M-Files Reviews

The predominant reason we use M-Files is for the legal team to be able to manage contracts and the signatures between those and the change orders. We're a construction company, and when we have a contract to go build a building and they want to change it, you have to have a change order. We use M-Files for storing those types of legal documents.

Using M-Files means anybody on the executive team to go in and immediately look at a dashboard and know the status of a contract. It has been huge for us.

The workflow is probably the number one reason we picked it. They have a very simple to use interface for normal people, who are not very technical. They can drag and drop a process and specify metadata, then set it up to be delivered to certain people, send approvals to others, ask to be alerted of updates, and so on. They have a very nice workflow.

The integration with other products needs to be improved. Our biggest problem is that it is very difficult to set up for API so that we can authenticate into it and pull data out. We want to be able to feed other dashboards that we have or to feed other processes.

Technical support is slow to resolve issues, which is something that needs to be improved.

They have implemented some AI where you can scan documents and bring up insights, but additional AI would be very good.

We have been using M-Files for almost a year, since November of 2019.

This product is very stable.

This is a very scalable solution. They have lawyers with two million documents that go in every year. The people we have using it are our legal VP, our contracts manager, our license coordinator, our program managers, and our IT people.

Technical support is probably the weakest part. We had a number of authentication issues and support has been very slow to respond and get us solutions. They have, but we had one issue up for over a month. I would rate the support a four out of ten.

In this company, M-Files is the first document repository or content manager that they have used.

In previous companies, I have used many solutions including OpenText, PandaDoc, and others. 

The initial setup is mostly straightforward, especially since it is a cloud product. They did it all.

They have an Optical Character Scanning module but we didn't buy it because it's ridiculously expensive.

My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing this product is to do a pilot first. After you do your research, do an actual pilot before you commit because everyone has nuances and you might find out that it is not what you want, or that it doesn't really do what you think it's going to do.

It is not the simplest product to use but because of the robustness of its feature set in the ability with the workflows, and the APIs, to do just about anything you can imagine with it, that's very valuable. I wish it was a little easier to use because we have to spend more time than I'd like with new users, teaching them how it works. We try to hide all that from them but the setup time to get everything the way we wanted was probably two months.

That is two months in one resource working on it half time a week, but it just took a lot of work to get the metadata set up, to get the workflows set up, and to get all the documents added to the repository. Now we've got versioning and we know where everything's at, the dashboard is great, but don't assume when they tell you that you'll be up and running in two weeks, that that is the truth. It takes much longer than you think.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

M-Files focus is more about creating a platform for users to store, share, and create documents, but it also plays nicely (integrates) with other products. Thus, it allows end-users to work from a single platform or environment, creating easier workflows and task management.

Our business uses M-Files for more than just document storage. We use M-Files for CRM, too. It integrates nicely with MS Exchange, so we get the full 360 degree view of our client engagements.

Quite honestly, we not sure it needs to get better. Perhaps if we can perform OCR functionality on our connected network drives and other connected DBs, then this product would be outstanding.

Five years.

Rarely.

Never. We have seen sites with 3500 users connected daily.

Phenomenal support, across various continents, and their response times are excellent.

Yes. We switched mainly because of the annual licence costs. These were predominantly linked to the initial purchase costs, which for our country and market were too expensive.

The initial setup is straightforward. The complexity comes in the design. We found that designing the solution upfront creates:

1. Understanding from the implementers and business owners.
2. Buy-in from the staff.

M-Files licence model is very flexible. You have the choice of Named User, Concurrent, or SaaS. This gives the business so much room and flexibility to implement new projects whilst maintaining costs and maximizing production.

Yes, we did evaluate one additional product.

1. Design: Design the system and processes with your staff on paper.
2. Train: Train and empower users within departments.
3. Implement: Implement a roll-out plan and project manage the process.
4. Test: Test the results with the staff/users, get feedback.

Follow a change management cycle.

I am giving it a 10 out of 10 rating based on functionality, price, and support.