IBM FileNet Reviews

We have implemented it in a real estate environment. They receive many applications on the front-end and, before our implementation, they were processing them manually. When we implemented it, they moved to a completely paperless system.

For example, a customer walks in at the front desk, the reception, and they ask that the company process a transfer or a no-demand certificate, which is a form used in real estate to clear charges against your property. The person at the front desk creates a case in Case Manager. It's processed by the Case Manager in two different departments, and it's completely paperless.

The customer can view the status from their homes. We have created a very scalable application using FileNet and Case Manager.

Our clients use it for office automation systems to have a paperless environment. Most customers are using it for paperless because Case Manager has more capability than any other product within case management and process flows.

Before the implementation of the software, there were about 30 people who were processing things. One person would take anywhere from one to four days to process something. Now, it takes them two hours. They are processing things within multiple departments within two hours. 

The solution has increased their productivity, saving them time and cost. When it takes a person longer to get something done, there are more operational costs. If we shave the time from days to hours, there is definitely an opportunity for them to save on operational costs.

In government departments and the public sector, they have to follow regulations regarding land issues. The products are already certified by the regulatory parties, such as OSHA and ISO. During implementation we take care of these rules.

• Scalability
• Ease of use

These features are important because the customer where we have deployed it has millions of documents, millions of block files, and inside one block file there are hundreds of documents. And over the last five years, the volume of the documents has been increasing. It's handling all of them and without any errors.

Also, we see business users using IBM automation and they think that the interface is very easy to use. They can find the options and links they need. It's not difficult to find what they want or to do what they need to do. In the scope of projects where we use it, we have been able to provide them with the user interface they require. After that, they are very comfortable with it. It is already a very simple interface.

We have been working with it from version 4.0 and now it is at 5.3. They have improved a lot already.

However, there is room for improvement in the file management. It's very complex. 

In addition, they should have a built-in application for directly capturing documents from the scanners. Currently, they have that, but it is a separate product. They should have a built-in solution for that functionality.

These solutions are very good in terms of stability.

Most of our customers want to expand their automation processes. They initially implement it in four to five departments and then they expand it to the rest of the departments.

Technical support from IBM is very good. There is level-one, level-two, level-three, and lab services. We have dealt with all these support levels during our implementation. When we have asked for support with technical issues, they have resolved them.

In the private sector our customers involve us in the decision-making process, but in the public sector they don't.

Some of our customers were using the Microsoft document management system, the SharePoint portal. They were not happy with that and some of them moved from SharePoint to FileNet. They switched because FileNet has more features and it's easy for the users. They find it a complete enterprise content-management system. They have told us that a SharePoint portal is only a document management system. They cannot use it in the broader context of enterprise content management.

The setup is very straightforward.

When it comes to automation processes, so far it has not added up to the mark versus what our customers were expecting, but there is definitely some return on investment due to having an automated system and through savings on the printing costs.

There are multiple vendors like OpenText, M-Files, and SharePoint. Our clients have found that FileNet is, overall, a better solution.

I would definitely advise going with FileNet. It is better when it comes to scalability.

We have integrated it with multiple systems. We have integrated it with customized customer applications built in-house and with Oracle ERP. It's also integrated with a customer's website. The solution provides a built-in API and by using the APIs we are integrating it easily with other systems.

We usually use it for document management in insurance or finance companies. Some of our clients are using the workflow for insurance cases. In these companies, FileNet is ingesting a lot of documents and a lot of insurance claims.

In terms of automation, we're using IBM Content Collector and we have started using RPA a bit. We're using ICC for some of our customers to ingest and automate the upload of multiple documents in bulk. We've just started using automation with RPA but not with the P8 system; rather for other functionality that customers need.

Ninety percent of our customers in the insurance industry, here in Israel, are working with FileNet.

Most of our customers use FileNet on-prem.

Filenet saves time in terms of clearance of insurance claims. Building a claim, from the customer side, is often easier as well. Not everything is perfect but it's good enough to work in most of the big insurance companies here in Israel.

Most of our customers are not using some of the most valuable features, like analytics, text search, or case or workflow features. They are generally not used by our customers because they're using other programs that are built-in to their networks. So if a customer has a workflow system already, he won't use the workflow system that is built-in to FileNet, although it's available.

