It's a great tool that works well to automate processes and, once set up, reduce admin time on things like tracking the approval process. However, it can be challenging to initially set up because it requires an understanding of the process in the first place. We have a team of business analysts who work for us so one of them was assigned to understand our own internal processes and then set up the relevant workflows. I think without this we might have struggled. We also each use the expense receipt feature which is great. You can in a receipt and using OCR the expense forms are automatically populated. You do need to manually check it but this saves a lot of time in filling in forms. As we now have a workflow in place it is straightforward to submit your monthly expense report for approval straight afterward. The document tracking feature is good too - who has seen, worked on, or needs to see the document. It means we were able to stop using Slack.
It is ideal where security is your number one concern or where there is a need to share securely across different physical locations. Speed is less than ideal in certain usage scenarios. It is limited by the speed of the internet and it can be difficult to pull large quantities of documents when researching or answering discovery requests, although, that being said, it can be addressed by maintaining your own secure server to contain a mirror of your online documents. But then the security for a mirror falls back on the organization.
Delay. At times, there is a delay between saving a document into Netdocuments and actually seeing them in the appropriate workspace. Such a delay is caused by the system indexing the newly added file.
Netdocuments' servers slow down at times causing users to receive error messages. This can be quickly remedied, but can become a nuisance.
DocLink is VERY user-friendly! The daily functions are easily taught to non-financial individuals. It's easy to understand and easy to manipulate with a simple, functional layout. The Administrative module is not too complicated, but it would be more effective if there was a more thorough "help" section or an online forum for users. All of my knowledge is self-taught, trial and error, but it would be helpful for a new user to have an online resource to address questions or issues.
The product is simple to learn and adheres to well-known web user protocols. The NetDocuments team spends a lot of time talking to customers regarding how to improve their interface, and are pretty quick about implementing good ideas. The system is reliable and repeatable, and similar functions are laid out consistently and in formats that users are used to.
DocLink is quite reliable and effective. Scanned documents are easy to read with very slight loss of integrity. Pages load quickly with occasional lag loading very large files. We use DocLink with MS Dynamics SL, and the two systems perform well together without much interruption or ambiguity in the process. One issue we have is in relation to the number of licenses and issues we have when a session will not close upon exit, thus suspending an available license rendering it unusable. Although very infrequent, IT has had to manually "end" a session to clear the license.
NetDocuments is a performant web app. It is reliable and provides all the functionality of a sophisticated document management system. It also can serve, through its APIs, as a base system for other applications, which enhances its value. Other vendors find the company easy to work with, and it consistently seems to be the first to offer new features and technologies to its customers.
I've never had to contact support, but I won't give it a ten. We've had a few hiccups along the way, but nothing that couldn't be fixed within 24 hours.
Document sender u can only send one at a time, doclink sends mass emails all at once and can archive all your documents, making it a complete solution.
We switched to NetDocuments 11 years ago. So, to be fair and accurate... the OpenText product at that time was called PC Docs and the company (that OpenText acquired) was Hummingbird. I can't remember who owned iManage at the time. Anyway, NetDocuments was a superior product at the time, in general, and more specifically because the search and remote access features\functions were superior (and still are).
Now set up it has significantly reduced admin time for everyone. I would say on average 1-2 hours per month per staff member spent on expense forms and submissions.
Cancelled paid version of slack as no longer needed.
