Case 3 Marketing software - Qumas

Qumas is an Irish information technology company, founded in 1994, that produces and markets document management software. This type of software has been used by large companies to increase quality and efficiency, and to decrease the time/cost associated with managing complex documents in business units and, more recently, across organizations. Qumas is in a very attractive market, with cash-rich customers looking for products that can make a real difference to their overall performance. Best of all, Qumas is in a market that had been more than doubling in size each year since 1995; but it is also a market that is becoming more competitive, with increasing consolidation among the leading players, and customers that are becoming more exacting in their demands.

Integrated document management (idm) technology

The total integrated document management (IDM) market (including products and services) was forecast to be worth in excess of US$10 billion by 2001, with a growth rate of 100 per cent per annum between 1998 and 2001. Underpinning this growth was the installation in large organizations of IDM across the enterprise. In effect, since the first products were available over a decade ago and there had been many successful smaller projects, organizations could now see that document management had a real role to play in business efficiency. This was happening across many industries, with products being installed in far more departments and business units than ever before.

Document management is a particular concern in tightly regulated industries, such as Pharmaceuticals, chemicals, medical devices and biotechnology. For example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the USA operates internationally and ensures the safety of the public through the licensing of companies' products. With rigorous enforcement through testing and audits, it is the FDA that decides who can produce these products. Usually the FDA gives very little notice prior to an audit, and has even been known to arrive unannounced. While a company may be producing a product to the correct standards, a key element of the inspection process is a review of the documentation, which describes what the company makes and how. The FDA must see evidence that the company has controls in place and how these have operated over time. Failure to demonstrate control over the documentation and change control process can give cause for failure of an FDA audit. This has in the past led to plant shut down, product withdrawal and the imposition of hefty fines, which can have a disastrous effect on the share prices of publicly quoted companies.

The time and cost of maintaining large amounts of documented information relating to quality control, production processes etc. represents a real problem for firms in these kinds of industry. IDM technology is being employed to solve this problem and deliver benefits on two fronts: first, to speed new product release by providing speedier creation of product-related documentation; second, to protect companies in the case of audits carried out by the FDA. Keeping the master copy up to date is difficult enough, but keeping copies of this, which are distributed around the plant, under control is an even greater headache. Such issues can make regulated document control very difficult.