OpenText eDOCS Content Management Reviews

Our usual use case for OpenText eDOCS Content Management is for compliance, as we are a rail company that has to report to the rail regulator, and there are standard formats in which we have to report and keep track of documents, as well as report on accidents and so forth. The people who are in that area use it more than the other general business users.

I think the ability to recover documents in OpenText eDOCS Content Management is the most important feature for us, and because we are a fleet organization with people coming and going, the fact that we can create a set of documents that belong or have to go to the regulator and track all the changes to those documents is a plus for us, although I suppose all other or most document management systems can do that.

I think the security mechanisms in OpenText eDOCS Content Management, such as encryption and access controls, are very good in my opinion and suffice for our environment.

I will give an example related to OpenText eDOCS Content Management: our legal department deals with very sensitive documents, and our supply chain management also handles very sensitive documents, and to date, there has not been any breach on those particular documents.

The reporting tools in OpenText eDOCS Content Management help the people who are doing reports to the regulator benefit the most.

We do not yet have workflow in OpenText eDOCS Content Management; it was my wish to implement workflows and all that, but we have not yet done so, as we are just using it as a document management system.

We do have the metadata management feature in OpenText eDOCS Content Management, but not as well as I would have preferred it to be.

Because of some organizational weaknesses, we know the mobile access capability in OpenText eDOCS Content Management is there, but it is not being used, and I think our biggest challenge is that we do not have someone solely responsible for enterprise content management. The challenge of it being managed or implemented on an ad hoc basis puts us at a disadvantage.

I think OpenText eDOCS Content Management could be improved or enhanced by simplifying the implementation in the sense of modification or enhancements, and I do not know whether it is the issue of our service providers or all that; I think the pricing for modifications from our service providers makes it unpalatable, and because there are few of them, there is also the risk that it might be displaced by Microsoft SharePoint since the skill base for Microsoft SharePoint is wider and also more affordable.

I have been on OpenText eDOCS Content Management as an end user for about five to eight years, but we do not use it intensively, and as a project manager, it was for the duration of the project.

OpenText eDOCS Content Management is stable and reliable, depending on the technical support you have and your infrastructure.

I think OpenText eDOCS Content Management is highly scalable, but I am no longer a project manager; I come in, work on that, and then move on to the next thing. I have some good understanding of document management, but so far for me, it is scalable.

In rating the technical support of OpenText eDOCS Content Management, I would give it a six.

I will tell you why I rate it at six: I think they have the know-how, but I feel they make the client feel like they are at their mercy, and that is what causes the pushback. Another reason for my rating is that we do not want to adjust our business processes to a product; the product must fit into our business processes, and that is where I had issues with them while managing the project.

They do communicate, but we have some contractual issues now, and I cannot communicate with them differently or separately, but we do communicate; it is just that because of some issues contractual between us and the service provider.

Before OpenText eDOCS Content Management, we were not using SharePoint or something else; eDOCS was the one that was used even before the birth of SharePoint. SharePoint came at a later stage, but even when SharePoint was there, the decision was taken to continue with eDOCS. Because the implementation of OpenText eDOCS Content Management needs higher technical skills while, in some instances, ordinary users can set something up for themselves in SharePoint, that is a challenge since we are having a problem with the mushrooming of SharePoint sites, and the ICT team itself is not sufficiently knowledgeable to manage both SharePoint and OpenText eDOCS Content Management.

I did not participate in the initial setup of OpenText eDOCS Content Management, and when I came, we had a problem that we upgraded a few years ago, maybe two or three years ago. By that time, SharePoint was at version 20 plus, and we were still at 2012. My role as the project manager was to take the migration from version 10 point something to version 20 point something; however, I was not happy with the original configuration or setup because it was not easy to use, which is why, over the years, OpenText eDOCS Content Management struggled to make a presence in the organization, and people avoided it. After the upgrade, we had discussions with the service provider until they simplified its use.

I think the return on investment with OpenText eDOCS Content Management is not quantifiable but is very important and critical because, for us to operate as a rail entity, we must be able to comply with the national regulator, and the fact that so far, we have been able to meet the requirements of the regulator is critical in supporting our business.

The implementation of OpenText eDOCS Content Management needs higher technical skills while, in some instances, ordinary users can set something up for themselves in SharePoint, that is a challenge since we are having a problem with the mushrooming of SharePoint sites, and the ICT team itself is not sufficiently knowledgeable to manage both SharePoint and OpenText eDOCS Content Management.

Overall, I would rate OpenText eDOCS Content Management at six based on my experience with the entirety of it; the reason for not giving it a ten is the human factor, both from the service provider and also internally within our organization.

Because the on-premises solution for a nationwide organization can be a bit challenging, I will use the example of provinces similar to your regions, and because we are a national organization, we have to keep copies of the documents per region while also making them accessible nationally, so there is a bird's eye view of the whole organization. Being on-premises can be a challenge when keeping multiple copies of document storage throughout the country, as sometimes our connectivity is not always reliable, resulting in issues such as the internet going down or power supplies failing, which can be a challenge.