Diakonie ČCE*: Return on investment of the new DMS at 262%

Within just three months, the implementation of eDoCat DMS at Diakonie resulted in a savings of 800 employee hours annually, with an impressive return on investment of approximately 262%. Find out why one of the largest non-governmental organizations providing social services in the Czech Republic chose Onlio and eDoCat.

New DMS for more efficient operations

Diakonie has been using DMS since the start of the new millennium. Over time, however, the original system no longer met the growing needs of the organization — the user interface became cumbersome, the system slowed down, full-text search was absent, and other limitations emerged. The Board has therefore decided to try a new solution.

The selection process was overseen by Ing. Miloslav Běťák, who is responsible for managing the economic and technical sectors. Over the course of six months, he explored six different systems for document management. The final recommendation was straightforward — Onlio’s eDoCat. The Board has begun discussions with us about making the system available in Software-as-a-service (SaaS) mode — i.e. in the form of the eDoCat Cloud solution.

“Selecting a new system is always a challenging task, but we were well aware about the functions we needed and the expectations we had for the new platform,” says Miloslav Běťák, MPH, statutory deputy director of Diakonie and executive director of the Diaconal Service Agency. “In addition to the advanced document management features, the intuitive user interface, top-notch vendor support, and the assurance of continuous innovations were crucial for us. In other words, we were looking for a high-quality, reliable solution that would endure beyond the typical lifespan of a single version.“

Deploying a new DMS within three months

Prior to implementing the eDoCat DMS, a comprehensive needs analysis was carried out. This analysis validated the relevance of the desired features and identified opportunities to enhance Diakonie’s efficiency by adapting processes to the specific needs of different staff groups.

The entire process, from placement of a binding order to the commencement of live operation,
took only three months. The implementation also included the creation of user roles and groups, setup of most commonly used document types, preparation of customer forms for structured search, implementation of customer workflows for the circulation of internal tasks related to documents, definition and deployment of backup and archiving policies, and last but not least, user training.

Secure, reliable and sustainable DMS

“One of the features we appreciate about our new system is the fact that it is based on open technologies,” explains Miloslav Běťák. “In addition to the DMS Alfresco Community Edition, which forms the basis of the entire solution, the system also relies on the CentOS Linux distribution and the PostgreSQL database platform — platforms that are also well-suited for deployment in an enterprise environment, giving us a high level of confidence in their reliability, security, and long-term sustainability.”

Easy collaboration across 40 organizational units

Four hundred users across the organization work with documents using the new solution, with about 25% of them doing so on a daily basis. Considering the size of the organization, the new solution must be able to handle a vast number of documents—several hundred thousand as of mid-2017—many of which, such as guidelines, are frequently accessed by the majority of users, whether for a short or extended period.

The key benefits include full support for the sharing, recording and management of all documents across the entire organization, from the head office to each unit.

Regular users appreciate the intuitive interface, along with the advanced full-text search, which features an autocomplete that lets them quickly find the desired document without the need to complete the full search. Also, the search can be filtered by content class which significantly reduces the number of results displayed. The user interface is highly responsive, allowing most operations to be completed with just a few clicks.

ROI of eDoCat DMS: 2 months

Operating in the cloud, eDoCat DMS is fully independent of Diakonie’s IT infrastructure, ensuring optimal performance and scalability for future development without requiring significant internal IT investments.

eDoCat also offers a quick return on investment, which for Diakonie ČCE was less than two months. This was positively impacted by the significant time savings in performing routine tasks. eDoCat DMS helps users save around 800 hours of productive time each year.

“Our experience with the eDoCat system in a software-as-a-service mode has validated our decision to move to this platform,” adds Miloslav Běťák. “User friendliness, work efficiency, structured storage, advanced search capabilities, and even the option to attach files directly from your local computer are just a few of the features that have helped us greatly streamline document management.”