Documens Boss

                                            Thinking Outside the Box
                                  By Mark Edwards CEO of Document Boss

In the beginning
The storing of business records dates back to ancient Egypt.  Written accounting records are some of the oldest writings that have survived until today, and they date back to circa 3300-3200 BC. These early records were simple, single-entry listings of wages paid, temple assets, taxes and tributes to the king or Pharaoh. This simple system was used until the mid-1400s. In those days, the business transactions were written on papyrus with a calamus.  Writing was primarily used as a form of record keeping such as transactions of daily life: tallies of cattle kept by herdsmen for their owners, production figures and lists of taxes, accounts, contracts and other facets of organizational life in the community. Another important category of writing included a large number of basic texts which were used for the purpose of teaching future generations of scribes.

The explosion of records management
The explosion for records management box storage companies really happened in the 1980’s with the proliferation of personal printers and the massive increase in the quantity of paper produced by businesses. These two factors, combined with rapidly rising office rental costs, created a greater demand to take business documents off-site for cheaper storage and to free up valuable office space for staff.; initially, document storage tended to be simply a repository of mostly inactive or “dead” documents.

Changing Service
However, advancements in document management technology and a proliferation of storage units close to the major cities, meant that a range of documentation could be stored off-site and retrieved within hours if required. This included image capture, vault storage, electronic storage and retrieval, document / file retrieval as well as document workflow and data input. Client expectations in the document services sector have dramatically increased and the storage of documents in boxes is no longer the service it once was. Documents are  increasingly seen as packages of information that are needed as part of the business intelligence of an organisation and, as such, need to be accessible and, for the most active documents, searchable and retrievable quickly, when needed to facilitate business processes. In recent years, there have been a number of developments in solution offerings and technology that will have an impact upon the commercial records services industry.  Namely, but not exhaustively, the following:

• RFID – Radio Frequency Identification and barcodes that include a tiny radio transmitter and include active, semi-active and passive RFID tags. These tags can store up to 2 kilobytes of data and are composed of a microchip, antenna and, in the case of active and semi-passive tags, a battery.  Such devices can communicate location, date fields, description of contents, or other relevant information. If a file or container is removed from a secure area without being properly checked out, the sys¬tem can sound an alarm and ensure that proper procedures are followed
• GPS - Global positioning satellite (GPS) technology is already prevalent and can be used so that each delivery vehicle from a records center can be identified and tracked by HQ and the client.
• Workflow & BPM - Software and technology to manage and automate, often mission critical, document intensive, business processes within an organisation.
• Enterprise Search & Business Intelligence - and the growing need for organisations to extract the right data at the right time with a record of the  metadata of each “document”.
• Mobile Document Scanning - On premise/on demand document conversion at a customer site.
• IDR, ICR, OCR & P2P - Intelligent Document Recognition, Intelligent Character Recognition and Optical Character Recognition have all made slow but significant progress in the past 5 years.  This has coincided with an upsurge in demand for electronic mail room services and a proliferation of P2P (Purchase to Pay) service providers, across a number of vertical sectors.
• Electronic Mailroom - The capture, classification and routing of a client’s incoming mail as an outsourced or facilities management service.
• Hosting - The electronic hosting of a client’s document management repositories with the provision of secure, web enabled access

Future Trends for the Box Storage Industry
The future for the document services industry is an inevitable move to offer a wider range of document services.  The traditional box storage companies will need to evolve or see their revenue and margins come under attack.  Already, there are signs that the marketing hype of the past, from the traditional storage companies, is no longer enough to win the more demanding tenders that are being issued.  The large corporates are more aware that better alternatives are available or are being developed ,which offer them a total document service, giving them fast access, no matter what format or location the information.  

Acquisitions
The advancement in capture, indexing and cloud storage and retrieval has made the document services sector an area of interest for private equity. Firstly, the service creates annuity revenue and secondly, customer contracts are valuable since they rarely change and, if they do, there is a premium the client has to pay to move the boxes. Hence, annuity grows minus destruction year on year, with some documentation having a storage term, as in the case of life policies for instance, of 80 years+.

There is a move for the box storage companies to move up the technology ladder.  For years, they have been effectively static in what they offer but that time is over.  Already, there are signs that technology and service consolidation will make major changes to the relatively simple service of storing boxes on shelves.  There are some big players in this sector who have a history of making multiple acquisitions and growing fast.  In the late 90’s and for ten years after there was a feeding frenzy as the smaller box storage companies were being acquired by these larger players, who sometimes acquired three and four companies per month.  Will this now happen again as the same companies widen their offering and buy, not only customer base, but technology and additional services?

The real issue will be the vision and flexibility of the senior executives within those companies.  Many have worked for years in a subsector of what is now a much bigger offering and, quite often, they have keyhole vision with each separate subsector struggling to see beyond their own comfort zone and area of expertise.  However, the demand is there and the spoils will undoubtedly go to the organisations that are customer-centric.  In order to offer a true document service that dovetails neatly with existing processes and automates to provide greater efficiencies and higher returns on their investment of cash and business intelligence, they need to embrace the service change.

Skills expertise, and solution selling capabilities  to solve specific business problems, more than just merely selling scanning capability or putting boxes on shelves, will be an increasing requirement for box storage companies to remain competitive.  The need to provide a more complete end-to-end business process will also be a key services differentiator and this will require incorporating a range of technologies.

Document Boss works throughout Europe, North America and Asia-Pac as a business “deal-maker” for companies operating in the ECM, BPM & BPO industry. We provide a range of profit-critical services for senior management, including:

• Boss Mergers & Acquisitions™ - Mergers & Acquisitions for “smart” growth or divestment
• Boss Equity Value Accelerator™ - Increased growth & profitability prior to acquisition or trade sale
• Boss Executive Search™ - Strategic recruitment of star senior executives for mission critical vacancies
• Boss News™ - A "fast scan" of ECM, BPM & BPO news, keeping your finger on the industry pulse

All of our services are delivered by experienced executives from the sector who partner with our client companies to increase profitability & growth, both quickly and cost-effectively. The Document Boss fee structure and engagement methodology delivers, at low risk to our clients, a proactive & results-oriented, deal-making service.