Instead of the theoretical materials traditional for this Topic of the Week, this time we decided to focus on the practical side, so to speak: noteworthy projects implementing EDMS at Ukrainian enterprises. Such accounts are extremely interesting, as they show not only what can be achieved through IT, but also what path an enterprise and its vendor have to take to succeed
Business processes come first
Open Joint-Stock Company Joint-Stock Bank Ukrgasbank was founded in 1993 and today ranks among the twenty largest financial institutions in Ukraine. As of 1 January 2009, the bank's assets totalled UAH 14,803.3 million, its loan portfolio UAH 9,259.8 million and its equity UAH 1,452.9 million. The bank's network comprises 18 regional branches and 260 branch offices throughout Ukraine, employing more than 3,500 specialists. In March 2008, the bank launched a project to implement a system automating the business processes related to its operations. The Megapolis.DocNet electronic document management system from Softline was chosen as the platform.
According to Vadym Bryhinets, head of the project managers department at Ukrgasbank, steady and dynamic growth in demand for financial services among Ukrainian households and businesses fuelled the rapid development of the banking sector. At that time the bank, like most financial institutions, faced a number of problems. The average customer service time at remote points of sale was far too long, which led to the loss of many potential customers. The low level of business process automation increased their cost and also raised operational risks. Finally, manageability deteriorated more and more owing to the decentralisation of the information processing departments' functions. "The bank lacked a full-fledged document management system and an electronic document archive, in particular an electronic archive of client files, which limited the staff's ability to respond promptly to customer needs and, consequently, slowed down the bank's development," Mr. Bryhinets emphasises.
To maintain its market position, Ukrgasbank's management decided to implement a business process automation system. A tender was held with the following main criteria: the contractor's relevant experience with commercial banks or other organisations, an integration platform (together with specific examples of building integrated applications), a web-based interface, and reporting and scanning modules; support for electronic digital signatures; easy interaction with office applications (primarily Microsoft Outlook); flexible mechanisms for building and changing document workflows and document repositories; support for file versioning; the cost of the project; and the level of system support after project completion.
The tender was won by Softline, which offered its own Megapolis.DocNet system as the solution that best met the bank's requirements. It is built on Microsoft technologies such as Office SharePoint Server 2007, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006. The software supports the full information management life cycle and is focused on automating document-centric tasks. The following business processes were selected: opening current and deposit accounts, currency control, lending, and issuing corporate plastic cards.
As Serhii Malyi, manager of Ukrgasbank's document management system implementation project, notes, since only highly specialised banking tools had been used there before Megapolis.DocNet, business process automation by means of EDMS essentially started "from scratch". As part of the project, Megapolis.DocNet was integrated with the existing Scrooge 3 core banking system, the iBank2 UA client-bank solution and other banking systems.
Current account opening operations were automated first. The work and commissioning into production took two months. Then the "Currency control" business process was built and went through pilot operation, followed by "Opening deposit accounts".
"Thanks to the system, Ukrgasbank gained a tool for centralised management of the business processes related to its operations, tighter control over their progress at every stage and a 'single window' for interacting with other specialised solutions. Employees can access the system from any branch of the bank via the Internet," Mr. Bryhinets says, sharing his impressions. "Most importantly, the business processes have become more transparent and it has become possible to optimise them." According to the bank's representatives, the results of the implementation were visible almost immediately: opening a current account used to take about two weeks, and now it takes four hours.
Based on an article in Komputernoye Obozreniye (Computer Review) magazine, No. 31 (697), 8 September 2009.