IBM FileNet Reviews

It is our unstructured record archive solution.

It is mainly for internal users. We don't have end users for it, since it is only used internally. It has captures a maximum part of our organization to help with the efficiency in our records.

It has a process interface for a lot of different aspects of our business, which makes record archiving very efficient.

With our organization being in the financial sector, it has a lot of records: millions to billions. These were very tough to manage overall. A solution like FileNet has definitely improved our business. It keeps legal focused on what is required, and what is not. It has also helped the overall organization to focus on what is really needed, and what is not.

The product has helped with compliance and governance issues. There are some archiving policies which a financial organization has to keep. Our organization can keep up with them because of the IBM product.

It does help the legal team with their decision-making. They can hold and sweep the records based on legal actions required on any particular record. Therefore, it does help on the compliance.

It is very user-friendly.

In the next release, I would like to see automation and simplicity in the installation.

I feel that there is not enough ease on the initial front part. The ease and flexibility could be improved.

The technical support is good and efficient. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

In the past, we did have some other custom solutions. We have also tried some other vendors and they did not covering the platform 360 degrees. When we opted for this particular product from IBM, we saw that it has the overall coverage which is not being provided by any other vendor. This has improved our productivity.

The initial setup was pretty complex. There are too many options, and it can get a bit confusing.

We implemented it in-house.

It has not done much for operations costs because there are still operations involved in it. However, I still see a percent or two difference.

We did a PoC. We tried multiple vendors and compared them on different aspects. Based on the simplicity, ease, convenience, and many aspects of this solution, we made the decision in the past to work with it. We plan on continuing doing so in future.

Do a study and learn about the solution instead of jumping in and finding out about stuff later on. Attend conferences before making decisions and doing things. Then, you can make a smart call.

We haven't used any automation so far. I would like to explore the business partners on automation and find out much more about it.

While it does have business and case management in the tool, we are not really using it.

The Workflow feature is the most valuable feature of FileNet, and then the content management and storage. These give users the ability to quickly store items, retrieve items, and then run workflows on the items and the content in the storage.

It's made using the wealth of the content a lot better; a lot faster for users.

One of the things I'd like to get installed is the Content Navigator. That offers a little bit more scalability for the users. It's not as clunky. It's a little bit more user friendly, with anything that reduces the number of clicks the user needs to get to the content.

Right now, I'd like to get upgraded to the 5.2.1 environment. We're kind of behind the curve on that with the rest of the country. I know you don't need the 5.2.1 environment to employ the Content Navigator. You can deploy it with 5.1, but it is something that we're going to move forward with.

One thing I'd like to have is SQL 2014, but we really can't move to that until we're on 5.2.1. Our current version doesn’t integrate with it.

It's very good. It's very stable. It's just like anything else; it's built up on the foundations. As long as your foundations are strong and sturdy, the application's fine.

Scalability-wise, it's incredible, especially if you deploy it either on a WebSphere or application server. You can build it as big and as small as you need it to be.

Technical support is very good, as long as you're providing the information. If they slack a little bit, just make sure you give them a call and remind them that it's an important issue to you.

I was not involved in the initial setup, but I was involved in subsequent upgrades, rollouts, improvements, moving to different configurations with fixed content devices and using Hitachi content platforms and SAN units. Those were a little complex; the more pieces you put into a puzzle. That was more on your end; making sure that the third-party apps work with the P8 system.

I have recommended FileNet to friends of mine at other companies.

Make sure you know what you want to do with it, how you're going to do it, and plan.
Nothing's perfect, but it's very good. It's above average.

I might give it a higher rating if it cost less; as with anything else, licensing is an issue. Anything with business boils down to money.

With anything, the most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is cost, system stability, features, and different components and third-party apps that'll work with it, for any company that has existing storage and hardware.

It’s possible that we would consider using IBM in cloud, hybrid, or box solutions. We are looking at cheaper ways to store items; faster retrieval. Maybe in the future, making the items more cognitive; getting the wealth from the data, the value that we have in the data.

At this moment, I don't have any plans to include mobile.

I'm not sure if there any new analytics or content management services we're able to provide for our organization. I'm not in that position, so I really can't answer.

There are existing services we're now able to provide better than before: quicker response to customers in the data center, when they call in, to answer questions about forms and medical records that they've received from us.

The usability is great. It's not difficult at all.

We use the platform for the automation of business digitalizing documents. We can turn the digital content into workflows for automation and monitoring processes.

It is a superior product based on Gartner's classification. It provides good stability and scalability for huge enterprises as well. One of the valuable features is the ability to digitalize documents, including enterprise content. We can store the information in video and audio formats. It provides efficient security. Only authorized users can view and edit the stored documents in a role-based user group. Another form of security is redacting documents, where one can view only selected parts of the document. It allows us to share crucial documents like contracts by ensuring that confidential information is redacted.

The platform's price could be better than other products in the market. It could be simpler to use, considering multiple use cases. We could deploy it easily with some training as well.

IBM offers distinct features through different products, such as IBM Enterprise Records for record management, IBM Datacap for document scanning, and IBM Business Automation Workflow for complex workflows. They could include all the features into one application, similar to other vendors.

