IBM FileNet Reviews

Our client is using it for search and retrieval and for archiving. From the very onset, it was deployed for archiving of their legacy records. We did not implement any workflow for them. We use the FileNet Content Engine Web Services to retrieve documents. We use high-end production scanners to scan the records. After that, users can use FileNet to search for these records.

There is automation involved in the process. At the point of scanning, the scanner dispatches the records to a particular folder. In each folder, there is an application that has been designed by us, which files the records in FileNet. We are not using any FileNet application to do the filing. We have an application which renames the XML to FileNet to do that.

We mainly use it for inactive documents. These are records they don't need to edit any longer. They are still necessary for their day-to-day operations; they provide evidence about their operations so they cannot be deleted.

 Our client is using version 4.2 on-prem.

We implemented it, per our client's request, as an archival solution. FileNet has given us what we needed.

FileNet has helped our client implement a retention policy for their inactive records.

We mainly use the Metadata, we don't use content, as such, for the retrieval. It has been robust because that's how we designed it. The application, in terms of durability, has been able to withstand the usage, given that it was installed in 2003 and it's still working. The version installed back then was 3.6. In about 2009, it was upgraded to 4.2.

For us, the back-end has been good. The system is so robust that we've never had problems, in terms of system administration. We've never had any challenges.

Our client feels FileNet does not provide them with content searchability. They feel it's cumbersome. They're only using Metadata. If the Metadata is not well-populated, it becomes a problem to retrieve a document.

Aside from that, they feel the interface — when they look at modern interfaces — is not robust enough for them. However, they're on an old version and I wouldn't know what the current interface looks like.

For non-technical users, with what we currently have on the ground, which is the web services, the only challenge we have is that content searchability is not available, because it is an old installation.

I've been using FileNet since back in 2003.

From a technical point of view, FileNet is very stable.

We have never had to contact FileNet support.

I was part of the team that set up the FileNet installation we are currently using. I don't remember how long it took to implement, as that goes back to 2003.

The installation has been going on for a long time. I believe they have seen value for their money. They've been using this application for over 15 years and it's still delivering.

FileNet is quite expensive, although Documentum is expensive too. There are several other content service platforms with a very low price, and they deliver as much as FileNet and Documentum do.

Our client is trying to move away from the FileNet to Documentum and that has been difficult. The migration from FileNet to Documentum was started sometime in 2013 but, unfortunately, they have not been successful with it. I believe the vendor they used did not have enough knowledge to be able to deploy it, so they're having challenges with it.

They decided to move away from FileNet back because there was no clear direction as to where FileNet was going. They wanted to do content, and there was an option to go with FileNet P8, but they got direction from industry reviews and decided to go with Documentum because of the content functionality. Aside from that, ideally, they need to bring in workflow, as well as content searchability — full-text search. Those are some of the things they desire.

When they began with FileNet it was started as an archiving solution. That is what it was conceived for initially. But the need arose to get into content and workflow and they felt they needed a new platform.

I do believe FileNet has such capabilities. We are trying to propose to them to go for FileNet P8. Unfortunately for them, they have spent so much time trying to implement Documentum and have not made headway. They have yet to look at P8. We are the ones supporting FileNet for them. We have told them that the functionality they're looking for is available in FileNet P8. I would love to use FileNet P8 to see what it can deliver. However, whether they want to implement FileNet P8 or Documentum, the procedure is cumbersome.

I'm very familiar with Documentum. I've gone for Documentum training in Germany. But I would still go with FileNet because it delivered for me. It has been stable for many years. That is a strong point for me.

My advice would be, before you go for any DMS, don't get stuck on looking for solutions that rate highly in industry reviews. For some of my clients, that is important, but others aren't concerned about that. They say, "Does the solution address my problem? Is it cost-effective? Can I scale up? If yes, good." Those are all things my clients are looking for.

One of the primary use cases is for documentation processing, including image processing and all the content. It is also used for archiving and document management.

For example, in the mobile telecom or financial industries, there are requirements to retain a customer's documents, depending on regulations, for five and sometimes ten years. In this instance, FileNet is used for archiving all of the documentation.

