Visiting Director of Mobius Management Systems, Peter Tierney, says the evolution of electronic document management systems points to the imminent arrival of what he calls the electronic document supermarket.
"Customer service intensive industries," says Tierney, "such as banking and insurance, know that extremely high volumes of customer information must be handled with greater speed than ever before. This makes it vital that they, and their customers, are able to access information quickly. The better service providers can do this on-line, provided they have the right tools, but the day is rapidly approaching when it will be even more cost effective for their customers to access the information they require for themselves, probably via the Internet.
"It will be rather like pushing your own information trolley into an electronic document supermarket," says Tierney, "and taking down from the shelves the information you require, when and as you need it. As a service consumer, you won`t need to keep files at home any more, because the service provider will have archived your documents and have a complete record of all your interaction with that organisation."
Tierney is on a visit to South Africa to talk to Mobius users and prospects. In addition to South Africa, Mobius Management Systems operates in the United States, Europe and the Pacific rim, and will soon be opening an office in Japan. Current customers number 1 400 world-wide. In South Africa, the exclusive distributor is Bateleur Software Holdings.
Tierney says: "My Mobius message to South African executives is that your country has tremendous entrepreneurial spirit which needs to be released. Currently the South African market is very finite and intense, competitive advantage has to be grabbed quickly if an organisation is going to expand its market share. As more mergers take place, the battle for market share will intensify.
"For those companies focusing on containing costs, there is a danger that business improvement and the delivery of new services will be limited. It is our experience that cost reduction must go hand in hand with revenue improvement, which flows from new business. An important part of generating new business is service improvement, through the use of technology."
After 17 years, says Tierney, Mobius is regarded as state-of-the-art when it comes to document management. In the eighties, document management hadn`t got much further than report distribution. By the nineties, the Mobius mantra had changed to `Any document type, any medium on any server`.
Looking at electronic document management in South Africa, Tierney says many companies still believe that report distribution is as far as it goes. Others, in an effort to improve on mere report distribution, embark on a learning curve but tend to get caught up in this process rather than driving a business need.
"Mobius people like to get close to the problems clients experience when high volumes of items have to be accessed," says Tierney. "Often what`s needed is just a copy of a certain document for head office, a billing detail which a customer may be querying, his latest letter of instruction or a request for historical information for tax purposes - simple day to day requirements which, unless met quickly, can generate a great deal of unproductive activity. Better access to information empowers the knowledge worker at every level and makes for happier customers.
"There is, of course, a bigger picture - global competition, which our colleagues at Bateleur are helping many South African companies combat. They need a software supplier who has the depth of expertise that`s required to take projects through to the delivery of the business benefits."
Bateleur`s Sam Selmer-Olsen says the Mobius customer base in South Africa is set to grow. "Productivity improvement can and should take place together with cost control when seeking competitive advantage, locally and globally. More and more of our companies are shaking off the lethargy brought on by legacy systems. And more and more of South Africa`s managers are growing dissatisfied with partial, on-line information. In Mobius, we have a remedy for that."
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