SMB Document Management Market Wide Open?

September 27th, 2006: Office productivity specialist FileVision is putting the fear into resellers saying that if they aren’t selling document management and imaging solutions to SMBs, they better start right now.

The company says that market trends such as the availability of affordable, integrated scanners, compliance standards and competitive forces are all pointing to SMBs needing solutions that enable them to do more with less.

“While businesses of all sizes are faced with stricter standards to capture, retain and securely store information, SMB customers are in an especially difficult spot to handle the time and staffing requirements necessary to comply,” says LuAnn Woods, Director of Marketing for FileVision.

While FileVision’s aim is to expand its value-add resellers, it does raise a good point in that document management is undervalued, particularly when it comes to improving the workflow of a typical SMB.

SMBs represent the majority these days, yet as analysts such as IDC’s are finding that they are still not necessarily seen as targets for document/content management solutions,

“Document management solutions represent a growing market that has great future potential,” says Kwon Chin, research manager with IDC's Document Solutions service. “The enterprise market is crowded, but the SMB space is still wide open, with increased education driving demand as well as the overall market size.”

IDC says SMBs are all ears for effective solutions, however, due to factors such as cost, perhaps an open source solution will be the first to fill the gap.

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