IBM FileNet Reviews

The most valuable features are that it is very well integrated and connected. To deploy many new applications and solutions it may sometimes not be very easy, but it is very robust, at the end of the day.

The benefit is a shorter time to market, especially.

In the next release, I would like to see features for how to move it to the cloud and enhance functionalities as you are developing new products.

Also, I come from a Spanish-speaking country. Sometimes, you have to work with people that don't speak Spanish and that makes that the overall solution a little trickier to implement, because of the language barrier. So, I think that a strong knowledge of the technical issues by people that also have good knowledge of the mother tongue of the country, that would help a lot.

Usually, IBM products are stable, although some of them require some changes or some upgrades for minor bugs, but the overall quality of the solutions is OK.

FileNet has helped us a lot with the customer documentation information and I think the solution is very strong.

Actually, right now, we are moving to the new version of FileNet. We are doing all the scalability right now to have more processes involved with the FileNet platform.

The technical support is good. I think that the guys have provided us with the solutions that we needed.

We didn't previously use any other solution. We decided to invest in a new solution because we understood that it was a benefit for us and our customers to have the solutions that FileNet, in this case, provided for us.

The setup was a little complex. Even though some of the projects or the solutions are not very complex, you have to integrate them with the company's old system. Some of the systems are not complex, so the overall solution sometimes requires effort, that if it's not on the FileNet solution itself, it's in another module that's integrated.

We were checking out other vendors. We were looking at Oracle, Microsoft and some smaller vendors that were developing some specific things for us.

When I'm selecting a vendor, I look for a vendor that you can trust, with whom you can have a long-term relationship, and you know that they are also on top of the technological wave. What you are going to implement is going to be constantly changing with new developments in the future.

Make a very good design at the beginning, understand what you need and also prepare the different phases of the project to ensure that you finish the projects. Have a clear view. Draw the lines of the software you need.

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.

• Enterprise content
• Document management
• Worker's management, which we are currently not leveraging. 

It is performed fine. It is a robust solution.

From the document management side, it is able to integrate with some of our other systems, such as SAP.

It has a robust API. We are able to have systems communicate with each other, and do business process automation. Although, there are a lot of opportunities that we have not leveraged yet.

• The document management elements
• The worker's management pieces
• The distributive environment capabilities

We run a global corporation with locations all around the world, therefore the distributive environment is important.

I would like to see Azure AD added.

It is a good, stable system.

I have found that it scales well.

I would rate the technical support as medium. I do not like the login process. It is not great. 

Getting an ID, and the IDs across the different things. IDs used to solve similar problems.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

If you are planning on managing records, go with a OpenText, FileNet, or Documentum. A lot of times companies go with SharePoint as a default, but there are some pain points around worker's management in SharePoint. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Company's position in the industry within that particular technology field. We want market leaders. A company who can support an 80,000 person company which is global.

It's an image repository for our medical documents, our claims, etc. They do all kinds of stuff. They put checks there. It's an indexing software.

It has added more indexing capability on images and enabled us to search them. 

Stores a lot of documents. It's a good repository for that.

What I would want to see is heavier analytical ability within it, but we've purchased the cognitive piece of it. I haven't seen that implemented yet, but that would be the future; I think it may already be there but I just haven't seen it yet. Something like indexing for unstructured text.

At this time, it has improved, but it wasn't that stable not that long ago. 

It seems fine, it's dynamic. It works with all the different business needs that we have for it.

I have not used tech support for this solution.

When selecting a vendor the important criteria are 

• cost
• ease in getting something accomplished
• not over-promising 
• trustworthy.

I would rate it a seven out of 10. That rating is because of stability problems when I first had it - and then, I'm not entirely sure our company has set it up right. Sometimes things are only as good as the people who run it. It's like going to a restaurant. It's only as good as the chef. So you can go to Burger King and have a pretty good burger or you can go down the road, it just depends on how good the chef is. So I think there's some of that dynamic. I don't know that much because I didn't mess with it like at that level. But it's a fine product. We've used it for a very long time.

The advice I would to a colleague at another company who's researching this or another similar solution would be to check how data index with one another, and the communication back and forth in being able to find your files, if you have a large data set like we do. 