We are using it for documentation automation projects, especially for content management such as customer contract management and some vendor contract management.

It has reduced operating costs, especially postage and courier costs and the cost of printing hard copies.

It has also helped with compliance issues. Instead of archiving hard copies, where there are regulations regarding the conditions in which they are stored, which means there are energy costs for climate control, FileNet saves on those energy costs. There are also savings on the cost of renting warehouses for the hard copies. Keeping everything digital means there are a lot of savings.

One of the most valuable features is FileNet's ability to capture things from the stack, from e-mail, to scanning of Excel and Word. FileNet can also convert many types of files to PDFs very easily.

Also, when the Content Engine processes files, it can reduce the size by up to ten times by compressing them. It has a very low storage profile. This is very important because storage is something that adds to the cost. In this way, it can reduce costs.

It is also possible to search any customer's documentation. If you want to find historical documents, you can find them very easily.

With the application layer you can install it with Windows Application Server to create web logic. 

You can also use clusters.

When requests come from users, you can extend it horizontally or vertically. You can put a lot of application servers in a vertical arrangement, so it's very flexible.

It's very simple to integrate it with other solutions. The business process management layer makes it very easy.

It's really user-friendly. Everything can be managed via a web application, a web console. And for non-technical users, it's mostly web-based now, so it's not so hard for them to use. Especially in the mobile industry, most workers are not technical. They are sales-based and are not familiar with a lot of technical features. But they find it very easy to use.

Finally, behind FileNet is IBM, which is a big company.

I have been using FileNet for 12 or 13 years.

It is very stable because FileNet is mostly compatible with Unix, Solaris, and also IBM Unix (AIX). It's also compatible with Windows but the Unix system is really robust. When I was working with FileNet for a telecom company, it never went down. The uptime was five-nines.

Scaling is easy. You can scale vertically because in front of the application server there is load balancing. You can put a lot of application servers behind the load balancing. It's very easy. We were using Oracle Database and we could scale the database very easily as well. You can upgrade and scale up without any downtime. That is very important.

The initial setup is very easy. You first implement the database and after that the application. You can even install it on a remote site. It's that easy.

However, the configuration does take a long time. Every company needs its own configuration design. It depends on how many applications are connecting to FileNet. It can take a long time, depending on the application count.

The installation itself only takes one or two days, but the configuration can take a long time. The first time we configured it, it took over 20 days.

First of all, the automation means there is no more dependency on hard copies. Storing those documents was dependent on the environmental conditions, and if they weren't right, the documents could break down. And they had to be sent via post or courier.

By using FileNet, especially with bigger contracts, it doesn't take ten days or two weeks to receive and store the documents. Instead, when the documents are emailed it takes under one second and it arrives to customer service. Once they open the email, they can activate the customer's product immediately. The customer doesn't have to wait two weeks and it means the company can earn money for the product sooner. It helps with time to market.

Overall, ROI depends on the particular project. Every project is different.

Licensing costs depend on the size of the storage.

I also know SharePoint and Documentum. When I looked into them, Documentum was harder to use than FileNet and more expensive. Implementing and integrating Documentum was much harder than with FileNet. I'm not sure how it stacks up now. SharePoint was not robust or sustainable, in my opinion. FileNet is much better than SharePoint in those areas. 

In terms of the biggest lessons I've learned from using the product, when we installed the first time, I didn't know anything about document management. But with time, I learned that the most important thing is choosing the best infrastructure.

My advice would be to use a specialist in documentation management to implement the solution. That's not just true for FileNet, it's true for other solutions as well.

I would rate FileNet at eight out of ten. No product is perfect. You will always find some bugs.

We used it to develop document-management solutions for various public sectors, in India. We also use IBM BPM on top of it, which is primarily used for Workflow, with FileNet as the repository in the backend for document storage. Our solutions manage the entire lifecycle of content, right from creation to disposal.

For example, when organizations receive invoices or proposals, using FileNet we have a solution which allows users to create the content, upload the content, manage the content, and it moves through the workflow.

Our solution is called E-Office is, which handles the entire file movement, correspondence, file creation, committee meetings, etc. Wherever content is involved, the solution is involved. All day-to-day, paper-based activities have been automated using the help of BPM and FileNet.

