The iceberg paradox

Information is like icebergs: Only about 20 percent is visible above water. But 80 percent is hidden underneath.

This analogy illustrates the dilemma of companies that strategically rely exclusively on SAP and rudimentary archiving solutions. Only about 20 percent of the information generated, so-called structured data, is visible and usable for them, analogous to the iceberg - a paradox!

This entails risks in day-to-day business and collides with the digital transformation of many business models.

Building information management exclusively on SAP is a dream that has not yet come true. SAP systems are based on structured data models and primarily address transactions as well as end-to-end processes.

The technological requirements of document management and archiving are not reflected here. That is why DMS functions are usually only weakly developed.

Any user who has ever tried to find SAP documents in a standard asset list can tell you a thing or two about this - not to mention non-SAP documents.

SAP Business Workflow only lets SAP users participate in the process. The existence of an ECM on an equal footing with SAP has justified reasons.

In many companies, there are hundreds of other business, e-mail and office applications in addition to SAP that generate masses of information day after day.

All these data-centric applications have one thing in common: they reveal weaknesses in handling unstructured data, mostly texts in the form of contracts, correspondence, etc.

Looking past this puts users on edge: the media disruptions and information silos bring them to the barricades. Without documents, decisions cannot be made, issues cannot be clarified, and processes cannot be completed.

Alongside ERP, a comparable technology has long been established in the form of ECM, which gives a face to the information lying under water. This is possible with full text and content analytics.

But just as with ERP, the same applies to ECM: Not everywhere that says ECM on it is also ECM in it! Many different offerings are available - from lean archives to departmental DMS applications for contract management and invoice processing to complete ECM systems.

IT decision-makers are no longer tempted by one-sided manufacturer statements to make quick investments in lean but "dumb" SAP archives that merely link documents to SAP on a transaction-by-transaction basis.

The fairy tale of an ECM system overloaded with unnecessary functions is nonsense, since the scalability of the functions and modules allows all entry scenarios, including that of a lean archive, which can, however, be expanded in perspective to a complete ECM.

In addition to the functional limitation of rudimentary archives, the dependency on SAP poses risks: With a pure, lean SAP archive, document access is only possible via an SAP GUI. Without an SAP license, "no way".

All non-SAP users are effectively locked out! Shutting down an SAP system is not possible with regard to future company audits, because shutting down means losing access to the archived documents.

In the case of company takeovers, where several SAP systems have to be consolidated, this becomes costly: the maintenance costs continue!

Running multiple archives from different vendors at the same time is still commonplace today. It hurts because a large number of the information silos complicates the work of the users and stands in the way of cross-functional collaboration.

Related information cannot be put into a common context. A 360-degree view is not possible. An ECM system like Doxis4 from SER creates information sovereignty and must be high on the digitization agenda.

This is the only way to harmonize information, processes and people. Those who compile their shortlist will find all ECM systems relevant to the market in the quadrants and waves of the globally independent analysts Gartner and Forrester. SER is the only German-speaking manufacturer listed.