We have been using IBM FileNet for eight years.

IBM FileNet can add and manage processes for a minimum of five and 1000 users.

The initial setup and maintenance are complicated. It requires authentication to be able to deploy and maintain the certificate. We need to configure different protocols for different user groups. We require an administrator to conduct the deployment as large enterprises involve several roles and lengthy processes. We first deploy it in a test environment. Once approved, we implement it in a production environment. It requires a month to complete.

The product generates a return on investment.

We evaluated Alfresco. It offers a community edition free of charge.

I rate IBM FileNet an eight out of ten. I recommend the product. I advise others to go for it if they have the budget. It is a mature product with enough resources and support partners in various regions.

Primary usage is storing content for content management.

We are the consultants, who provide the solution to our clients.

We mostly use ECM solutions from IBM, not database.

While business users are happy with the solution, trends are changing. We need to catch up to them.

The solution helps with governance, especially with PII or PHI, and then with some redaction capabilities.

It has had a positive effect on the decision-making for the business users in our organization.

The solution has improved business process management and case management in our organization.

It provides better content management for security content: both storage and archival.

It is pretty robust and user-friendly. 

We have integrated this solution with other solutions, and the integration process is seamless.

The new software and trends with the cloud solution is a little slow. I would like them to move toward more cloud-based and microservices rather than a SaaS model. This is where the industry is going and what customers are asking for.

The usability is a lot better than it used to be.

It is pretty stable.

It is scalable.

The technical support is pretty knowledgeable and good.

The industry is changing. Competitors for the clients are growing faster, so they need to catch up with them. We need to deploy processes to make them more efficient, interactive, and faster.

The initial setup is complex in the sense that there are server dependencies, installation issues, and compatibility issues with the existing environment and software. Then, the hardware and software have to be managed.

We are the consultants for the deployment.

The solution increases productivity and reduces operating costs. With a few customers, it has reduced costs by 30 percent from the legacy systems to the new system.

It saves our customers time by 30 to 40 percent by eliminating the time to process paper.

We work with the competitors, as well. While the solution is good, it needs to catch up to the average.

Depending on the customer's needs (requirement) and how they have they have laid out their environment, I would recommend the product.

The product has improved over time through automation.

We plan to expand automation into machine learning, artificial intelligence, and analytics.

We use FileNet to store all the medical records and information for a patient. 

We have business users utilizing it in the whole organization for medical records.

I work in information systems now. However, regarding the emergency medical records, research, and other parts of the organization, FileNet lets us have all these records maintained smartly and securely. Mostly, we can use this information in the future for research, if we ever want into AI solution or if we wanted to look for new ways to look at cancer, then it is all there.

The solution provides ease of access. It has affected the decision-making in our organization.

FileNet lets us store everything there for compliance. There is something legally about us not being able to delete stuff. 

The taxonomy is its most valuable feature. Everything is hierarchical and has properties.

I am doing practical coding. Therefore, I am very happy that they have extensive Redbooks and demos with the FileNet API.

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.

I did hear that maybe there are some errors in relationship to another product that they offer, like SmartLock. There is something going on there which is not good.

It is stable.

It is scalale.

There are a lot of Redbooks, and there is the IBM knowledge that is sent there. There are some more obscure errors that get thrown when I'm coding, because I'm bad. 

All in all, the tech support is really good. They have a lot of support.

We were using image services. Now, we are migrating to FileNet. Therefore, we are storing patient records, so they can be used in research.

I know it took them seven months to convert, so the initial setup was, probably to some degree, complex.

We used enChoice for the deployment. Our experience with them was good.

It has reduced operating costs. We went from paper to image services to FileNet. We did that because it was cheaper and better.

The solution has saved us time.

I would recommend choosing IBM. Go for it. It is not like there is a better alternative.

The automation that we are doing right now is to check that all our systems are up and working. I wrote a program in C# which touches a whole bunch of boxes and services. It does a whole bunch of actions against FileNet that checks everything is going correctly. It saves us time and effort, and it works.

I know that they're releasing FileNet 5.5.3 at the end of the month, but I don't know what is in it.

It just allows us to do a lot more data management, just because we have a lot of services, as well as the whole content management we had to do. The whole the FileNet solution that we have integrated allows us to do all of that.

The benefit of this solution is that it provides the whole file services, given that we have a lot of content management. There are not a lot of other technologies available out there for us to efficiently manage the whole FileNet services.

They should continue having the same stack of stuff. There's nothing new that we are expecting. Given our use cases, this is pretty much what we need at this time.

Stability is pretty good, because we've evolved over a period of time. Initially, we used to have it at a different data center. Currently, we've evolved into a place where we feel much more comfortable, in regards to the stability of the system.

Scalability is also good. Although, I'll have to admit that with our use case right now, we have a very good prediction of the number of customers. So, we've been able to meet our benchmark. But, at the same time, if it has to become much more larger than that, I'm not quite sure about where we would end up.

Technical support is pretty good, given that we have a very good partnership with IBM.