It's deployed as a hybrid. It's mostly on-premise but some of our customers have part of it on cloud.

It's not only about productivity but utilizing resources effectively. Because of the automation, they use a lot less paper for printing. And on top of the resource benefits, there are also a lot of cost-savings as a result.

In addition, because offices are located in different locations, they now work together virtually. It is very difficult to transfer this kind of data through emails. Our solution has really helped with that. Productivity is a primary focus for every automation we implement. And our client companies have seen that as a result.

Our clients are saving a minimum of two hours a day in work time. They no longer depend on couriers or whatever they were using to dispatch and move files. Everything happens in the solution.

The most valuable feature is the suite of IBM products. It's a packaged solution. We have IBM Datacap which is used for the OCR capabilities. FileNet is the repository for document management. BPM is primarily used for workflow. Then we have Red Hat Linux or AIX, which is an OS from IBM. There is also Db2 which is a database, again from IBM. We get all these products straight from IBM. We don't have to rely on different vendors or products when there is an integration issue.

The FileNet Navigator, which came out four or five years ago, was really a major upgrade from IBM in terms of the UI. Users are happy with that.

FileNet has the capabilities to meet compliance and regulatory requirements. It is very secure. That is also one of the key requirements of any automation that we do.

There is some confusion with FileNet workflow. It's not really going into the next level. They are probably replacing it with BPM's workflow. So there's an issue of clarity, the vision for going forward. There are a lot of tools and a lot of features, but which one is really going to stay and which one is going away. When they make that vision public it will be good.

I have been using this solution for about 12 years.

FileNet is stable. A lot of our customers are actually on older versions, so we've been upgrading their systems recently. The current version is really stable because it has been rewritten. Since IBM acquired this product — FileNet is not an original IBM product — they have rewritten certain engines in it. The more they release new versions, the more the product is stable, especially in the "five-dot" series. They are really stable. We are encouraging customers to upgrade to the latest version. That is what is happening now.

I don't remember any stability issues recently. Maybe a long time ago, with certain limitations, there were a couple of issues. But we don't have them now. There is a resolution for everything in the current versions.

We were using products like Documentum and OpenText, and we used to rely on different vendors for the database, etc., and we had certain challenges. But the IBM products come as an entire package for us, which is really helping.

The setup is going to be complex but we put the right people on the job. In the older versions, it was much more complex. Slowly it is improving. They started releasing container stuff, recently, which we like. 

I would say it is not too complex or too easy. It's somewhere in the middle. Hopefully, the coming versions will simplify the FileNet setup to help it go more quickly. Currently, it takes at least a day to set up a basic environment.

Our clients have definitely benefitted from FileNet but they don't disclose the numbers.

Some people say it is costly, but when they negotiate with IBM it is sold for somewhat less. IBM gives discounts depending on the customer base. We don't have complaints about it from customers.

FileNet is at the top of our list of referred content management solutions. It ranks well in industry reviews. FileNet has a customer base in different domains and different business areas. If somebody wants to implement it, they should look at the case studies and see how it is being implemented and what the benefits are.

In terms of its usability, we mostly use the out-of-the-box capabilities of FileNet, such as the Content Navigator. BPM has built-in capabilities to communicate with FileNet and we also develop certain Java-based GUIs.

With the new version, the UI has been improved as has the performance. There is also a distributed enrollment that FileNet allows. There is something Cache Service Manager so you can have this service set up and distributed so that people can access it locally.

I would rate FileNet at nine out of ten. IBM needs to clarify the vision, the roadmap of what is expected for it. How they want to take this product to the next level, that is what is missing.

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.

It has been almost five years since I started using FileNet.

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.

I've been using FileNet for two years.

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.

There are two use cases. One is as an extended datastore for IBM Connections, but we don't have many Connections customers. We have actually lost two such customers in the recent years because IBM didn't do anything for that product. 

The more common use case is as a general filestore for documents, with interfaces to the Web, etc. It is used to store incoming invoices and documents and to classify them. It's also used to automate the process of document storage, when documents come in. We have a mechanism to automatically categorize a document based on content. Based on that, we are able to create attributes for the content management system. Then we store the document in FileNet to enable retrieving it. We have PIDs, a universal access code, for each document and via that we are able to retrieve documents, even via applications.