We use the Case Manager component of FileNet, itself. It helps with the business process, mainly; incoming documents; and then collaboration of the underwriters or adjusters. Besides that, we consolidate all documents within FileNet, so nothing is going to be left on a file share or somewhere that is not going to be found down the road. It's very important for the company to have something like that in place, to control every asset of the documents within the enterprise.

Documents used to be everywhere; anybody's desktop or shared file systems. Now, everything is in one location and people can share or view the same document at the same time, without waiting for each other to finish a folder, paper or document, to go ahead and work on them again. Basically, that's it. You can have many people using the same document at the same time, sharing it without any problem; annotating on them, if need be; having it all in one place; and being easily accessible.

I would rate it higher if they improved the usability, because as a product, it went through iterations and things like that. If it was supposed to be a perfect product, Content Navigator would have been developed earlier, so that people would have been using the system much, much better. We still have lots of customers that are used to using XT; migrating them from one environment to another always causes issues. Training them again on the new product for the same backend, for the same solution, that always creates some issues. It's the response from the customers, mainly; the end users. When there's a change, there is always resentment. You have to deal with all of those things.

It would have been better if things were what they are today five years ago or seven years ago. The product could have matured quicker.

Because it's a content management solution, they could start providing an analytics component on it. They already have the content, so they could start adding components. Usually, they rely on third-party or external products to do those things. If they start doing the analytics, that would make it easier for me, instead of implementing other products, but I guess that's the trend now. You have to go with that. It's something that we don't currently have that I would like.

The way I see it, IBM is going more towards cloud-based solutions; more towards Box being a content management solution for the cloud. Even with the delay, how that's going to fit with the Case Manager, I don't know. I don't know what the future is going to be for content management.

They could have done things differently or better. No product is perfect 100% of the time.

It is stable. We have no major issues.

It's an enterprise solution. Everybody, from coast to coast, is using it. It's not only departmental or one geographical area. It's enterprise, coast to coast, and it’s being used.

My advice wouldn’t be positive because, as I see it, everything is going cloud-based. Everything is going in a direction where content management is becoming like the database products used to be 10 years ago; they are in the back room and nobody knows about them anymore. They do their job, day in and day out, but they are in the dark now. That's the trend I'm seeing with the content management. They're going to go in the back room and nobody's going to be dealing with them. They will just sit there and do their job; collect the content and then do nothing else. That's where it's going.

Just because it's not sexy doesn't mean it's not good. Everything runs on the databases but they just sit there; nobody cares about them anymore. The same thing goes for content management. That's my impression. That's my gut feeling about what's going to happen.

We're looking into the IBM Box solution, for cloud collaboration with external vendors, external users and external suppliers. That would make it easier for them to come in, send documents or upload documents, without having to go through emails, which is currently the case. It makes the work process easier, document management easier.

As far as new analytics or content management services that we are now able to provide our organization, we are doing some proof of concepts but nothing in production yet; mainly content analytics, not streams or anything that's coming in from other sources. We're doing analytics on the content that we already have. We're looking into the sentiment part of the documents that are coming in, to see if it’s something people are going to be using, or to escalate it to be looked into right away, or it's something that anyone can view anytime they want; there's no urgency on it.

Regarding existing services that we're able to provide better than before, it's easier to respond to documents that are coming in or are requested; coming in from brokers, for example. It's easier to work on them. It's faster to work on them. Turnaround time used to be two or three days; now, it's minutes or less than an hour.

Mobile is probably going to be part of the Box solution coming in but nothing has been decided yet.

As far as usability, it's user-friendly. Now that we're using Content Navigator, it's easier to use and easier to present it to the users. Training-wise, it's much easier because you teach them on one application so everybody knows how to use the next application that's going to come on as a solution. That's a plus.

The most important criteria for me in selecting a vendor to work with is how accessible they are; how support is available, especially IT or technical support; and if we're doing development, how fast they're going to respond for problems that we encounter. Those are the things that are important.

