IBM FileNet Reviews

It is about simplicity. It designs and builds the process, then adds document facilities for the documentation. Therefore, it is easier to model the process and include documents in this process.

It improves processes. For example, it can improve staffing for human resources.

It has the ability to mix document management and process automation. For our customers, it is very attractive that they have a solution which documents their structure and the structure of their data. It also designs the process to complete the automation.

Preforms could be useful for specific projects.

It works for all types of enterprise companies. For larger enterprise companies, there might be other solutions. In general, it should work for all enterprises.

I do not really work with the technical support. The solutions that we are implementing are brand new.

Usually their support is good, though you would have a support contract. I will mention that I think the support could be better, and it could improve.

The initial setup is straightforward. You will need people who know what they are doing, but otherwise it is straightforward.

The reporting is good, and customers value that about the product.

We use it for content management and to manage documents. It has performed well.

It allows for multiple people to access content at the same time.

It is very flexible.

It is stable as long as you create the right environment. We have had issues at times, but just because of configuration issues.

It is very scalable.

It was used in a customer environment. 

IBM FileNet was used for combining incoming paper documents, as well as electronic documents. The environment consisted of FileNet, Documentum, and SharePoint. Each product was first tested, then used for different business processes.

My experience with FileNet leads me to rate it as a six out of 10. It needs a lot of development effort. Programmers have to translate user needs into IBM FileNet, which causes misinterpretations.

It is mainly a document repository for our business.

We are not a first-time user of ECM. Benefits are those typical of an ECM solution and are not specific to FileNet.

Document security.

We are looking at FileNet on AWS cloud. To date, even our IBM rep cannot be certain if it will work. Similarly, Amazon did not clearly state that they can work with IBM FileNet.

The objective for this solution is for secure transfer of accounting information between servers to enable payment of insurance.

Streamlines file delivery throughout the company.

The most valuable feature is the guarantee of delivery, although in some cases this guarantee of delivery fails. Development in code appeared to solve this lack.

• Accounting
• Collection
• Operations

We use it mostly as our content management system. It is our system of records, so it is where we store all our engineering, HR, admin documents, etc.

Instead storing our documents offsite (physical documents), we are storing all of our documents electronically. Therefore, we do not have an outside storage fee.

• Document storage
• The ability to search
• Check in/check out

I would like to see expanded search features, like content search. The search needs to be improved. 

Stability is perfect.

It is very scalable.

Technical support is very good.

We previously had an in-house solution.

The initial setup is a little complex. The installation and configuration to start up needs expert level knowledge.

There are lots of components to the product. Make sure before you invest that you know which components you need.

It is a very stable, scalable system, but it needs a little improvement. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Price
• Name
• Expertise
• Reference.

Reference is very important for us, because we are a government agency and prefer to have a government agency reference.

• Enterprise content
• Document management
• Worker's management, which we are currently not leveraging. 

It is performed fine. It is a robust solution.

From the document management side, it is able to integrate with some of our other systems, such as SAP.

It has a robust API. We are able to have systems communicate with each other, and do business process automation. Although, there are a lot of opportunities that we have not leveraged yet.

• The document management elements
• The worker's management pieces
• The distributive environment capabilities

We run a global corporation with locations all around the world, therefore the distributive environment is important.

I would like to see Azure AD added.

It is a good, stable system.

I have found that it scales well.

I would rate the technical support as medium. I do not like the login process. It is not great. 

Getting an ID, and the IDs across the different things. IDs used to solve similar problems.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

If you are planning on managing records, go with a OpenText, FileNet, or Documentum. A lot of times companies go with SharePoint as a default, but there are some pain points around worker's management in SharePoint. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Company's position in the industry within that particular technology field. We want market leaders. A company who can support an 80,000 person company which is global.

We're in the process of implementing it for what we call a product plan approval process. It's going to be used by project managers to submit their product plans to our department that will then go on and approve them.

For example, if they want to produce a pamphlet, or a website in support of a particular objective, they will hit our product plan system to input what they want to do, what they want to produce, and then it will go through an approval process. Then they'll be able to produce it in whatever languages they decide that they want to produce it in. It's more an approval workflow that we're using it for.

We will also use it for integration back to our product lifecycle management system, as well for our materials management division.

It's a lot simpler than us doing in-house development of it and managing it, so that's part of it. But the overall improvement I'd say is through the ease of automation, it takes away a lot of manual processes.

The workflow. I would say the workflow is pretty good. Also, the flexibility of being able to create custom objects with a lot of domain-specific attributes that we follow.

One of the things I know is a bit of a challenge for them - because I know that it lives on top of FileNet, so it's not necessarily living on top of a relational database, per se - is that we also are using it as our system of record for our language management and our language definitions. I know that that was a little bit of a challenge, just because of the underlying architecture.

So far, so good, but we're also very new, in this implementation particularly.

I still don't know about the scalability yet.

We've been using an implementation vendor to help us get rolling with it, a company called Vega. They've been very helpful.

I was involved in a lot of the planning, and specifically for the technical aspects of it, integration and data migration. It seemed pretty straightforward.

When selecting a vendor what's important are the 

• product
• service, response
• name and reputation.

We definitely look for somebody that we can trust, that understands our vision, that is reliable, that really is going to do their best to kind of help meet our needs without necessarily trying to push us into a corner.

I would give Case Manager a seven out of 10 at this point, because I think there has been some challenges with trying to get the language library. I know that we do have some individuals that do need to come up to speed on it technically, and the only onsite training for Case Manager is in Europe, there is not a lot of US-based training. So they have to do all their training online rather than being able to go and have a good bootcamp-style training somewhere nearby.

In terms of advice, I would say use our partner, Vega, because they've done a really good job. It's been, honestly, one of the quicker implementations that I've been part of, overall. They've done a really good job coming in and understanding our business scenario, our business case; the speed of delivery is actually really impressive. We're going to be going live either end of this month or beginning of next month. It's been six months to replace something that has been broken into two different pieces that we're merging into one, but that have been parts of solutions that have taken us much, much longer to put together.