IBM FileNet Reviews

There are many aspects that can be improved in this product. We're doing a lot of projects with customers. It would help if there was a summary of the products. They should be able to do more upgrades of the product or offer new versions. They could also improve the user experience.

They have to think about how to make the environment over. Make it in some containers, for example. The complexity of installation can also be improved. They should re-imagine the way that they install products. 

The solution is very stable.

The solution is very scalable.

We use various solutions that aren't really similar, but are in the same field. There are lots of products that pretend to do enterprise content management. I have sample projects with SharePoint, and Microsoft Checkpoint among others.

In terms of the initial setup, you have to have some requirements. I am technical specialist in finance, so I can do installation as well, but it's not easy for everyone to handle. 

You have to know it takes time, you have to be very careful and know exactly what you are going to do. You need a good knowledge of the production system, middleware, application services, servers databases, etc. It's not as easy as other products.

How long it takes to deploy the solution depends of the requirements. It can take from six months to two years. It depends on a lot of factors including the modules, because you want a summary, and which remodels are the customer needs. The solution is modular, so you may have lots of modules. 

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

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.

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.

It is usually the client's system of record for their documents. In addition, it can be used for digital assets, like video and recordings.

It provides a centralized system of truth around their documents. It also allows them to automate their processes and gain efficiencies in cost reductions. 

It puts governance in place around the content and processes:

• People can only see what they should be able to see.
• It is auditable, so you have an audit trail.
• Access levels can be set to certain parts of the document based on role level.

Our most valuable feature is it's highly scalable. There can be up to billions of documents or content items. It can support thousands to tens of thousands of concurrent users. There is also tight integration between the content and process functionality.

I would like IBM to improve with each release, continue moving towards a continual, tighter integration, and build solutions that take advantage of all the different modules the platform has from one place.

It is stable.

It is used by large enterprises. It has to be scalable and robust for them to use. We have seen that on multiple projects over the years.

We work very closely with IBM and their technical service as part of a solution proposal. We also work with them to support and implement our client systems. It's a team effort.

We have been using the platform over the years. They have continued to make the product easier to install. With the new release of container support, it's becoming even easier to install. The trick to it is the design architecture which allows you to scale, and also putting in performance tuning for the scaling to happen.

Some of our customers are IBM shops and work with IBM exclusively, but there are also customers who look at other solutions.

Overall, IBM has a great end-to-end solution. I would highly recommend it.

Most important criteria for our customers when selecting a vendor: stable and scalable. Performance is a very big deal for most of our customers, and knowing it's a secure platform as well.

We use FileNet as an unstructured content repository today. About six, seven years ago, we also used it as a case management solution but we don't use it as a case management solution anymore. We use it primarily as a content repository. We like the fact that it is a large vendor solution. It is robust and stable; hardly comes down. One of the challenges we face is finding qualified personnel to take care of the upkeep of the solution but, other than that, it's serviced very well.

It has actually simplified some of our business processes that rely on unstructured data. We are in the health care business, so centralized storing and management of unstructured data allows the different business processes to go to the same single source of truth for that information. For example, we process claims. We also have to answer questions at the contact center on the claims that we've processed. If there is a document that is associated with a claim, for both those business processes to have access to it from a single source of truth is valuable. There are multiple business processes that rely on that. Having a centralized repository has become very useful and valuable. And, naturally, the audit and compliance requirements have also been fairly well satisfied, thanks to the fact that we have that centralized repository.

I would like to see better integration with other tools. For example, we use IBM Security Suite. We also use IBM's Business Process Manager, Rules Engine, Cognos, and so on. I think IBM products can be better integrated across themselves. We find that, sometimes, we have to jump through hoops to get one product to work with another.

I would give it a perfect rating if all the upgrades had been smooth.

We've been using it for almost 10 years now.

It is very stable and it does scale well. It does require a certain amount of discipline in setting the infrastructure up right and keeping up with the patches and releases. But it has been very stable for us and it has scaled well.

I think technical support is pretty good. They've been very responsive and helpful, but we haven't really had to call them too many times in the last few months.