It's the same with the content analytics. If the client has Kibana and Elasticsearch for searching text, they won't use that feature that comes with the FileNet P8 because it's only for the P8 system and not for the whole network.

The analytics in FileNet are too complicated and they consume too much infrastructure, memory, and CPU. They're too expensive to work with.

The usability, with the addition of Content Navigator, is not good enough. We're building our own interface, doing a facelift of the product, to satisfy our customers. People here in Israel are generally more Microsoft-oriented. They're used to the SharePoint look and feel, the Outlook look and feel. When they see Content Navigator and its features, it's a bit different for them. It's hard for them to get used to it.

Most of our customers and users are asking for features with a file-system-type look and feel. For example, when they open a folder in their file system they want to see the hierarchy of the folders. If IBM built something like other products, like M-Files for example, with a file-browsing feature, into P8, it would be a very good feature. Most customers around the world would use it.

That is what we're trying to build on our own. It would be easier for the customer to work with, in the same way IBM did with the Content Navigator Office Integration. There, you can browse through Office, the folders, and find things. You can drag and drop documents from Word, from Outlook, straight into the file folder in FileNet. If they would bring these kinds of features into the file system itself, without Office, it would be a killer feature.

We have been working with it for a long time. It's one of the older versions. Both it and the new version are probably very stable.

We generally don't have any issues with the stability of the system. That could be because we are too small. In Israel we have small companies and they don't have very complicated systems, like in the United States or Europe. We have medium-size customers, compared to companies around the world. We don't have 500 users at a customer's site so these are not huge systems. And they're usually in the same geographical area. It's not like there is a site in New York and another one in Chicago or Philadelphia.

There are no issues with scaling. It's based on WebSphere Application Server so it's very easy to scale up.

I've contacted tech support many times. I don't have very much good to say about it. The people in support are changing often so most of the people there aren't familiar with the product. They are always asking for the basic information about the system, even though we've worked with finance customers for many years and we know the product. We try to provide the actual error to customer support and to get an answer about it. But until they forward it to first-level support or engineering, we lose time. We are not usually satisfied with customer support.

We used to use M-Files and we are a little familiar with Alfresco and Documentum. Generally, the biggest difference between those solutions and FileNet is the price. The others are much cheaper but most of them are less robust and less stable than FileNet. Programming and manipulating other programs to work with FileNet is easier than in Documentum, as far as I know. Each one has its own best features. It depends on the use case.

The initial setup depends. If we're talking about a Windows-based installation, it's very easy. For other operating systems, like Linux, it's a bit complex. If we're talking about the whole P8 suite, it's very complicated. Documentation on how-to, screenshots, or step-by-step instructions are missing in all of IBM's P8 finance products.

Unlike Apple or with other vendors, where you've got to book, you can install it without any understanding of the underlying system. In finance, with P8, if you are not familiar with bits and bytes you won't end up completing the installation.

In terms of how long it takes, if we're talking about only Content Navigator and FileNet P8, a basic system, just the installation could take three to five days. And that's not talking about the implementation. It depends on the customer's site, on the operating system, on the database vendor. Sometimes the version doesn't support it. It also depends on the network. It depends on a lot of things that are not straightforward.

We have a standard implementation strategy that we use for our customers. We're usually asking for Microsoft Windows operating system and either a SQL or Oracle Database, and we are not doing any other complex installation configurations like a very sophisticated single sign-on. That's because it doesn't work very smoothly.

The ROI on the automation aspect of FileNet is a big question. I don't have specific numbers. We're dealing with between 30 and 40 customers here in Israel, and every customer is different.

Within the IBM DBA (Digital Business Automation) portfolio we use Datacap and we do see a return on investment from that. The automated document scanning and email scanning show a very good return on investment.

If you are a small or medium-sized company, I would advise working with other programs before you put money into FileNet, even though I've worked with it for a long time. If we're talking about a large company, for the robustness, stability, performance, and the growth — that you can grow it within seconds — I would advise using FileNet, without any doubt.

The performance is dependent on the database. Issues with performance are usually associated with databases issues. And, as I mentioned, the GUI of IBM Content Navigator caused a lot of issues with performance, but it's working well with our GUI.

I would rate FileNet at eight out of ten. It's not a ten because of issues like the flexibility of the system, the ease of working with or manipulating or programming and enlarging it. It needs to be more flexible to work with, not hard-coded and not closed like it is now.

