There are about 16,000 employees in MTS who work in 150 geographically distributed sites. In present the company is planning to implement the Document Management System (DMS) which is intended for managing generation, processing, duplication and the storage of orders, as well as for organization and automation of the main procedures involved in company.
The first step in the project to install DMS in the Commercial Office which is responsible for:
- market research;
- price policy;
- advertising;
- sales;
- customer services;
- regional branch management;
- distribution channel management;
- development of new services;
- new technology project management.
BUSINESS NEEDS
In present there is traditional method on hard copy of data processing in The Commercial Office. It is possible to allocate a number of problems:
- the large stream of the internal documents on paper (high level of data loss);
- a lot of incoming documents which purpose and source are not clear;
- low level of confidential information security;
- search of an order requires about 40 per sent of working time;
- coordination, approval and distribution of an order requires long time;
- lack of follow-up control.
The DMS launching allows to solve problems shown above such as:
- to provide all departments with well organized interaction;
- to simplify data processing and increase its efficiency;
- to increase productivity efficiency of activities due to cutting down time of writing, processing and searching an orders;
- to increase the efficiency of data access;
- to differentiate data access rights of employees.
The object of the DMS lunching is to decrease in the cost of services development and to increase of competitiveness due to cut down time of data processing.
DEFINITION OF REQUIREMENTS
Business Process Description
The structure of the Commercial Office management is presented in figure 1 below.
Figure 1. The structure of management.
The work flow diagram of the order’s coordination is shown in figure 2 below. We don’t use the Pert-diagram, because some stakeholders are not familiar with formal notation, thus we have chosen an easy-to-use format.
The order’s coordination is carried out by stages and takes a long time.
Figure 2. Work flow diagram.
The process consists of the following stages:
- the order’s life cycle starts with writing of a draft by the manager.
- the draft control is carried out by the manager who is responsible for checking of a draft in term of completeness and correctness of filling necessary fields. The manager is also responsible for further coordination of an order.
- the Head of Division whose name is given in the submitting list receives an order. The are three ways how to process an order:
- to add comments if the person who signs an order disagrees with some its position. The order can be signed after satisfactory answer (explanations) from the manager or anyone else;
- to transfer an order to be coordinated by employee of the department or to appoint another person to submitting list.
- the Head of Department can:
- to approve an order;
- to add comments;
- to hand over to revision.
- if an order is not coordinated it is sent back to the manager for revision.
- an approved order is given a number and is distributed into the company by the Head of Department’s secretary.
- the order’s life cycle is over when it is canceled.
New Functional Requirements
- full-scale routing and document flow scenario editors;
- control for compliance with the document processing technology requirements;
- follow-up control;
- dynamic modification of the form and content of the registration data and registration procedure;
- full-fledged version control mechanism;
- generation of any reporting forms;
- processing of any electronic objects;
- support of database server corporate standard;
- support of distributed corporate networks;
- certified encoding and digital signature tools;
- search possibilities (full-text indexing, context search);
- easy-to-use.
Proposed Approach to System Acquisition
With the implementation of DMS the company considers several options:
- in-house development a new system based on Lotus;
- purchase a commercial system that will support new processes.
In the table below the comparison analysis of the two proposals is presented.
Table 1.
In-house development will be the best choice:
- the company has the strong software development team which installed Lotus Notes;
- low proposed development budget;
- replication of product to another division without additional cost;
- short time for modification.
There are certain requirements and risks associated with this decision and they are discussed below.
Roadmap
The system implementation plan is carried out as follows:
- formation of the steering committee;
- analyzing of business process and work flows in accordance with IDEF0 and IDEF3;
- formalization of the detailed technical specification and the database model;
- designing and development;
- creating of the system description and user’s guide;
- testing and checking of technical parameters;
- user’s training;
- operation and maintenance phase.
Hardware and Software Requirements
The system will be built upon Lotus Notes technology. Systems requirements are performed by IBM. To ensure high performance and robustness, the system will be developed using the three-tier architecture, which separates presentation and business logic, and will guarantee effective work even under high loads.
- Recommended configuration for database server Lotus Domino:
Hardware: 2 х CPU Pentium IV 1MHz, 1Gb RAM, 32Gb SCSI HDD.
Software: MS Windows 2000 Advanced Server Service pack 3, Lotus Domino 5.0.9a
- Recommended configuration of the DMS system administrator workstation:
Hardware: CPU Pentium III 800 MHz, 128M RAM, HDD 4Gb,CD-ROM, 17” monitor.
Software: MS Windows 2000, MSOffice 97 OSR2 or MSOffice 2000 SR1, Internet Explorer 5.0, Lotus Notes 5.0.9a full release.
- Recommended configuration of the client workstation:
Hardware: CPU Pentium III 800 MHz, 128M RAM, HDD 4Gb,CD-ROM, 15” monitor.
Software: MS Windows 98, MSOffice 97 OSR2 or MSOffice 2000 SR1, Internet Explorer 5.0, Lotus Notes 5.0.9a.
Risk assessment
All the documents, rules of their processing, mailing routes and housekeeping information are protected by the system from any deliberate or unintentional interference. Users may access only the entities that are posted to their «desktops».
Testing Process
Testing will be performed by a high-quality assurance group, manually according to the testing plan. It takes a month. All problems and their solutions will be recorded. After the system launching feedback will be collected and troubleshooting reports how to solve problems will be distributed among users.
Ergonomics, Documentation and Training
Development of the system will follow the ISO 9241 (Part 11) standard on usability and latest user-centered design approach (as specified in the ISO 13407 standard and European Union guidelines on usability). The system will have context-sensitive online help and a limited user manual; an in-house training will be performed prior to deployment of the system.
BENEFITS
Qualitative/Quantitative Benefits
The new system will bring intangible results such as:
- to enhance productivity;
- to reduce time consumption in the management decision-making process;
- to improve follow-up control and to reduce influence of the human factor on the document flow process;
- single centralized optimally structured document repository;
- high level of confidential information security;
- the system can be implemented to different departments;
- savings up to $150 per user compared to externally systems;
- saving up to 50% working time;
Cost and Payback Period
The systems development takes 2 months and the cost of system development is $10,000. The project has short payback period.
REFERENCES
- D. Browne, D. Martland, P. Samoul, T. Sims, W. Skok, Information Management, Kingston University Business School 2002.