Go for it!

The most important criteria while selecting a vendor are the initial support, the knowledge they have and then, being able to partner-up from the support perspective, for any future needs. That's the most important thing for us.

FileNet is very robust and it’s scalable. It's unlimited as far as size and file types that we manage. It's very accessible. It really works for us, for what we use it for.

In ECM, the M is management. Before, we didn't really manage very well. We had shares with files stuck over here; a laptop with some important files on it over here that are important to our enterprise. FileNet has allowed us to have a true enterprise system for all of our employees, customers and so on.

I would like to see a hybrid cloud, where we could have a cloud solution behind our firewall and use the benefits of the cloud without exposing it to the outside world. I would like a private cloud in conjunction with an external-facing cloud, like the box solution that they're talking about now. We don't have that right now.

We have a different use-case for our ECM solutions than most. We are a government lab with high security requirements. I probably would never house much of our data on an external cloud. The access that administrators would have to data does not meet our security requirements (i.e., Security Clearance for the US Government and ‘need-to-know’ requirements). However, I feel that cloud technology is a much better way to secure and share data. I would like to utilize cloud technology that we could implement on our own servers behind our firewall in conjunction with an external cloud for storing data outside our firewall or maybe in a DMZ to enable collaboration with our sister labs and customers in the government and industry.

It's very stable.

Scalability is unlimited; it really is.

Technical support is good. We rely on them a lot. We think of them as a partner. They're excellent, for the most part. We've had a few times when we were stuck and never had a solution. It was because we were way outdated on our system. For the most part, IBM, they're good. They're really good.

I have given it a high rating because we've analyzed other systems; compared everything out there. We do that because our CIO's office wanted us to. There just isn't anything better out there for what we use it for, for ECM.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is that they deliver what they promise; not just a white paper but actually implemented it and it's working. If they do what they say, I think that's most important.

The most valuable feature of FileNet is that it's a secure location for us to store our documentation, where we can put some rigor around it so people can find it and use it for an archiving type system.

Before, we would have things on server stores, hard drives, SharePoint. It allows us to have a central place that everyone knows that it's the official copy of something that they can go and access. FileNet has given both internal and external customers a way to access central data that they might not have had access to before. It allows access out in the field to documents that, before, they would have to get a paper copy of, sometimes.

That makes us more efficient, and saves us time and space.

We have Content Navigator and it seems like we still need to do a level of our own coding for plug-ins and so on. I'd like to see something a little bit more out of box, where there are plug-ins that we can get to do some of what we need to do, instead of having to build it ourselves, to make it simpler. Faster time to market is important and we're not really there.

I still think it's kind of expensive. I didn't notice that the cloud offerings were going to be any cheaper. Expense is probably another area with room for improvement.

Also, when I attend conferences, activities are shown that sound very easy. "Oh, look at this bright, shiny thing." But then, when you really start digging, it takes a lot more work to implement the bright, shiny thing. It's a nicer on a PowerPoint.

We have a lot of content stored on server shared drives, and because there is often no naming or filing standards, or metadata, users find it difficult to locate documents. Also, users tend not to go back and delete items per our records retention policy (which can be decades depending on the document), and content can continue to clog up servers. It is helpful to setup automation of records retention.

Users also keep documents on their computer drives making it difficult to share. We also have a lot of legacy documentation in file drawers that could be digital for easier sharing.

We have an enterprise license. We've been able to scale it up to large groups, as well as very small independent areas.

I don't actually put in tickets; my dev team does. Sometimes they've been a little frustrated with response times, especially for production systems. It’s hit and miss.

I was consulted during the decision process as well to invest in FileNet.

We were starting to acquire a lot of little, home-built document management systems. It didn't make sense to build something when we could buy a package that already had a lot of capabilities. We had already built, I think, three or four little scanning applications. It just didn't make sense to keep building. We had a hodge podge of stuff.

We acquired FileNet back when it was owned by FileNet, and it was much more complex then. You had to hire them to come in and do all the installation. Now, we can do our own installation. That’s because of the steps IBM has taken. Before, you had to hire them, you had to hire FileNet to come do it; you couldn't do it yourself.

Usability all depends on how it is set-up. FileNet itself is good, but it relies on just how complex does the business want to get.

We had an external consultant group that was coming in to do a significant amount of work for us. They were bringing in new technologies and they were the deciders of bringing in FileNet.

Nonetheless, when I select a vendor to work with, cost is very important and a level of expertise in a similar type of industry is helpful, peer experiences. If they've worked with a company that is similar to ours, it seems like there is faster ramp-up time for them.

Really understand your use case and capabilities that you're going to need, especially because we start out thinking it's just document management or content management, but then there's always all this other stuff. Does the product or product line have the ability to expand to the other stuff that the business wants?

I think Box has potential for us because of our interaction with external consultants, but not at this time.

As far as any pre-existing services that we're now able to provide better than we did before, we’re now able to provide better centralized access by using FileNet; that's where we're at, at this point and time.

We have plans to include mobile. We have folks out in the field, so we want them to have access to electronic documentation via a tablet or other mobile device.