We use the platform for the automation of business digitalizing documents. We can turn the digital content into workflows for automation and monitoring processes.

It is a superior product based on Gartner's classification. It provides good stability and scalability for huge enterprises as well. One of the valuable features is the ability to digitalize documents, including enterprise content. We can store the information in video and audio formats. It provides efficient security. Only authorized users can view and edit the stored documents in a role-based user group. Another form of security is redacting documents, where one can view only selected parts of the document. It allows us to share crucial documents like contracts by ensuring that confidential information is redacted.

The platform's price could be better than other products in the market. It could be simpler to use, considering multiple use cases. We could deploy it easily with some training as well.

IBM offers distinct features through different products, such as IBM Enterprise Records for record management, IBM Datacap for document scanning, and IBM Business Automation Workflow for complex workflows. They could include all the features into one application, similar to other vendors.

We have been using IBM FileNet for eight years.

IBM FileNet can add and manage processes for a minimum of five and 1000 users.

The initial setup and maintenance are complicated. It requires authentication to be able to deploy and maintain the certificate. We need to configure different protocols for different user groups. We require an administrator to conduct the deployment as large enterprises involve several roles and lengthy processes. We first deploy it in a test environment. Once approved, we implement it in a production environment. It requires a month to complete.

The product generates a return on investment.

We evaluated Alfresco. It offers a community edition free of charge.

I rate IBM FileNet an eight out of ten. I recommend the product. I advise others to go for it if they have the budget. It is a mature product with enough resources and support partners in various regions.

We use it to document content management. We have a payment system for every corporate payment that goes through our bank, it has to go through our application. We use it for the business process management data where multiple things have instability for that transaction.

They do validations on it to see if the transaction is valid and next we use it according to the guidelines of the governments of countries like Singapore, India, and the USA. Every now and then countries impose sanctions on different countries and they have to make sure that the payments do not go in or out from those countries.

We use it to audit.

I like the security and also the configuration. It is easy to configure and most of our business use cases have everything just with the configuration itself.

Developers like us have an upgraded interface. That interface does not work in the process that we have today. It hangs and is not user-friendly.

I have been using IBM Case Foundation for the last five years.

It is stable. There were a few bugs. They should release the fixes for the bugs a little more quickly, maybe within a month instead of waiting six months. I think they do it quarterly now. If possible they should release small patches again.

It is scalable.

In my previous company, we had an issue with one of their products. We could not find anything on the data documentations or on their website. We approached them and they accepted that there is a problem with the product itself and so we got in touch with them and they tried to fix the issue. 

The initial setup is quite complex, not straightforward. 

Deployment takes around two hours roughly. Depending on the setup, it can take half a day. 

We used consultants for the deployment. 

My advice to someone considering this solution is that there are a lot of open-source tools available. Other than going for IBM FileNet you should look into other options too because even we are not using the full potential of FileNet and we are paying a huge amount of money for it. 

I would rate FileNet a seven out of ten. 

There are many aspects that can be improved in this product. We're doing a lot of projects with customers. It would help if there was a summary of the products. They should be able to do more upgrades of the product or offer new versions. They could also improve the user experience.

They have to think about how to make the environment over. Make it in some containers, for example. The complexity of installation can also be improved. They should re-imagine the way that they install products. 

The solution is very stable.

The solution is very scalable.

We use various solutions that aren't really similar, but are in the same field. There are lots of products that pretend to do enterprise content management. I have sample projects with SharePoint, and Microsoft Checkpoint among others.

In terms of the initial setup, you have to have some requirements. I am technical specialist in finance, so I can do installation as well, but it's not easy for everyone to handle. 

You have to know it takes time, you have to be very careful and know exactly what you are going to do. You need a good knowledge of the production system, middleware, application services, servers databases, etc. It's not as easy as other products.

How long it takes to deploy the solution depends of the requirements. It can take from six months to two years. It depends on a lot of factors including the modules, because you want a summary, and which remodels are the customer needs. The solution is modular, so you may have lots of modules. 

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We are using it as a repository. We have multiple input sources where we receive files and, as of now, we are using it as a kind of a "dumping yard." We are not using it for end-to-end workflows and processes as well. We are just using it to get the files and keep them.

It's deployed on-prem only.