We have created some interfaces. We have a central solution to make it easy for customers to plug in their application systems in an easy, customizable way, without having to program it. We also work in the area of analytics where we use Cognos. We have customers who retrieve information about incoming invoices. They can click on a link and retrieve it automatically out of FileNet or Content Manager.

FileNet helps increase productivity. For example, in reporting for a construction company, when they look at the costs, they can see the incoming and outgoing invoices. By clicking, they pull that document from the content store. The productivity comes from not having to go to a folder and look for a document. It's the integration which makes it productive, day-to-day.

You can only see how much the solution saves when you did not have a content system before. We have customers, for instance, who stored their documents in PDF format in folder structures. They had structures based on year and customer number. To find and use a document would take three to four times more effort than to have access via automated interfaces. The next gain is when you plug in mobile. Then you need something like FileNet, an intelligent content store.

It also helps with compliance and governance issues because it's a datastore that is not modifiable, and you can guarantee that. You cannot guarantee that with a folder-based file structure, where multiple people have access. In that scenario, you cannot guarantee that a document hasn't been changed.

The most valuable features of FileNet are the 

• storage mechanism
• search mechanism 
• interface through Content Navigator and 
• mobile interfaces. 

The area of migrations to new versions must be made easier. It's quite good that they have now begun to improve the API area, to modernize the interfaces, but there's always a very big investment involved in migrating from one version to another. That prohibits rolling out new functionalities to customers. It's not so easy. You can't release a new version every three months to bring in new capabilities. That is the old-fashioned, the way it worked ten or 20 years ago. That is bad. In that area, they really must improve.

We have FileNet, Content Manager, and TSM in our own installation. We migrated that installation three years ago to version 5.12. Now we have to migrate to 5.25 to bring in new facilities, and it's a big task. We have to do it in addition to our other tasks where we support customers. We need a parallel machine and to set it up there and to migrate step-by-step, then test it and roll it out. It's not so easy. That is a big area where there is much to be done to satisfy the needs of customers.

I've been using it a long time. We have been an IBM Business Partner for more than 20 years. We have been using FileNet since IBM bought it, I believe about eight years ago. We have been in the content management area since 2002. We started in the area of content systems with IBM Content Manager and then we added our support for File Net.

I have never really heard of problems with the stability because the database. IBM Db2 is never a problem. I cannot say anything about Oracle or other databases. We have avoided implementing with a non-IBM database where we can. When we do, there is no problem with stability.

In the larger installations, we use primarily TSM as the object store, and therefore we do not have problems with overrunning file space and those kinds of issues. The only thing we have seen is that when a customer's system administrator installs a new Java version on the server where FileNet is running, sometimes it can cause a big mess. FileNet doesn't come up.

We have customers with a very small user base, 50 users or so, and we have some who have a really big user base. But the scalability is primarily dependent on how long you are storing documents. The time over which documents are stored now has been extended far beyond seven years. In the past, often this was a financial necessity. But now, even though we do not have insurance companies as clients, we have customers where the stored documents are more than ten or 15 years old. The scalability is also more dependent on the count of documents than on the user-base interaction.

From my point of view, it's scalable enough. Today there are machines which are scalable, where you can put in additional processors and memory. In today's scenarios, scalability is not really an issue. FileNet can take advantage of today's technology for scaling. There are other products which cannot because the database prohibits it. When they use MS SQL Server Express, for example, there are limitations. And when you have windream and such solutions in the German market, which are also in the Austrian customer area, they show wonderful functionality and a wonderful GUI, but when it comes to the extensibility and scalability, they reach their limits relatively early.

We have not had to use technical support very often. We get technical support from Germany. There is a good support center where the response time is quite good.

When you use IBM Content Foundation as the entry point for installation, it's quite well-documented. If you have know-how in the IBM area, including the area of WebSphere Application Server, then it's not too hard to install. It's up to your partner to download the right versions which fit together, the right way, and then it's not really a big deal. In those circumstances, you can install FileNet within two or three days and have a running version.

