India has come a long way from sending a fax and maintaining documents to sending emails and using digital documentation. The journey till now was not as simple as it looks. It took decades for people to adjust and embrace this shift of digitization. There is still a long way to go, but India is seeing a vast evolution in digitization with every passing day.
Even after the technological shift, the age-old practice of maintaining manual documentation is still practiced, and many companies understand the need to do this. There are a handful of companies that delivers both digital and manual documentation services to clients. Keeping track of everything is a difficult task, and Shelves Tech Pvt Ltd is acing when it comes to handling the crucial task of documentation.
While in search for India’s Best Document Management Companies, we crossed paths with Shelves Tech Pvt Ltd. In the interview below, Mr. Panchal, Co-founder of the company, shares insights on the company’s operations and services. Read ahead for some insightful knowledge.
Please describe to us about Shelves Tech Pvt Ltd in detail.
Shelves Tech is a company formed in 2013 by two founders, with an idea to change how the information management and record management industry operates in India. Document Scanning, Document Capture, and Management are some of the Electronic Records Management services that we offer. Shelves Tech does the scanning, indexing, document conversion, and data capture either off-site or onsite for clients looking for electronic document management. We partner with major record management houses to provide complete electronic document management solutions from scanning records to storage and management in DMS.
As the Indian economy evolved and the need to provide a great platform to build businesses increased, an organization’s broader activities associated with the discipline or field known as Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) will be increased. At Shelves Tech, we work as the guardian for clients’ records. Records information management (RIM) is the professional practice or discipline of controlling and governing. It is considered to be the most critical assets of an organization throughout the records lifecycle.
The core business is the work of identifying, classifying, prioritizing, storing, securing, archiving, preserving, retrieving, tracking and destroying records. Once a record is generated, record controls are activated to govern its access and dissemination. A human resources staff may segregate papers from a personnel file and place them in a secured cabinet with a control log to manage and track access.
Role security may be set on a repository allowing access to approved users. Software may identify the official record, versions, copies, and distribution. Records managers use the classification or categorization of record types as a means of working with records. These classifications aid in functions such as record generation, organisation, storage, retrieval, transportation, and destruction. Physical vs electronic documents are the greatest degree of categorization.
Mr. Panchal, please brief us about yourself and shed some light on your professional tenure.
I am a Postgraduate in Commerce (Management) with experience of more than a decade of working in various roles in Credit Card Services (Corporate cards Portfolio), IT operations, and TPA. The varied work exposure gained in GE Capitals (SBI Cards), Attra Infotech, E-Meditek has imbibed in me great leadership qualities and equipped me with the capability and confidence to work independently. It has also boosted me to work in a team and under peer pressure, adapt myself to changing situations, and make innovations to ensure efficient and smooth workflow. The experience gained in Shelves has also helped me to take responsibility for my actions, work within deadlines and deal with people at different hierarchical levels.
Nearly a decade and more of learning experience across multiple industries, geographies, and scale and had been a part of businesses from the ground up, developing in-depth expertise on all facets of the business.
What made you venture into the document management space?
In an era of severe compliance rules like the right to information, and consumer activism, India is undergoing tremendous transformations in information management. It requires every business, government, and institution to respond promptly. Records and information management services are constantly developing.
Technological advancement, cost-effective, and enhanced ways of storage and access necessitate ongoing modification and integration with the application software. Data security and disaster recovery solutions are just a few of the key services provided to clients.
What kind of offerings do you provide to your clients?
Major services include gathering, storing, and organizing confidential and time-sensitive information, including physical and electronic records related to an organization’s business matters or transactions. Virtually all large companies use off-site storage for documents that are either vital to current operations or that are inactive but must be kept for legal reasons.
Information management services include classification and indexing, as well as data protection, recovery, and destruction services such as secure shredding. Digital document management services may involve scanning hard copies into electronic format and implementing systems for receiving and transmitting information electronically. Shelves Tech offers:
- Store, Manage, and retrieval of physical files.
- Capacity to scan and index backlogs and archives
- Digital Transformation
- Fully hosted document storage (Document management software)
- Healthcare Information Management (HIMS)
- System Integration
- Business Intelligence
- Record Management Solutions
What kind of challenges have you faced while entering into the document management space?
Though significant attention has recently been paid to the tremendous issues provided by electronic records, it is crucial to remember that the decades-long shift from paper-based to electronic recordkeeping may yet take decades to complete. As a result, records management systems are still mostly paper-based in many situations, and many organisations maintain significant amounts of paper.
Getting ready and building confidence in order to outsource their most important asset as documents were never easy. Although the cost of ownership of documents increased with each passing day, change in the mindset was never easy.
How was Shelves Tech affected in the pandemic times, and what were the steps you took to curb the damages while helping your clients and maintaining the safety of your employees?
Moriarty’s small businesses were forced to shut its operations in March when the coronavirus pandemic prompted a city mandate requiring all nonessential businesses to close. But when we closed our doors, we had to come up with different strategies to keep business going and engage with our customers. We knew we would reopen at some point, but we did not want to sit around and wait, so we did all we could to keep sales coming in.
As the pandemic shut down most of India, millions of small-business owners faced a similar issue. To restrict the spread of the illness, the economy and consumers stayed at home. To stay afloat, we changed on the fly and devised novel strategies to modify their business model. We had worked on our software solutions to provide more comprehensive solutions and targeted the corporate audience working from home. Working from home was never discussed much before, and this was a time for us to reinvest ourselves to provide digital solutions to the corporate.
What would you like to advise the young generation of entrepreneurs and enthusiasts?
Never lose hope, Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle. When you’re running your own business, it’s easy to forget to clock out. Your 9-5 days are over if you’re successful, but try to keep work and leisure distinct. Don’t let your business rule your life. Invest yourself into the business before investing your money.
Where do you envision Shelves Tech to be in the long run, and what are your future goals? How do you plan to embrace the changes happening in the document management space?
Shelves Tech is currently looking for funding to expand its array of services to offer a complete 360 degrees solution from digital record management to storing physical files and facilitating expansion in other cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore Hyderabad, and Chennai. These cities host lot of industries, and records management is the need of the hour. The company is looking forward to expanding business in the warehousing model for Physical Record management.
The requirement for the same shall be in adding warehouses varying from 5000 sq ft. to 100,000 sq ft. for enhanced reach and quality service to clients. Additionally, to build up STPL, we shall require procuring a fleet of vehicles and manpower to enhance productivity and enhanced quality checks. This shall help us to reduce dependency on outsourced business models. With three years of experience under the belt, we have realized our potential.
Have already scanned more than ten million pages ranging from healthcare to telecom and currently running processes 24 hours a day, seven days in a week. We are managing the legacy and facilitating organizations to manage and retrieve their data online by converting them into an electronic image. We are not going anywhere! Companies need services like ours to help them manage their records efficiently.
Working with freelancers, small enterprises, and corporations has shown us that we can provide a wide variety of services such as data processing, business process management, fungible management, and e-commerce fulfilment, in addition to the core services of records management. As a result, Shelves Tech Private Limited has emerged as a one-stop solution provider for its clients’ information and records management needs, providing easy and cheap solutions tailored from a wide variety of services!
What is the current industrial scenario of the document management space?
Our electronic record management and document management software services will also be a huge revenue generator as most organizations today prefer electronic storage. This is economical and provides an analytical view on their existing information. Corporates are eager to consolidate their landholdings and move from home or offshore as they realised tremendous savings during the pandemic. With the presence of current speedy network and technological advancement, we provide them monitoring tools to manage and execute the task from any place of the world.