When it comes to automation, it has been really helpful for us. We used to do multiple things manually, like storing files store on our local PCs. Now, everything is stored inside of FileNet. It has really helped to smooth our business processes.

In terms of work effort, it has certainly reduced the amount of manual work by 40 to 50 percent. Some of the end-to-end, SLA processes used to take somewhere around two to three days and now they have been reduced to about an hour.

Compliance comes by default with product itself. Everything is captured in the product. Any kind of context, accessibility — everything is captured there. It has really smoothed out our audit process.

FileNet is very user-friendly. I went to Middle East about a year ago and one of the sales guys there gave me a demo with the latest version of the UI. I would love to get into it. If I had to rate the usability on a scale of one to ten I would rate it as a seven or eight for sure. We have business users using and it is quite friendly for them. From a usability perspective, we haven't had any kind of negative feedback. That's quite positive.

It is a very full-fledged ECM product. Starting from data security, workflow management, etc. It has everything, but we are using it just for content management.

Technically, the product is pretty good. In the area of AI and whatever new technologies are coming, I would like to see it able to capture NLP in an advanced search. It would also be good if it could capture images and segregate them in categories within a span of seconds.

The stability of the product is quite good. This is the only product I can think of which is very stable.

In terms of scalability they are modeling it in such a way that, at any point in time, if you are thinking of increasing the user base or increasing the load, it comes in packages. That can be really helpful in an organization like a bank where the user base fluctuates quite a bit. We don't have many problems when scaling it up.

Whenever we have any kind of technical problem or glitch, we use a PMR (problem management report) and it goes to IBM support. They are quite helpful and they are meeting their SLAs. I wouldn't say it has been excellent, but I would rate support at seven out of ten.

I have used multiple ECM products such as Documentum, OpenText Content Suite, Newgen's OmniDocs, Alfresco, and Laserfiche as well. Among those, I have the most experience with Documentum. I started my career in ECM using it and then, being part of the ECM team in multiple companies, I had to look into other products as well.

Both FileNet and Documentum are very good. It all depends on your requirements. For ECM, IBM has multiple products. Based on your requirements they can suggest which layer you should buy. IBM has Content Manager, Case Manager, and FileNet. For example, if you're in insurance or a bank, it would be more case-based. In that case, you could customize FileNet to make it case-centric, but you could use it out-of-the-box as well.

We went with FileNet because of the customization. We can do whatever we need to on to FileNet. It's very easy to customize. You can mold it based on your requirements. Whoever is a good developer can mold it to meet the requirements instead of going with how it comes out-of-the-box.

As compared to other products, the setup is a little time-consuming, maybe because of the weight of the product, of the deployable components. For someone with experience in the field, they should find it very easy because everything is inside the product. While it did not happen in my project, in someone else's, while deploying, they found some glitches here and there and some services that would not come up. That made it a little complicated for them. But my experience is that it's pretty straightforward.

For us, it took somewhere between 15 to 30 minutes. It depends on how customized it is.

If you want to integrate it with multiple other solutions you can do it quite easily. It exposes its services and it exposes APIs so you can integrate it with other applications have on the floor. These days, whatever products we have, we can do multiple things on the platform itself with some simple configuration.

We are still thinking about merging IBM BPM with FileNet. In terms of automation, we have two BPM products. We capture the file transfers, outbound and inbound. We capture forms with pharmacy data from customers, the pharmacy branches. They collect it and scan it and then it is processed under BPM. We keep a version of the document in FileNet. So far, there has been a very small ROI with the project. There is ROI but if the project can be explored further, it will have better ROI.

In terms of market capture, FileNet is significant in North America. It is coming along in the Middle East, but in North America, I would say it is the leader.

Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten. It's a flexible, very much scalable product and it's very user-friendly.

We use it as a business documents repository for documents such as invoices, packing lists, POs, etc.

One way the solution has helped our organization is that HR uses FileNet to keep personnel documents instead of keeping photocopies.

The most valuable feature is access control.

We do not know how to use the FileNet API. It seems like it is very difficult and not transparent. They could also improve on the solution's resource consumption and cost.

The stability of the solution is good.

My impression of the scalability of the solution is that it is not really good since FileNet is a high resource-consuming solution.

The knowledge of their tech support staff is perfect but, even with that kind of support, we still need internal staff who have a notable level of knowledge of the solution.

We switched from an AS/400-based, on-demand solution because the company decided to abolish the IBM AS/400.