Since we implemented FileNet, the users are happy with the experience. The users are using it on a daily basis, especially when they don't deal with paper. Whenever they need, it’s there and they don't have to worry about paper. It helps them in their daily work and job.

Our primary use case is document management for eliminating paper.

We shred all our paper and no longer need the cabinet space. We used to have about six to 12 inches of cabinet space per customer, which is now gone.

The tool is used by business users in our organization. Productivity has increased because retrieval is easier. Documents don't disappear when someone is retrieving them.

The solution helps us with compliance and governance issues because the documents are all available. 

Having all the documents available has improved our decision-making quality.

It gets rid of paper.

It is perfectly usable as a back-end solution without a user interface through the use of APIs.

When information is available (by having your documents available), your case management is better.

It is really not useful for us as a front-end tool. If somebody wants to access documents, I would not let them use the FileNet interfaces.

I would like more controlled APIs, tools, exception handling, and ways to globally monitor it. Something that would make it a true back-end system. 

I would like to have more governance features with more supervisory layers.

Access control integration would be nice. You can actually control access, but it's not that easy to integrate. It is all up to our software to make sure that we do the job, and we don't always do. We all screw up.

The API needs improvement.

It is stable, and it works.

It is very scalable, and scalable enough for us.

We never used the technical support. We have enough in-house knowledge.

I didn't like using paper. It's painful.

The initial setup is straightforward for us. We have so many years of experience with it.

We have in-house people.

The physical space that we have gained back pays for the service. Therefore, it has reduced our operating costs overall. We have definitely seen ROI. I would estimate $30,000 a year.

While it does not save on retrieval time, what we do save very significantly on was when person took a document, then misplaced it. Or, somebody else needed it when it is in somebody's hands. At least one document in a thousand was not placed back in the right spot, then you needed to look for it. That was tricky. You hoped it was somewhere in the vicinity, and not on a different floor. Thus, it saves me on decision quality, because if the document is not there, then I am making the decision without it.

When we started with FileNet, they were pretty much it. The alternatives were not serious. We looked at using just file systems with PDFs, etc. FileNet was the best solution.

We have integrated FileNet with other solutions, and the integration process works.

The biggest lesson that I learned from using this solution is to slow down. Think five years ahead and don't worry about today.

15 years ago, I would look at my problems of the day and try to solve them, or maybe at my problems of the next year and try to solve them. Today, I look at my problems five to ten years from now, then try to think of them and go towards a solution, as much as possible.

The primary use for this solution is customer and client demos, in order to share it with them, if they have a requirement for this particular type of capability.

We position a product or solution like this to a client where there is a great fit, and it does have a return on investment in terms of efficiencies, cost savings, or job role function acceleration.

We position the solution for client-facing opportunities. The internal use of it would be in terms of testing and prevalidation. Therefore, the internal use is what would be considered our informal R&D lab situation in partnership with IBM.

It improves out client and customer functions, which is paramount to our business model. It enables customers and clients to quickly and readily access the content that they need in real-time, without any delays.

Indirectly, it does have the potential to provide a high level of audit capabilities, in terms of being able to track the success of a person's job role in a workspace.

The most valuable feature is the way in which it enables clients and customers to quickly access the content and information that they use for everyday functions.

There is a high degree of usability with this solution. It is highly compatible with our clients' and customers' work environments, making it easy to deploy and implement.

It would be nice to have additional integration features, which could be integration with IoOT-based products and solutions that also have automation requirements on the IOT side. Anything can be integrated from a Gateway or API perspective would be a plus.

It is highly stable.

It is highly scalable.

The technical support is very robust.

That is our role as an adviser. As a trusted adviser to our clients and customers, we would have discussions with them that would identify this particular type of requirement, then identify it in the client/customer review.

We are the partner who works with either the customer or client for deployment.

My advice would be to have that upfront requirements discussion with your clients and customers early on to ensure that this solution is indeed a fit for them. If so, explore other automation products and solutions which might run sidecar to this one from a more deep dive automation perspective, since clients and customers seem to have an increasing propensity for absorbing automated solutions at this time.

Even a simple, straightforward approach to one-stop solution implementations, like this, one can provide significant gains in terms of accelerated job role functions and efficiencies that clients and customers really like.

