General ECM Question

Community Topic(s):

By ,

November 06, 2010 - 3:22 AM

Our company is going to purchase an ECM program. We have narrowed the search to LaserFiche, Knowledgelake, Fortis and Autonomy (iManage). We have resellers already for each product. We want workflow, versioning, webflow, document management storage/retrieval - all the basics of the major systems out there. We do not need to be on a Sharepoint platform. I am not a techie and am the end-user and have reached some information overload after many, many presentations. All of these products will do what we want, with some variation. I like the "look and feel" of Knowledgelake best as we use the full suite of Office programs and so this product is comfortable and familiar.

Can any experts/users offer any big-picture pros/cons etc. about any/all of these?

Thanks,

Steve

 

 

 

Report

Add a Response

You need to log in to post messages. Click here to login.

Responses

Submitted by

HI Steve

Here is my view point: All the ECM products are good in their own way…..
Well, we all know that ECM products covers the Key technology functions right from DM,RM, WCM, Workflow, Imaging (Capture), Search , Browsing, Collaboration etc , , …but which product scores high & Suites the requirement is Unique can’t be determined in generic way. Detailed Assessment is required between Business requirement (Functional Fitment) Vs Technology Selection (Product Fitment) Vs Achievability (Process optimization & Efficiency achieved) Vs Finale Cost… need to be ascertained. The best way is selecting the product is through detailed Assessment for fitment to right Business & End user requirement.
Best Bet is doing a pre implementation assessment like detail Process to Product fitment analysis (Functional fitment analysis) and Technology & Vendor selection analysis.


Report
Was this helpful? Yes No
Reply

Submitted by

Coming as a vendor that has worked with all of those products, narrow your search down to Laserfiche and Knowledgelake. However with Knowledgelake, they are tightly integrated with the SharePoint platform for many of the items you mentioned. Their capture technology is awesome though. So if you pick KL, expect to implement and support SharePoint as well, which you would need to plan accordingly for.

No offense to Fortis and Autonomy, but their products have been stagnant for a long time. Not ones I recommend to customers. Laserfiche is a very mature product with great featurs. speaking form experience, your mileage will vary based on the VAR you work with. If you want some suggestions of their best VARs let me know.

Have you considered things like mobile device access? Electronic forms? iPad? Digital signature? Don;t just plan for the problems you have today, think about how you will do things going forward.

The system we at LincWare standardized on is Box.net. I know it might be late in the conversation, but it really is an amazing platform without any of the headaches of the legacy ECM systems. We integrated our electronic forms software with them in less than an hour, and we get amazing support from their team.

If you need any help or have questions, send me a message, happy to help a community member.

Report
Was this helpful? Yes No
Reply

Submitted by

I saw the AIIM tweet.
KL is a SharePoint buddy. Usually they co-exist. Laserfiche is very comfortable to use for most PC users. So as an end user there is minimal training using LF.
When it comes down to $ and number of users. These "solutions" can add up quick. So look at the ROIs for both LF and KL.
I have to agree with Dan about Box. There are no storage server issues, FTP issues, access records on mobile devices, 264 bit encryption, type II SAS 70 data storage too.

Report
Was this helpful? Yes No
Reply

Submitted by


Because ECM systems essentially all have similar capabilities, the key is your ability to manage risk and ensure a successful implementation. Yes you need to define business context and requirements in which you're applying the technology and ideally you need a BA type resource who understands ECM systems. Start there.

And your decision may come down to the vendor's / partner's ability to successfully execute/implement the system. Things like:

1. ease of installation / configuration -- what's the effort? h/w and s/w required? costs?
2. cost of governance and maintenance/supportability -- how many resources, what skills, cost of operations
3. are customizations required and effort involved in doing so?
4. security requirements -- if your organization has strict security policies, does the ecm system technically meet those and how?

I wasn't sure if records management was part of your requirements and sometimes it's easy to forget the archiving/retention side of things. And scalability and applying retention policies may also be a consideration as well.

Report
Was this helpful? Yes No
Reply

Submitted by

Steve,

A lot of great feedback here. However, one huge red flag for me is that you have seen the demos but not prepared any sort of requirements document or expectations. All these products demo well. They will also all go to bat for you on pricing most likely. Your selection of whether or not you are using SharePoint as a repository will be very critical in your choice here. If you go with SharePoint 2010, then how it's configured will also play a big role in your decision. If you are not and considering the other systems as your repository, then you need to isolate your specifications for a good repository from a good document imaging solution. For the imaging solution, you need to know what level of capture you expect, because NOT ALL CAPTURE PRODUCTS ARE THE SAME. You should also prepare sample images and see the application work on your images.

Bottom line. Do your homework before any demo's

Report
Was this helpful? Yes No
Reply
Blog email facebook linkedin Rss Twitter Youtube

Copyright © AIIM 2013 Privacy Policy