in place to support a robust document management system or don't have the means (or desire) to build one. New hardware is typically not required in hosted solutions, although many customers choose to invest in production-quality scanners to scan documents and upload them into the document management solution using a web-based interface. Other benefits include accessibility (from any Internet-enabled computer), the ability to get up-and-running quickly, and lower risk.

If you have been considering implementing a document management solution but have hesitated to invest heavily in the onsite IT infrastructure necessary to support such a system, a hosted solution may be a viable alternative for you. More information about these solutions is included in this issue of The AccuView. While the articles vary in their terminology - ASP versus SaaS - the solution is essentially the same, as are the corporate benefits they propose.

Whatever your document management needs, AccuImage has a solution for you. We understand that no two solutions can be exactly alike, since all businesses have different requirements, goals and budgets. It is for this reason that we work closely with our customers to discuss, determine, design, develop and deploy a document management solution that precisely matches their needs.

We can start by helping you determine if a hosted solution is right for you. We invite you to call 615.242.7226 to schedule a consultation today.

Best regards,
C. Roy Payne
tom.beasley@accuimagellc.com

Document management usually refers to a system or method of organizing and using documents (paper or electronic) derived from one's business. The promise of document management is huge. Getting the right information to the right people at the right time means faster and better decision-making, shorter sales cycles, better customer service and less wasted time and steps.

Document management can help organizations:

• Organize and share critical information in order to compete.
• Establish and manage document workflow processes.
• Maintain document security.
• Control information assets.

Unfortunately, many document management systems require big commitment, investment and risk. These initiatives can be characterized by: lengthy installation times, higher price tags, complex technical infrastructure requirements, and the need for company-wide buy-in. These factors have historically put document management out of reach for small and mid-sized businesses or departments within larger companies simply looking to solve their own group's needs for document management.

Benefits of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Document Management:

• Access the service through the Internet from any location.
• No large up-front hardware purchases.
• Little to no IT resources required.
• Upgrades to the software are included.
• Easy to get started with implementation taking days/weeks.
• Low-risk solution - short time to be able to demonstrate ROI.

The SaaS model provides organizations with total cost of ownership (TCO) savings. With this approach, the software is paid for by subscription and the back-end infrastructure is outsourced. This breakthrough in deployment of document management software is especially beneficial to small and mid-sized organizations because they can have access to the benefits of document management without the big startup and overhead expense. With SaaS, available IT budgets can be spread across many applications to support and grow the business.

Is a SaaS solution right for you?

• Do you have the capital resources and budget for acquiring software licenses and hardware for an in-house document solution?

• Do you have the IT resources to deploy, train and maintain an in-house document management solution?

• Do you have the expertise to combat today's security threats?

If you answered "No" to any of these questions, or if you would rather focus your financial and human resources on systems that support your core business - consider SaaS document management. No matter what type of documents you need to manage, with SaaS you can streamline your business processes and work simply.

[Source: Ricoh]

In the period leading up to Y2K, IT resources and capital investment dollars were in short supply. All of these resources were committed to code reviews and rewrites to ensure that all the legacy applications and systems would accommodate the millennium date change. Most businesses that wanted to consider new applications during this time were required to look outside the organization to have any chance of implementation in a reasonable period of time. At this same time, the financial markets were flying; venture capital flowed to any web-based startup that could project worldwide adoption, page views or click-through counts. As a result of these dynamics, development companies scrambled to web-enable their applications and most began to offer outsourced access to these same applications. A new market segment was created and the term ASP (application service provider) was coined.

ASP companies typically developed a niche service that they offered by co-locating in telecom data centers that were also funded by all the venture capital availability. As Y2K passed and IT resources became more readily available again, the markets began to realize that most of these startups or spinoffs were not based on or valued by sound business principles and the sector fell out of favor. With little or no revenues, depressed stock prices that couldn't be used to raise operating capital, and no outside capital investment availability, a lot of these companies went out of business.

At the time, the general market perception of these companies and the services they offered was that they, and their business proposition, simply didn't make sense. In a lot of cases that was true, but I want to contend that there were certain segments of this group that did have sound business plans, and that the reasons that made them sound back then still exist today. They simply fell out of favor as a result of being guilty by association with those that didn't.

One segment that is relevant today and based on sound business principles is the document management or ECM (enterprise content management) ASP. I believe that if you evaluate their offerings up against some of the traditional in-house software for license providers, you will discover that several advantages such as cost, minimizing risk, flexibility, scalability and continuity exist.

As we explore some of these, one of the first advantages we find is that by choosing an ASP solution for your ECM needs, you minimize the risk associated with making a large financial and cultural change decision. If the solution doesn't meet expectations and creates political adoption issues, it's much easier to change, and the decision-maker probably is not going to get fired due to the fact that ASP solutions typically only require a minimal upfront cost and a monthly usage fee rather than a long-term, high-risk capital investment. Also, since ASPs aggregate volumes across multiple customers, they create economies of scale in infrastructure and operational costs that are passed on to their customers.

The next advantage is scalability and flexibility, since the ASP is managing large volumes of documents and/or content for multiple customers. As a single customer's needs change, it is very easy to immediately accommodate those needs. Additional advantages include redundancy, disaster recovery and business continuity. These services are typically architected to provide infrastructure and physical location redundancy. This would be very difficult and costly for most organizations to implement and manage on this own.

With the given advantages, and the ever-increasing need for organizations to implement these types of solutions to store, manage and retrieve diverse content, while maintaining regulatory compliance, ASP solutions are indeed relevant in the current DM/ECM landscape.

[Source: Marex Group]

A few years ago, the term ASP (application service provider) was all the rage in the document imaging industry. Our 2000 index of articles [in Document Imaging Report] indicates no less than a dozen references to the then-burgeoning new business model. Of course, 2000 was also the height of the tech boom, and a few things have changed since then. Much like the term dotcom, ASP has almost become a dirty word. But in actuality, today, hosted document imaging services make a nice complement to existing document services.

Have you ever heard of Salesforce.com? Saleforce.com is the brainchild of former Oracle executive Marc Benioff. The CRM vendor has grown from a startup in 2000 to a public company with annual revenue today in the range of $300 million. Its entire business is based on an ASP model, or should I say software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. SaaS is currently the en vogue term for describing hosted applications.

Needless to say, Salesforce.com's success has attracted attention, and the hosted software model has quickly returned to the technology picture. And ECM is ripe for the success of SaaS.

We are transitioning to a world where CEOs and CFOs are increasingly reluctant to lay out big money for projects they are not going to see a return on for more than a year. This is particularly true for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), a market that is now embracing the concept of document management and ECM. ECM has the potential to become as widespread as the use of the Internet. What business can't benefit from better management of digital documents? It saves both time and money. As summarized by one industry executive, "When end users realize that ECM processes they formerly would have outsourced are now as easy to implement as falling off a log, we are going to really see this market take off."

[Source: Document Imaging Report]

AccuImage, LLC is a systems integrator that empowers their customers with solutions designed to gain the maximum value from their information at every point in the information lifecycle. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, AccuImage specializes in the design, installation and support of document and content management systems, forms processing solutions, and electronic workflow systems. The company offers hardware and software from leading companies - AnyDoc Software, Böwe Bell+Howell, Canon, Captaris, Captovation, EMC Documentum, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Kodak, Kofax, Panasonic, Plasmon and Verity - as well as consulting, document conversion and professional services.