Bits 'n' PCs

PILLAR PROPERY plc, the property investment and development company, has invested in the latest invoice management technology from Documation, UK developer of document management and eProcess solutions.
Pillar was formed in 1992, listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1994 and its shares were included in the FTSE 250 in 1997. Pillar Property plc is a property advisor and a major investor in property unit trusts with funds under management of approximately £2billion. Pillar is the UK’s largest retail park operator.

Pillar has placed an order for Documation IMS (Invoice Management Solution) to streamline and automate their invoice processing leading to major efficiency gains and reduced costs. Pillar’s financial accountant, Anne Thomas explains:

“Implementing Documation IMS will make processing supplier invoices more efficient. Not only will we remove the paper within the office but it will also provide us with the ability to view an invoice image from within our Coda financial system. This will enable us to answer supplier queries and internal queries more quickly.”
It will also eliminate all the filing, photocopying, loss and posting of paper invoices.

Alan Farrell, business consultant at Documation believes that Pillar will not only see a rapid return on investment but will profit from softer benefits such as a reduction in repetitive manual tasks for the account payable staff.

Documation, Wessex House, Upper Market Street, Eastleigh SO50 9FD. Tel: 02380 647776; fax: 023 80 647775; www.documation.co.uk; e-mail: info@documation.co.uk. Contact: Alison Mason.

NUCLEUS RESEARCH, an analyst firm focused on providing evaluation of return on investment (ROI) from IT investments, has published its first report in the new Benchmark Study series that looks at document management (DM) solutions. The findings based on information from DM vendors, revealed that 83 per cent of study participants felt that their ROI in DM had been worthwhile. Participants stated the biggest productivity returns were faster document retrieval and filing, staff reductions and the greatest cost savings in printing, distribution and storage.
Key Findings: In addition to the 83 per cent of users who felt they have achieved a positive ROI as the result of their DM investment.
Direct Productivity Benefits:
• 86 per cent of participants claimed the document search functionality had produced a positive effect on productivity
• 91 per cent said version-control functionality had a positive effect on productivity
• 52 per cent reduction time in document retrieval was the average from most particpants.
Scope of study: 250,000 documents per enterprise was average number included in the DM systems.
Pitfalls of Lengthy Deployments: The study revealed that lengthy deployments could adversely affect the ROI. This causes additional costs in employee time and implementation and delays the accrual of benefits. Nucleus recommends, therefore, that businesses deploy DM as a series of independent smaller scale, projects that can promise a positive ROI.
Study Methodology: Last November Nucleus conducted thirty detailed interviews with companies using DM solutions from Documentum, OpenText, FileNET, and Hummingbird. Participants involved in the study represented industries including energy, financial services, government, health care, hi-tech and manufacturing. The aim of these interviews was to create a ROI assessment tool aimed at assisting other businesses assess the likelihood of successful ROI through DM. Questions covered costs incurred and benefits gained in using DM. The replies set ranges and averages for key figures such as software licence cost and estimated time-savings.
The summary of this study is freely downloadable from:

www.NucleusResearch.com

STERLING COMMERCE, provider of business integration solutions, has released a white paper aimed at helping organisations understand the complexities of business process management (BPM) and business process integration (BPI). BPM and integration play a key role in providing business and IT managers with the ability to gain greater control over their processes and predictability in managing them. The white paper, entitled BPM and Integration: enabling organisations to gain control of their businesses is available now at www.sterlingcommerce.co.uk/response/integration/index.asp?lang+2.

Datamonitor predicts the European B2BI, BPM and BPI market will grow by 12 per cent to reach $1.9 billion in 2005, with the UK, Germany, and France capturing the lion’s share of spending, with 32 per cent, 24 per cent, and 10 per cent respectively. Most of the spend will come from the European financial services market, manufacturing, the retail, wholesale and distribution sector and communications.

The white paper found the key factor driving the growth of the BPM/BPI market was enterprises’ need to regain control of their business and technology through a unified business process integration solution that supports both internal and external integration requirements, and that can be implemented incrementally as the business requirements evolve. The white paper also outlines the unique integration needs of these specific industries that are not supported by off-the-shelf solutions, i.e. straight through processing (STP) in financial services, collaborative product design in manufacturing, collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment in distribution and consolidated billing in the telecoms sector.

The paper also draws on the uncertainty that surrounds Web services and the need for enterprise integration technologies (EAI and B2BI) to be considered within the overall context of Web services. Amongst the end-user companies interviewed, 32 per cent believed the benefits of Web services related to the integration of internal applications and the sharing of data between applications in different companies.

Sterling Commerce, 1 Longwalk Road, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Mddx. UB11 1VB. Tel: 020 8867 8000; fax: 020 8867 8001; www.sterlingcommerce.com