Dumping Your DMS? Consider This…

 

Investing in technology is expensive. Occasionally, we see customers become frustrated enough to consider moving off of the DMS (document management system) in which they’ve invested substantially. This might, or might not, be an appropriate move. If you’re considering replacing your system, you’re not alone. Over the past twenty years, there have been rollups and mergers and combined product lines.  Sometimes, the product you originally purchased is no longer available or reflected in the product sets now offered.  Even if the original product didn’t change, your needs might. Your legacy system might not offer solutions to your new requirements. Or, perhaps the changes involved in adoption were not adequately communicated, leading to dissatisfaction.

Whether you’re dealing with dissatisfaction or product changes, you aren’t stuck. There are options for you to consider. Here are three options, and steps to take before moving forward on any of them. 

Switch To A New Product

The technology refresh cycle is between three and five years. Even after successful implementation and use, there are times when it is appropriate to switch to a new product. Switching to a new DMS can be a viable option, especially if you did not get value out of the original system. A benefit to redefining your document management requirements after you have started on your digital transformation is that you are much clearer about what your business requires.

We see situations where major tech companies buy multiple competing product lines and begin offering a new product, or a hybrid of these options. This may be easier for them to support, but it may not reflect the product or functionality you originally purchased. 

Almost all systems provide a way to migrate massive amounts of data, so you don’t lose the metadata you’ve invested labor into capturing.  That said, you MUST include migration support in your requirements to ensure that you capture manually entered keywords, any dates relating to record retention, audit histories, etc. 

Switch Service Providers

Sometimes, your implementation problems have to do with your service provider. The scenario above holds. You bought your DMS to address a set of business requirements.  As those requirements evolve, you must ask if your solution provider still best fits your needs? 

Many perceived system limitations have more to do with service provider capabilities than product functionality. Consider seriously looking at the reasons for a replacement to ensure that they are product specific and not vendor specific. Many software manufacturers have communities for support and questions. Look at use cases outside of your solution provider’s references to see if there is a resource that has experience with your current requirements.  You might find you don’t need to repurchase software and can maintain your familiar interface.

There are often add on products that address additional requirements. Rather than replacing an entire system, consider using the existing framework with some add-ons to achieve your required goals. The cost for these add-ons is invariably less than a new system and migration. 

Extract Everything And Move Back To Windows

This is NOT recommended, but more than one client has considered it. Once done, there is no easy or enforceable way to maintain the same consistency in indexing and managing files. Should you move back to the nested file structure of Windows and away from database systems, you not only lose the software investment. but all of the labor cost that went into indexing the documents. 

After you have extracted the files from your DMS, how will you search for them? If you have security or audit history needs, how will you preserve them? Further, how will you restrict and document access in the future? You may figure something out, but this can come at a high cost. You can lock directories, but how do you keep them up to date? If you don’t lock them, how do you keep users from accidentally dragging a folder up a level?  Managing a shared file structure is risk-prone, arguably too risky for an asset like your business information. 

Your DMS provider and platform might fit initially, but your needs may evolve. Service providers and consumers alike should perceive changes as an opportunity to re-earn your business and reset expectations. If you opt to make a change, your service providers and business partners should leverage the investment in labor to populate the system and infrastructure of the legacy system while defining new requirements. There isn’t shame in re-evaluating the market to determine if your existing solution continues to be the best fit.