Business Management Services (BMS), renowned as one of the leading Document Management, Imaging and Information Storage companies in South Africa, has announced that local Canon Products distributor, Office Equipment Products, (OEP), has entered into a joint venture agreement with BMS, for an undisclosed amount.
Commenting on the venture agreement, Peter More, Managing Director of BMS, said that the arrangement would facilitate the phasing out of his partner, Gerhard Robbin, who would be retiring. In terms of the agreement, OEP also retains the right to acquire shares in BMS in the future.
Steven Schafer, Sales and Marketing Director of Canon OEP said that as an office automation company, one of OEP`s strengths is to provide pre- and post-sales support to customers. "Through experience gleaned as key players in the office automation market, we bring a wealth of experience and a large customer base to the BMS alliance," he said.
"As we move out of the traditional printing and copying market into the digital age, we are becoming more acutely aware that the document management, processing and storage market is a huge growth area for us. In partnership with BMS, we intend becoming a major player in the local arena, to offer the total solution in integrated document, image and information management systems." he added.
Scanfile software suite
BMS is the distributor of ScanFile Document Management Systems in Southern Africa. ScanFile International has 54% of the installed base of intermediate sized document imaging systems in the United Kingdom, with Canon U.K. being the sole distributor for ScanFile.
Schafer said: "Together with BMS and ScanFile we expect to grow the market accordingly in South Africa".
Webfile - virtual image storage service
BMS recently launched ScanFile`s ASP (Application Service Provider) model, together with its WebFile product, at Dimension Data owned Internet Solutions` (IS) data centre in Rosebank.
WebFile is a South African first in document image retrieval across the Internet, off a central data and storage centre. "Rent the application, with secure storage and have instant retrieval of images, at a fraction of the outright purchase cost, anytime, anywhere", said Peter More of BMS.
Documents are the lifeblood of e-business
According to J. Ingalls of the research company the Gartner Group, "Documents are the life blood of e-Business." He said that to compete successfully in e-Business, enterprises must develop a document production and delivery strategy, which relies on automated document creation and delivery capabilities of both digital, and paper documents with prospective and existing customers. Corporations need to review how they can more effectively communicate with their current and prospective customer base, using the Internet as part of the overall e-Business strategy.
"For institutions, companies with remote sites, branches or offices, instant, secure and controlled access to records committed to an image filing system, with easy retrieval across the Internet will be a pre-requisite for companies in the future, to remain competitive and offer customer service", said More.
Canon OEP, together with BMS and the ScanFile suite of programmes will meet this demand, at affordable prices through their ASP rental model.
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