Groupware solutions such as Exchange already play a central role in communications within and among organisations. Yet even the exchange of information between e-business partners is increasingly being handled by e-mail.
Tenders, invoices and storage space-intensive business documents such as presentations, graphics, and video and audio clips, which support business processes must be preserved in their original form, and can quickly exceed mailbox storage volume. Beyond a critical threshold, the sheer volume obstructs the ability to send e-mails.
The growing volume of e-mail traffic in small, medium-sized and large companies - some of which have thousands of separate mailboxes - puts significant load on the mailbox server. The reorganisation and emptying of mailboxes requires valuable user and system administrator resources. "Because e-mail has become the backbone of business document transfer, companies must introduce document management at an enterprise level if they want their documents archived and managed properly," says `s Rob Shaw. "Before a company knows it, its document management infrastructure could collapse into chaos and system administrators overburdened with accessing and filing important documents."
In these environments the only solution is automation, says Shaw. "By automating document archiving and access, several problems are solved:
- The burden on the Exchange server is eased
- Less responsibility for users and system administrators
- More cost effective document storage off the server, for example optical
- Integration of e-mails and attachments into collaborative business processes
- Transparent access to business data and potential for Web integration
"Essentially one is eliminating the presence of documents within the Exchange environment, yet providing ready access to attachments in a separate archive by clicking on an icon within the mail entry," explains Shaw. "Business process-related attachments are migrated either automatically (rules-based) or interactively."
Supported Software is the local supplier of the Ixos range of document and data archiving solutions, focused particularly on the SAP R/3 and Microsoft Exchange environments. Shaw says that a groupware environment demands a group approach to document management, and that complex, critical systems such as Exchange and SAP focus more on delivering an immediate function that providing industrial-strength management tools.
"Wise organisations implement a document management strategy the moment they implement a groupware application," says Shaw. "The longer they delay, the more costly and time consuming it becomes to implement such a system."
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