The solution increase productivity. The working example is that of a client who has been using a different type of product or solution which had roadblocks, issues, or challenges that frustrated them, making it more difficult for them to access the necessary content. Whereas, this solution is able to streamline the process for them, making it easy and still resilient for their business model.

It definitely saves time in terms of enabling the customer and client to access more content, if they want to. The prior content that they were accessing is now accessed in an accelerated fashion, allowing them to get onto other business tasks of greater value.

We have not integrated the solution with other solutions yet.

It has the potential to improve business process or case management.

It can be used in conjunction with automation, but it is not positioned as an independent, standalone automation solution.

I rated it as a nine (out of ten), because of the robust nature of the solution, its stability, and the ease of being able to position it from a requirement's perspective with clients and customers.

Right now, we're trying to roll out our automation to our branches. It's very, very important for us to do the re-engineering our business process right now from manual to automation. That's pretty much the most important feature.

Automation is one of the best parts of FileNet; second, of course, is the repository being able to actually archive all our documents in there; and then, records management, which we implemented about a year ago.

There are some tangible and intangible benefits. The tangible part is the cost savings and all that; the intangible is making everything more efficient, and being able to access the documents across the board, anywhere in our bank.

I've been working with our business partner on what we can improve, more on the presentation layer, on our content, as well as being able to provide us with more recommendations when it comes to how we apply the technology such as DataCap or Case Manager into our business right now. We're not quite getting that on the presentation level, because we need someone who will be able to present to us the latest and the greatest when it comes to technology, when it comes to ECM, so that we could present it to our business and say, “Hey, we have this.”

We're in our baby steps on this. After we have implemented a solution, we do a review and see how we can make it efficient. In that respect, I’ve mentioned the presentation. We're in banking, so there's a huge need to be able to see our search results and images, rather than just a text result panel. We're implementing that right now. I know ICN just came out about a couple of years ago. I wish they were fast enough to develop APIs for that. The presentation site that we use through our business partner is not quite developed yet. I wish that was developed already. I think the responsibility for that falls on both IBM and our business partner, but more on our business partner.

There's always a need for improvement. As I’ve mentioned, I wish the ICN part that our business partner is actually developing right now was already complete because we ended up purchasing an application that sucks. We're looking to replace it with the ICN.

I might give it a perfect rating if I was able to use DataCap as promised, definitely.

It is actually very stable. As of right now, the only negative feedback I have is on the capture piece, the DataCap part. We have actually piloted that. It didn't quite work out. I’m kind of hesitant to use the DataCap technology because of the unreliability. However, I heard that the current version is actually more reliable.

It is definitely scalable. Right now, we're planning to move most of our departments over and I don't see any issues at all, infrastructure-wise, being able to accommodate most of our departments.

We have a business partner that we go through, and then to IBM. The technical support we receive through our business partner is excellent. We have very good relationship with them. They provide and recommend solutions to us and how to make our setup more efficient. If we have a business case, we're set up to go.

Do your research. Don't listen to the vendors all the time. Make sure you have a reference about using the technology and are able to get feedback from those customers.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are knowledge, being able to support us and availability.

As far as I know, we do not have any plans to consider IBM for cloud, hybrid or box solutions.

Regarding new analytics or content management services that we are now able to provide to my organization, we haven't really gotten that far. We're taking our steps slowly, right now, because we are just trying to convert all of our departments into ECM.

Automation and capture were existing services that we are now definitely able to provide better than before.

We have plans to include mobile. That was the reason I attended a session on it at a recent IBM World of Watson conference. We're not sure yet how we're going leverage the mobility part. I just wanted to see what technology we need. According to their content, it looks like we have it; I just wanted to see how they use it.
Usability is excellent. The API website that we're using right now has everything. It's really good because it presents all the functionalities that we need in order to search and retrieve documents, as well as in workflow.

The feedback has always been positive regarding changes to our internal and external customers’ experience since implementing FileNet. A lot of our businesses right now are going to the next level; meaning, automating their business process right now and being able to use e-signatures and all that; integrating with FileNet.