I was not involved in the initial setup but I was involved in an upgrade that was almost an overhaul, about four years ago. It was fairly complex because I think the model we used to lay down the unstructured data within FileNet originally was not really very extensible. We had to redo a little bit of that work, so there was some complexity in it. And, also, we were coming from a fairly older version of the software... Lack of upkeep, I guess. And that's why it was a fairly difficult exercise at that point.

First, know the problem that you are trying to solve. Different products have different sweet spots, different scales, for operation. Understand the business problem that you are trying to solve. Understand the ability of your organization to adapt to change, because these things require the entire organization to think a little differently about how they do what they do. And then, make sure you have the right technical strength to implement a large infrastructure solution like this.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are reliability, technical support, and, definitely, the cost.

We are able to provide a lot more content management solutions than before. We've been using it for almost 10 years now. There's really nothing dramatically different or new that we've done in the last 12 months.

It's very usable. I haven't seen it lately but I'm sure it has improved dramatically in the last 12 months, too. Compared to what I saw five, six, years ago, and what we actually upgraded to, it's come a long way.

We are not considering employing IBM on cloud, hybrid or Box solutions, nor for mobile, at the moment.

We use it to document content management. We have a payment system for every corporate payment that goes through our bank, it has to go through our application. We use it for the business process management data where multiple things have instability for that transaction.

They do validations on it to see if the transaction is valid and next we use it according to the guidelines of the governments of countries like Singapore, India, and the USA. Every now and then countries impose sanctions on different countries and they have to make sure that the payments do not go in or out from those countries.

We use it to audit.

I like the security and also the configuration. It is easy to configure and most of our business use cases have everything just with the configuration itself.

Developers like us have an upgraded interface. That interface does not work in the process that we have today. It hangs and is not user-friendly.

I have been using IBM Case Foundation for the last five years.

It is stable. There were a few bugs. They should release the fixes for the bugs a little more quickly, maybe within a month instead of waiting six months. I think they do it quarterly now. If possible they should release small patches again.

It is scalable.

In my previous company, we had an issue with one of their products. We could not find anything on the data documentations or on their website. We approached them and they accepted that there is a problem with the product itself and so we got in touch with them and they tried to fix the issue. 

The initial setup is quite complex, not straightforward. 

Deployment takes around two hours roughly. Depending on the setup, it can take half a day. 

We used consultants for the deployment. 

My advice to someone considering this solution is that there are a lot of open-source tools available. Other than going for IBM FileNet you should look into other options too because even we are not using the full potential of FileNet and we are paying a huge amount of money for it. 

I would rate FileNet a seven out of ten. 

Our primary use case for this solution is document storage and retrieval - Workflow.

IBM FileNet has given us a much better platform than our previous ECM platform. It's more stable, more flexible and more powerful. The only downside is that it takes a dedicated staff to maintain it and the learning curve is pretty steep.

The features that I have found most valuable include the Data Capture and Case Manager features.

Simplifying both training and maintenance would be an improvement.

We did not have any stability issues.

It's very scalable.

IBM technical support is pretty good.

We were previously using a different solution but the previous platform was obsolete.

The initial setup was fairly complex. You will need help from IBM or a third party.

We implemented through a vendor team. We did not have a great vendor experience initially based on not having a clear set of deliverables.  

Hard to calculate since the old system was so bad.  A couple of improvements were noted immediately:  

1.  Training time was cut for the new system by 80%, 

2.  The business unit was able to absorb a 30% increase in workload with adding staff or overtime, and

3. Processing errors dropped by 40%.

1. It will be more expensive than estimated to setup.  
2. You will need to double the staff while you are running the old system and installing the new system.
3. Depending on the number of documents to be migrated, make sure you understand the potentially massive amount of time and effort required to migrate the existing content to the new platform.

We looked at multiple vendors: Perceptive, Hyland, and Dell EMC.

Do not underestimate the staffing component or you will fail.

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the best I would give IBM FileNet an 8 out of 10.

