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Published on October 30, 2007

Thai taxpayers are these days very happy when they receive tax refund cheques from the Revenue Department just a few days after submitting online tax returns.

Have you ever wondered how the department, which handles millions of such refund applications every year, can process refunds so rapidly? And how many people know that behind this quick new process, which has done a lot to boost the department's reputation, is a work-flow and "intelligent document" management system designed by a 30-year-old local software company called Summit Computer?

This company's three decades of experience in the IT industry began as a business unit of Summit Industrial, whose main business was bidding for hardware-supply contracts for government projects. After several years, the business unit was split out and established as a company with the name Summit Computer to sell hardware.

Managing director Jinda Boonlarptaveechoke says that in the early stages of the local IT industry, the company enjoyed considerable growth. However, about 10 years ago it became obvious that selling hardware would no longer sustain the business, so she decided to do a 180-degree turn, changing from hardware to software.

"The margin in selling hardware had dramatically decreased. We saw that if we held on to hardware as our core business, the company would not survive. So we had to change to the software business," she says.

Then there was the question of what kind of software the company would focus on. The hardware that had given Summit Computer its years of experience included scanners, and scanners involved imaging applications. So Jinda decided that the company should develop software related to the hardware it had been selling. That became the starting point for Summit Computer's current success.

Summit Computer has become a leader in the field of document management, and it seems that the bigger the system, the better Summit likes it.

Its software not only handles document management for the Revenue Department's individual and business tax applications, but also the Business Development Department's business-registration forms and business balance-sheet information, the Tourism Authority of Thailand's electronic correspondence, the Foreign Affairs Ministry's visa and blacklist databases and the Education Ministry's electronic correspondence.

"The Revenue Department has eight million individual tax applications per year, and we have kept them since 1995. The database has now scaled up to 36 terabytes [36 million megabytes]. The Business Development Department's business balance-sheet information requires 1.4 terabytes. Our system not only keeps and manages the information, but it also allows users to search through this huge mass of information efficiently," Jinda says.

The system handles both image and text documents, and the company's services extend from designing a document-management system to developing and maintaining it. Basically, the company caters for clients with a huge volume of information and a constant need to search through it.

"We developed a software engine to create a link between the document index kept in the database and the document itself. Programming varies according to a customer's requirements and usually follows their work patterns.

"Once a document is kept, users must be able to search for it and find it easily. The system is designed according to Web-based architecture that allows a client's users to log on to the system from branches throughout the country," Jinda says.

Although most of the company's clients are government organisations with huge chunks of information and sizeable needs in terms of data collection, analysis and searching, it is thinking smaller for the future. Summit Computer is planning to expand its business into the realm of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

It has concentrated its expertise into a core product called the Electronic Document Archive System (EDAS). It offers a 30-terabyte database with full-text-search and single sign-on anywhere in the country through Web-based technology. Its price is around Bt1 million.

The concept of EDAS is an electronic document cabinet capable of text and image data collection and equipped with an index management system and full-text search function. Users can easily customise the system to suit their requirements.

The move from large to smaller organisations is aimed at capitalising on the increasing number of small- and medium-sized enterprises requiring electronic document management. The cheaper price of storage and the higher capability of data-capture equipment have raised demand for digital-information collection and management.

Jinda says the company also plans to begin exporting software to global markets. Recently, it joined Software Park Thailand's "Go to the US Market" scheme and struck a deal in the US that it hopes will be a starting point for wider exports.

"There are huge opportunities, because the trend is for people to use less paper and more electronic documents. And the technology is helping, because storage prices are coming down while storage size is increasing. The market is opening up, and we are ready to catch the opportunities because we have been gradually gathering experience for 10 years. We are now a leader in electronic document management," Jinda says.

Next year, Summit Computer plans to expand its business footprint in global markets, and EDAS will be its flagship export product. Half the company's future revenue is expected to come from exports, with the rest coming locally, after Summit exits the large-enterprise market in the government sector and taps the emerging SME market.

This year, its revenue is expected to grow by at least 10 per cent over last year's figure of Bt200 million.

The changes now being planned might be regarded as simply the latest stage in Summit Computer's business diversification. The company's 30-year history in the technology business reflects the constant adjustments needed by a local IT company to keep abreast of rapid transitions in technology and business in order to survive.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation