IBM FileNet vs SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management comparison

IBM and SAP are both solutions in the Enterprise Content Management category. IBM is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.9, while SAP is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.5. IBM holds a 6.5% mindshare in ECM, compared to SAP’s 1.4% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of SAP users who would recommend it.

IBM FileNet

Read 105 IBM FileNet reviews

4,015 Views
3,694 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

SAP Extended Enterprise Con...

Read 2 SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management reviews

491 Views
486 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM FileNet

SAP Extended Enterprise Con...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

IBM FileNet and SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management compete in enterprise content management. SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management appears superior due to its enhanced features and perceived value.

Features: IBM FileNet provides robust document management, workflow automation, and compliance capabilities. SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management offers seamless integration with SAP landscapes, enhanced collaboration tools, and advanced data analytics.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM FileNet is recognized for its flexible deployment options and responsive customer service. SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management integrates easily with SAP environments but may require more upfront commitment.

Pricing and ROI: IBM FileNet is cost-effective, delivering satisfactory ROI with moderately lower costs. SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management demands higher initial investment but offers better long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM FileNet vs. SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM FileNet vs. SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management

December 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

IBM FileNet

Ranking in Enterprise Content Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

105

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SAP Extended Enterprise Con...

Ranking in Enterprise Content Management

13th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of IBM FileNet is 6.5%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Content Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM FileNet	6.5%
SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management	1.4%
Other	92.1%

Enterprise Content Management

Featured Reviews

Shankar-Kambhampaty

Consulting CTO at a tech consulting company with 1-10 employees

Business workflows have been automated and document processes are streamlined at large scale

I believe IBM FileNet could be improved or enhanced in the future, specifically the user interface development support, which, despite all the improvements, still feels from the 2010s or 2000s. The current state of the user interface development support and the ability to customize it leaves much to be desired. The backend engine, process engine, and object engine are fantastic. However, the user interface, which is required to provide an impressive experience to the user, is difficult to build. IBM will need to do something about this area. Over time, IBM has made improvements with enhancements through CP4BA and other tools, with which user interfaces can be built. But there is much more is needed. The initial setup process for IBM FileNet requires specialists. IBM FileNet is not a click-click-click deploy kind of product. It has several components that need to be installed in different versions and in a particular order. Additionally, IBM Cloud does not provide a proper experience. The problem is I cannot use IBM Cloud easily. I cannot even get a membership easily. With AWS, I just use my credit card, sign up, and I am done. With IBM Cloud, that is not how it is. They go through all validation processes, and it is a nightmare at times. There are problems around IBM FileNet, not exactly with IBM FileNet itself, but the point is that it is not a click-click-click deploy either on the cloud or on-premise. It requires specialists, and there is a big learning curve toward deploying and managing the whole infrastructure as well as the software. I communicate with the technical support of IBM frequently. I have communicated several times, and frankly, there is much to be desired on that side. When you raise a ticket, it takes 24 to 48 hours for them to respond. We live in a time where business moves at the speed of light. Twenty-four hours is a very long time. You need to be able to get technical support instantaneously. It is not like the more contemporary support models where you get turnaround in minutes, not days.

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MukeshGiri

Senior Solution Architect at Freeport LNG Development, L.P.

Offers advanced search capabilities, integrates seamlessly with SAP and efficiently stores non-essential business content

Consider you have some use cases. For example, something for your accounting or procurement department. And you purchase equipment, machines, and plants for plant-related operations. Essentially, there will be manuals and basically anything and everything related to your particular equipment. So, where do the equipment entries go? They go into SAP. Depending on your SAP deployment, it can go into some database. Most companies these days are talking about SAP HANA and stuff like that. So it will be stored in SAP HANA. But, these documentation, drawings, manuals, and help files for these big pieces of equipment, where do they go? That’s where Extended ECM for SAP comes into the picture. All these integrations are through a one-way push, essentially, but with two-way access. So as a user in the procurement department or the accounting department, or an engineering department where you are using SAP for asset management entries inside your system. All those related documents, drawings, manuals, and files have to be stored somewhere. If you store them in SAP, it will be a costly implementation going forward. After maybe a couple of years, you will realize that it’s too much to deal with because HANA database will be too costly. There will not be much business value because you cannot utilize a lot of search and cool features inside your application from an SAP perspective. That’s where you will integrate SAP. For example, SAP Extended ECM for SAP Plant Maintenance. One of the modules SAP provides is SAP Plant Maintenance. So what you will do is deploy Extended ECM for SAP, then try something called SAP Plant Maintenance, Extended ECM for SAP Plant Maintenance. The content maintenance, manuals, files, drawings, and related stuff, its details or tags, or any kind of stuff is stored in your SAP. But anything and everything else is pushed through this integration into Extended ECM platform. So now it is available to be utilized by your business user who knows nothing about SAP. They only live and breathe in a different management system. They can look into these details depending on what kind of integration has been done for that company. So that’s one use case. Second use case will be in SAP itself. Now, if you are an SAP user, you have this information readily available at your fingertips. Anything goes wrong in your maintenance or any kind of management, you can look into these details, which are readily available because this documentation lifecycle is being managed by Extended ECM for SAP. It will give you extended storage capabilities within your SAP application. So it will be a two-way integration, essentially. Similar, wider features will be available within Extended ECM platform. Within SAP, you have these extra features called business attachments or business content retrieval. Those business contents are stored inside Extended ECM, and those features will be available within your SAP GUI from an SAP perspective. So it’s a win-win situation for both worlds.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Streamlined our business processes."