A lot of the time Datacap and FileNet work in tandem together. FileNet is like a database repository which can be connected to a bunch of different third-party applications or the Web. It's a very interesting technology in the sense of you can pull in a lot of information through the Datacap network, then connect it to servers on the FileNet side. The servers can communicate and assist in the automated workflow structure. This is especially helpful when it comes to multiple parties who are trying to work together.

A majority of our customers use FileNet. It's a valuable software in what it can do. If you need manual processes automated to the point where you are going to have a lot of information in a repository and it needs to be extraordinarily secure, then you need to work with external forces and it's not going to be an all internal processes. FileNet is a fantastic system and almost all of our clients use it. 

We work with Georgia, Connecticut, Minnesota, Montana, Rhode Island, and integrating into New York. Many different state organizations use it because it is secure and highly advanced. 

We were working with the state troopers who needed their FileNet servers implemented with the ability to communicate with a third-party app called a OffenderWatch. OffenderWatch is a database where a lot of the sex offenders are stored. However, with the way that everything works, Datacap and FileNet must stay properly maintained, otherwise there are a lot of issues which might happen. 

The ability to coordinate with automated workflows is the most valuable feature. You have a lot of external servers, and even internal servers, where all the information needs to be housed somewhere securely. If you're pulling information through Datacap, FileNet needs to be able to store it, then also assist in the automation aspect of it.

The ability to connect servers is another big feature. It can connect a lot of third-party people and hold information securely. Security is the big thing for FileNet. 

I would also include the automated word flow structure as a valuable feature.

I would like to see in FileNet integrated with Watson, which can read something and send it without any human contact or interaction.

Stability is fantastic. It's probably one of the more highly secure systems out there right now. Though, you have to have the right people to support, implement, integrate, and maintain it. No technology will work completely on its own. Even if it does, one day it might break (and that goes for any tech). 

It is very simple to add any users that you need to. Implement it once, and so long as it works, you can add and train more people to use it. Scalability is absolutely there.

We switched to IBM because it is in high demand in the government market.

If you are looking for a stable, highly secure solution which will work with a capture solution or will work with an automated workflow solution that you are implementing, then you should look at FileNet, especially if you have a very large repository or database.

Going forward, I am interested in knowing:

• Where is AI going to play a part in FileNet?
• Does IBM plan on advancing the technology and integrating it with the newer technologies that they are focusing on now?
• Will FileNet and Datacap one day be replaced by something better?

It's used for content management. It's not for business process automation but for digital, electronic archives: documents, folders, and access to the client's native IBM content. It's an IBM content manager, especially for IBM BPM.

FileNet has many features which support our clients' compliance and governance requirements.

The most useful feature is its persistent storage. Also, the full-text search and attribute searching are valuable. It shows a preview of documents, and makes possible small, event-driven automation: creating documents, editing documents, deleting documents, and others.

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

IBM is doing a lot of work to combine the abilities of its major products, BPM and FileNet, into one product, either IBM Business Automation Workflow, or Digital Business Automation. These are two major offerings from IBM. These products are very tightly integrated. I'm waiting for the moment when, in one or two years, it will be only one product which will combine the major strengths of these products. This is the right way forward, from my point of view. IBM is moving quickly in this direction.

I haven't seen any problems. FileNet is stable software as long as it is installed correctly.

The installation of FileNet is not very easy. It requires a very experienced administrator. But if the program installs correctly, it works. It's stable. It takes two to three days to install FileNet in high-availability mode.

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.

I didn't do a deep comparison. Previously, I compared FileNet with some open-source enterprise content systems, especially Alfresco, but I realized that this product is for a different type of customer. FileNet is for enterprise customers, but Alfresco and other open-source BPM products are for small or medium-sized customers.

In terms of a comparison of the features, the open-source solutions are really are missing a lot.

Create a solution combining the strengths of all of IBM's products: IBM BPM, FileNet, or IBM Case Manager, a product which sits on top of IBM FileNet technology.

We have banks as clients with 3,000 to 4,000 employees but the FileNet users number between 100 and 200.