The initial setup was complex. Access control setup took a long time and it was difficult to upload documents from other systems.

We worked with Starting Point and RSTN.

The cost is about $40,000, plus yearly maintenance.

We looked at Ricoh and ParaDM. We chose IBM FileNet because of the brand name.

The biggest lesson I have used from using this solution is that, if it were up to me, I would choose a solution with a very easy upload method and an easy-to-use API.

My advice would be to understand the company deeply before making a decision.

We're not using much automation related to FileNet. We will introduce BAW soon, with a goal of introducing time savings. In terms of expanding our use of automation in our organization, we may convert some of our approval processes from paper to digitalized documents.

We have some projects now with a university in Bogota, here in Colombia. We developed a correspondence process and some administration processes with invoices. We also have a government project where the main process is around the lifecycle of documents. We use FileNet to automate correspondence processes when our clients receive documents.

There a lot of legal requirements in Colombia and companies need to automate their processes around these requirements. We incorporate FileNet in the middle of the process and we collaborate to make our clients' processes more efficient.

We offer FileNet to our clients with IBM's RPA capabilities and help to automate processes.

The most valuable feature is when we combine FileNet with Datacap. We have a lot of client data here. We use IBM Datacap's capabilities to capture data and then we use FileNet's capabilities for filing, to create an archive of documents. 

We also use the check-in and check-out capabilities a lot to enable correct document security for users. 

In addition, we use a lot of workflow for document processing for our clients.

Finally, we use FileNet's ability to expose information via APIs and interoperate with other systems.

IBM has a lot of documentation but the kind of information in a lot of the documents can be confusing to our clients. It would be easier if they used video tutorials. Right now, the information is too hard to understand, and there is a lot of it. If they used videos I think FinalNet would be easy to use for an end-user.

The technical information is hard to understand at times, especially on the installation of the product. And that's particularly true when you have to install FileNet with high-availability.

In addition, there are a lot of use cases for FileNet as a platform. There are other tools on the market with demos or models, ready-to-use use cases that can be configured. With FileNet, all projects we have to be developed step-by-step. IBM should develop some use cases or pre-configured models, across use cases. That would help us speed up implementation a lot.

FileNet is stable because the web application server is a very powerful tool. The problem is that people don't always correctly configure this tool. If the people doing the configuration are not the right people, the client has problems. But the web application server is very stable when configured correctly.

Scalability is good. IBM is one of the platforms that we can upgrade. They have different versions and new versions and upgrades happen without a lot of issues. As a developer or partner, we can take advantage of the flexibility of the scalability.

There are three levels of support. The first one is local support which relies on our experience as a partner. At the second level, we use IBM support for our clients. Sometimes, an issue we have is when our client has an older version for a given component. IBM has told us that some of these versions are no longer supported and an upgrade is required. After that, they can give support. But if we are on the correct version or release, the support is good.

In terms of ROI on the automation processes, FileNet is so expensive in Colombia. So return on investment takes time.

A lot of companies here need solutions like FinalNet. Its capabilities are very good. However, when it comes to pricing, IBM needs to make an effort to improve the cost. That's the main issue regarding use of FinalNet in Columbia.

In our company, we have three different tools for documents services. One of them is FileNet, another is Laserfiche, and there is a third one. But our company has an agreement with IBM where there is flexibility on pricing.

One of the main differences between IBM and its competitors is the pricing. In this market, IBM is the most expensive platform. But IBM has a lot of components in one package. We can use this advantage to offer just one package with all these components. With the competitors, we may need to combine technologies. Sometimes customers feel that having a lot of different vendors for one solution makes things hard to maintain. With IBM, we have just one platform with multiple components, making it a very good solution in terms of maintenance.

Support is also important after the initial implementation. That's one of the differences between IBM and its competitors

You need to be patient when you first use FileNet because the information is hard to understand. People often learn a lot when they go over the licensing agreement because it gives them all the possibilities of the platform. You also need technical expertise to use the platform. In addition, it's important to use support after implementation. Keep updated on the versions of the product and try to use all its capabilities. Don't try to customize the product code because that may lead you into difficulties.

I would rate FileNet, overall, at seven out of ten. It's not just about the platform. It's also the skills of the people around the platform. That is the most important thing you have. The platform is good but it's the people who know the platform who can be hard to find.