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Case study: DLF adopts Document Management System, upgrades ERP

The Rs 700-crore construction company DLF Laing O'Rourke provides engineering and construction services across India. Currently is has over 25 projects including housing, malls, commercial offices and SEZs. Each of these projects are independent, but their staff interact with central functions such as finance and accounts at the company's head office.

The projects generate a high number of financial documents including bank payments, invoices and journal vouchers. As the business grew, so did the numbers of documents. "When we started this project, we had 8 lakh pages which were hardbound and stored on expensive real estate at our head office. Moreover, these documents needed to accessed for audit purposes and it was very expensive and time-consuming to archive and retrieve a document," says Deepak Madan, GM-IT, DLF Laing O'Rourke. "It impacted business efficiency."

Madan knew the company needed to digitize these documents in an electronic repository and implement a document management system that could search and retrieve documents at the click of the mouse. And it had to be done quickly:  the pile of documents was growing at the rate of 30,000 pages a month.

Madan evaluated several document management systems in the market before zeroing in on DocImage. The next step was interfacing it with the company's existing ERP system to validate unique data fields on the different kinds of vouchers that were being scanned. Scanned images were converted to text using OCR and matched with data captured from the ERP.

In July 2008, the digitization of the initial lot of pages was outsourced to a vendor who organized, scanned and indexed them. End users at all project locations were then trained to use DocImage by the vendor employing the 'train-a-trainer model'.

In the meanwhile, scanners were procured and implemented at all project sites. By August 2008, the application was tested and implemented.

The Rs 38-lakh project has helped the company save Rs 1.65 lakh a month in real estate and manpower costs. Today, users have an electronic, indexed and searchable repository of all financial documents. Each document is now digitized within 48 hours of its creation. DLF also maintains a complete back-up of records on tapes, thus mitigating the risk of complete data loss.