You have realized well in time that you need a good document management solution to secure your company documents. Perhaps you have even figured out how you would organise, store, and retrieve your documents. You have seen demos of several solutions that promise to fulfil your requirement. Now is the time to evaluate the shortlisted vendors and finally arrive at a decision, as to which DMS are you really going to deploy at your workplace. Well, we are here to help you make that choice. Now that you know what a DMS is and what it has on offer, we are going to take you straight to the point. Here are 5 questions you need to ask while evaluating the right DMS provider for your organisation.
1. Is the vendor providing an end-to-end solution?
Most DMS solution providers talk of securing your documents but once they deploy the solution, they turn their backs on their customers. Their service agreement only mentions about deploying the solution for the client. You need to be wary of such vendors. Choose a vendor who would not only help you scan documents (or perhaps even let you scan your documents on your own) but also help you upload the documents on the document management solution. In case any data import is required, they must also help you do that. Basically, a good DMS provider would ensure that your GoLive goes seamless and each and every employee of your organisation is comfortable using the DMS.
2. Is the vendor open to customizing the DMS?
No DMS works exactly like you want it to work. Any DMS that you choose may close in on 90% of your requirement. You still have to bring down your expectations by 10%. Now, what if you have a unique requirement that must be fulfilled within the purview of the DMS but needs to customize the solution in question? Is the vendor ready to customize the solution for you? Or are the modules so pre-defined that any change you propose comes with only one choice – you adjusting to the system? A good DMS provider will have the team to develop newer modules/units within the DMS to fulfil your out-of-the-box requirement.
3. Is the DMS open to multiple file formats?
Your DMS is going to be the repository for all of the company documents. Not all documents would be scanned copies created in PDF format. Some documents would be MS-WORD documents while some others may be TIFF. Hence, it is important to ensure that the DMS that you shortlist is compatible with multiple file formats. ShareDocs Enterpriser, for example, is open to more than 22 file formats, including .dwg. Thus, you can also upload AutoCAD files onto ShareDocs Enterpriser.
4. Does the vendor have experience in providing industry-specific solutions?
Every organisation houses more or less the same types of documents. Wrong! Each and every organisation generates a different set of documents. While some documents are generic by nature, some others are specific to certain industries. A good DMS vendor would understand the primary nature of each industry and would offer specific modules that are compatible with the specific needs of an industry.
5. Is the vendor offering a scalable model?
It may so happen that when you initially set out for a DMS, you may have only one department in mind but have a plan to include more and more departments or the entire organisation to use the DMS! Or you may now be a small organisation today that may experience a major breakthrough and grow huge overnight! Is the DMS that you are considering capable of handling a sudden ramp up? It is important to think of this possibility. In case you are deploying the DMS on your premises, it will be your internal IT team’s job to ramp up the infrastructure. On the other hand, if your DMS vendor deploys your DMS on cloud, you need to ensure that the vendor is capable of scaling up the cloud server while DMS remains unaffected in the process.
When you are choosing your DMS provider, it is important to do a lot of research. A document management solution is a long-term investment as it eventually becomes the custodian of all important data that is critical for the functioning of the organisation.