Process automation is the main reason we created our own server: To make the interfaces easy and to automate the process of storing and adding the right attributes, and to make sure you're able to search and find the document again.

It's very hard to say what the ROI is on that automation. The goal was to make a solution for the customer where he can solve his problems. For us, the greatest part is the services part. We set it up as a vehicle through which customers are able to implement automation, and to make it easy for them to apply it to their applications.

For FileNet in general, the return in investment happens over two to three years when you take into account the license costs, the maintenance costs, and the implementation. I think that is a reasonable ROI. I have heard of products that have much longer ROI.

The licensing cost of FileNet is comparable. It costs more if you use Case Foundation or the like — if you extended it. But that is not the scale of our customers. They are too small for that.

We do the scanning part, at the moment, with other products, not the IBM scanning engine, because it's a price-sensitive area.

The problem is that the competitors' products have, in most areas, a contract with an ERP system. We now have three customers who are migrating to new ERP systems and they all have contracts with a document management solution. They bring it in with a fixed price and give them a whole document integration path.

We have one customer who, for many years, used IBM Content Manager, and now he's migrating to a new ERP system and he's throwing out the old solution because, with the new ERP system, he has document management out-of-the-box with the licensing cost. This customer has no experience with the new document management system. Nothing. The ERP seller sold him the D3 DMS system and now we have lost that content management installation.

In terms of decision-making, the problem is that most customers have IT people making the decision about which product to use and they do not have really the experience. When customers come to us, they often come in with a prepared offer from someone else with a vested interest.

This is happening more or more and it is not good. In the past, it was up to the market to have a good but independent product with interfaces to all application areas. With this new scenario, it's the IT managers, who do not have much experience — they come from university from which they only have technical knowledge — and they say: "Okay, I have one supplier who is providing me one solution. I have an all-in service contract and I don't need to take care of the solution on a technical level." That is bad for independent solutions like FileNet.

It's a stable solution. It's proven. It provides guaranteed compliance; neither the attributes nor the content itself can be modified. You can guarantee and report that. The implementation time is no more than for other products. And the product is scalable.

In creating our tools we have integrated a lot with FileNet. It's very easy to integrate because the only thing you need is a mechanism to store, a way to add and change attributes, and to retrieve. You also have to be sure that you have a good search engine when you do not have direct attributes, a full content search.

In the first years, we were not happy with the usability of the content management products. Content Manager had no value for end-user interfaces. We passed on the strong demand for that. In the last few years, with the new versions of Content Navigator, it has been much better. We have a good interface also in Notes, in the right sidebar. It's a solution from IBM, Germany, where you can drag and drop documents. The Content Navigator now also has mobile support with a good interface. It's much more useful than it was before.

The internal features haven't changed and are enough to fulfill the requirements of customers. But customers always want a beautiful GUI. It's much more necessary to sell it with a beautiful GUI than with the functionality they really need. When we sell it, the end-user interface carries a much greater weight in customer decision-making than the technical part. On the technical side, there is nothing that FileNet is missing. There are three ways things can be stored: in the database, in the filestore, or in TSM. Our larger customers have TSM as object storage for FileNet and that is a very good solution.

We have not implemented the IBM Automation Platform for Digital Business. We have looked at it. We thought that in the last two or three years it was too big, too heavy, and too expensive for our customers. We are rethinking that at the moment, looking again to see if it can help and if it makes sense. We are not sure in the moment if this automation package is really a helpful and an effective investment.

Overall I would rate FileNet at nine out of ten. What it's missing to make it to a ten is the possibility of implementing new versions and new functions easily, in smaller time intervals, without a big investment on the customer's side. That is a barrier to new functionalities. In addition, IBM doesn't market well. You do not hear anything about FileNet in the market — nothing. Nobody has promoted it over the last three years. You hear much more about all other DMS systems compared to FileNet. You hear about new facilities, about mobility, and the integration of scanning and scanning-automation processes. You don't hear anything about FileNet. And that doesn't make it easy.

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.

We have used it and implemented it for the last five to six years.

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 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.

I've been using FileNet for about five years.

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.