"FileNet provides a compact solution for midsized companies."

"The usability is very good. We like the Content Navigator. It's very easy to use the search and retrieve for documents and has a lot of options for the user to download documents or send an email."

"The ability to manage the content well."

"It has a very broad market share and a lot of people know about it."

"It is really usable. There is a lot of support for it. You have the online components to trawl through the storage. I have a lot of fun with it."

"Centralized our business documents."

"I would highly recommend it to those seeking a robust enterprise content management solution."

More IBM FileNet pros

"All these integrations are through a one-way push, essentially, but with two-way access."

"The integration capabilities of the product are pretty good."

Cons

"We'd like to use the docker, to have it containerized."

"I'd like to see more cognitive. That's obviously where all of our world is going. I think if we can have more of those types of features and functions as a core, out of the box, that would be very helpful for us and our space."

"For end-users there is a lack of administrative features. The interface of basic FileNet is not very good."

"I think some of the technical pieces, when implementing it ourselves, were something of a roadblock until we discovered the Concierge. Those are some things they have to work on."

"It would be nice if they could make it like containers are working in Kubernetes to auto-scale based on demand."

"FileNet and similar enterprise-level tools require substantial costs, starting in the millions, which limits their use to large enterprises."

"IBM does not do very good marketing for FileNet."

"We would like to have more automation of rollout solutions."

More IBM FileNet cons

"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"The deployment could be costly because of resource availability."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For the medium scale or large scale, I would recommend FileNet. FileNet is free of licensing expenses, thus good for the money. It is not expensive, but worth for the money, especially for medium scale and large scale industries."

"For small scale industries, they allow different options. They can do open source. It is the complexity of the data security that they should think about before they choose."

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

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

"The platform is inexpensive."

"Talking about the cost is difficult because IBM has offers that combine different products, and each of these offers has different types of licensing. IBM also has a policy that the actual price for a given customer may be very different from the stated book price. It's hard to say whether it's expensive or not."

"We use extraction. Therefore, we can see 80 to 85 percent accuracy on data extraction. This reduces the manual indexing part, which is definitely a gain on performance efficiency."

"IBM FileNet is an expensive solution."

More IBM FileNet pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

Government

Insurance Company

Energy/Utilities Company

18%

Government

14%

University

12%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	74

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM FileNet?

The product is robust and can process a lot of documents for enterprise content management.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FileNet?

From the company's perspective, the licensing cost for IBM FileNet is still affordable. Though the license cost is somewhat expensive, it remains manageable. The company rates it between 3 and 5 be...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM FileNet?

We almost do not utilize the automation capabilities of IBM FileNet to streamline our business processes. The process automation and business automation features are barely used. Currently, we prim...

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What do you like most about SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management?

The integration capabilities of the product are pretty good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management?

The prices can vary depending on the customer, region, and domain. I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management?

Improvement could be more about training because it is one of the giants in this market. Nobody can be exposed to SAP and other stuff. So the deployment could be costly because of resource availabi...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenText Content Management vs IBM FileNet

Compared 14% of the time

SharePoint vs IBM FileNet

Compared 13% of the time

Hyland OnBase vs IBM FileNet

Compared 9% of the time

Alfresco vs IBM FileNet

Compared 9% of the time

OpenText Documentum Content Management vs IBM FileNet

Compared 8% of the time

More IBM FileNet Competitors

Adobe Experience Manager vs SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management

Compared 40% of the time

OpenText Content Management vs SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management

Compared 15% of the time

IBM ECM vs SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management

Compared 14% of the time

Newgen OmniDocs vs SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management

Compared 9% of the time

OpenText Documentum Content Management vs SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management

Compared 9% of the time

More SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM FileNet

January 2026

Download IBM FileNet product report

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Content Management

January 2026

SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management report

Download SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management product report

Also Known As

No data available

SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management by OpenText, SAP Extended ECM

Overview

IBM FileNet is a leading IBM enterprise content management product family. IBM FileNet is one of the ECM solutions that can change the way a company does business by enabling users to capture, activate, socialize, analyze, and govern content throughout its lifecycle.

There are many IBM FileNet products available, all of which are integrated and based on the FileNet P8 Platform.

IBM

A digital core built on the SAP HANA business data platform and integrated applications for content management comprise the next-generation business model to complete your digital transformation and help you manage unstructured content as part of the business transactions more effectively while facilitating collaboration and storing content to avoid redundancies, minimize information growth, and support regulatory compliance. The SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management application by OpenText helps you engage customers with a 360-degree view of their profile and optimize procurement processes, employee productivity, process efficiency, and equipment ROI.

SAP

Sample Customers

Suncorp Group Limited, St. Vincent Health, Citigroup, SRCSD, and UK Dept for Work and Pensions.

Metropolitan Utilities District, MAN Diesel & Turbo

Buyer's Guide

IBM FileNet vs. SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management

December 2025

Free Report: IBM FileNet vs. SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management

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