Laserfiche has two main editions: Rio and Avante: Laserfiche Rio is designed to meet the needs of large organizations that have more than 100 users. It combines content management functionality with business process management (BPM), security and auditing, unlimited servers and a thin-client interface. Add-ons include records management functionality, public Web portals and production-level document capture and processing.
Laserfiche Avante is an ECM suite for small to medium organizations with…
$540
per year per user
M‑Files
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
M-Files is a platform for knowledge work automation, that helps knowledge workers to find information faster. M-Files features a metadata-driven architecture, embedded workflow engine, and advanced artificial intelligence. This helps customers to eliminate information chaos, improve process efficiency, and automate security and compliance.
The vendor's value proposition:
EASE OF USE: M-Files increases productivity and
improves work quality by making…
The customization ability seemed to be a level above and easy to navigate and available options are constantly being reinvented. We have used OnBase for years and now desire to move away from this option for a number of reasons.
Laserfiche is well suited to the submission of simple routine reports to create a record repository. We use it for routine transport reports, audit reports, and anonymous citizen complaints. It creates a simple chronological record of routine events that can be reviewed and easily stored and recalled. Because the reports are in PDF format, it is not well suited to anything that needs to be imported into a common database or amended after submission.
M‑Files is great for companies with multiple locations. Drive letters can become cumbersome to use and collaborate with colleagues and M‑Files fills that gap. The check out/check in system is great and allows only one editor at a time. This can be good and bad depending on the situation.
Reliable: Our M-Files system has only gone down one time (for a very short period of time) at the beginning of the two years that we have been with M-Files. Our previous vendor's system had so many downtimes that our IT Department had to assign an associate to work with me for sending out notifications to associates etc. With our last vendor, one day I came to work and only 60 of the 260 consent for surgery forms were available to our end users although they were visible to me as the Administrator but weren't showing up for the end-users!
Our M-Files system was created for us. It was created by working with developers to only have on our system what we required, and I must say, there were so many extra features that M-Files offered in our program that weren't available with our previous vendor. As mentioned previously, we can have two policies or forms visible to the end-user so one can be listed as "draft" or "training only" so our end users can read and use for training as we get ready to roll out a new medical record system. I can also preload policies and leave them in the working stage until they are approved and go back and publish them the day they are approved. The list goes on with so many great features.
Our end users would say the greatest asset of this product is the search function. It's amazing how fast it is. There are many ways to search out a form or policy which makes it a true asset for our associates.
While Laserfiche has some powerful development tools, it is difficult to manage configurations while promoting code across environments. For example, SQL connections and other environment specific resources have to be manually configured in each environment.
Laserfiche forms are a newer addition to the product family and could use some product maturity. While easy to use for simple forms, once your forms become more complex, you need to accomplish tasks by heavy JavaScript coding.
If you are new to Electronic Document Management, this can be a really difficult product to roll out. Since it is infinitely versatile, there are infinite ways to configure it wrong. I highly recommend the M-Files admin training offered by M-Files as it will set you in the right direction.
Many options are paid add-ons. So while you are not paying for what you don't need, many great features will come at a cost.
If you don't have a technical person on staff, this will be tricky to maintain. Not impossible. If your processes do not change, once setup it will be fine.
We plan on renewing Laserfiche for the coming year but also have been considering a scanning and document management solution that can be purchased from our new accounting system company, we are implementing the accounting system this year. It will be a couple years before we make a decision to stay with Laserfiche or change.
M-files meets our almost all needs, we dont have other option to replace m-files. it saves lots, like Hardware because of Vault Feature means we can create many vaults (mini-servers) in m-files in other solutions we need more hardware for more installations.
It has an intuitive design that feels very natural to any user that has ever used Outlook or Windows Explorer. There are multiple ways to perform every action in order to help users with various software experiences find the shortcuts and actions they seek quickly and effectively.
It is a powerful system that can locate content fast and effectively. The system takes quite some time to setup initially. It can be hard for M-Files support to know how businesses operate and how they want to use the system in a way that works for them. The customization makes it great for companies to cater to their own needs. Once the system is set up in a way that makes sense for the business, the user experience is positive. There is room for improvement in the notifications, workflow, and support areas.
I am very satisfied with Laserfiche. I have found that certain larger jobs may are slow. This may also be related to our infrastructure environment. We have been able to tune Laserfiche to increase performance on larger jobs.
Performance, of course, is largely dependent on the underlying environment. Laserfiche does its part with multi-threading, taking advantage of multi-core servers on scanning, workflows, and bots. A SQL-Server back-end is suitable for small to medium-sized company, but may not scale to large, where Oracle would be the better choice. Workflows can be poorly written and perform recursive work slowing down the system. It's better to run batch type workflows at night when possible.
I noticed some lagging with the integration with Microsoft Office but not so much that I would not use it. It has gotten better with updates. to be fair the issues were when Office 2013 first came out.
I have never had to wait for help from Laserfiche. If I cannot find the answer online, I can easily send an email to a customer support representative. I have always been helped the same day and my questions have always been resolved. The Empower conference is always a great learning opportunity and the online resources and webinars are top-notch.
Usually when I need help from them I got support and it was very good and focused to solve my problem. I didn't have so many problems, but when used it worked. I just would like to have a support in my native language, but I can understand that sometimes is hard for the companies.
Easily accessible 24/7 so am able to complete courseware whenever time allows: Commute to work; waiting for friends or family; at night while relaxing [with a delicious glass of wine!]; whenever and wherever time and circumstances permit. Courseware is well written and presented in an easy to follow and understand format.
The key insight is that the most important thing is to have a open mind. The application is easy to use, but if you have a company with different views and it is not aligned could be a huge problem. So the company transformation is required together with the application. Ensure to use as much as possible the capabilities of the application helps to have best ROI.
The core infrastructure of Laserfiche, and the end user experience, is vastly superior. OnBase has a TERRIBLE UI and administration console by comparison. The core architecture of OnBase is also more scattered, while all Laserfiche processes go through a single service. Overall, the Laserfiche product is easier and more intuitive to install, maintain, and use.
The customization ability seemed to be a level above and easy to navigate and available options are constantly being reinvented. We have used OnBase for years and now desire to move away from this option for a number of reasons.
Laserfiche has increased the efficiency of our sales reps by giving making all of the historical sales deal information very simple and fast to retrieve.
Laserfiche has increased our efficiency with our AP department and gave department heads the ability to approve invoices where ever they are.
I would say the biggest ROI came with the transparency of the order process for new deals. Before there would be numerous phone calls made daily to find out where an order was within the process, and now you can simply look at all deals at any time.
M-Files allows us to track important milestones and expiration dates. We are now able to easily track revisions to contracts with community partners and record comments and history in one place.
We are able to track all contracts that come through our District and to create monthly reports to present to our Board.
