IBM Enterprise Content Manager Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 9 out of 10

Score

9 out of 10

Reviews

6 Reviews

Everything is a Case. Use IBM Case Manager.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 8, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a premier solutions provider for our clients, we utilize numerous IBM Enterprise Content Management products based upon the FileNet P8 foundation; from Cognos and Big Data Analytics to WebSphere Application Server - and just about everything in between. The group I work with specializes in creating Case Manager solutions for our clients in Banking, Mortgage, and Insurance. In addition, we further specialize in creating products for our inventory which augment and provide depth and breadth to the basic out of the box experience of the IBM suite of Content Management software, such as customized Case Manager widgets and base solutions for various industries.

Pros

Speaking of IBM Case Manager in particular, we believe that just about every business process involving the effort of knowledge workers can be enhanced and automated using IBM Case Manager. If a process or set of tasks requires the judgment, decision-making skills, and experience of a knowledge worker, then the process can be configured for IBM Case Manager. If the process is dynamic and requires flexibility such that the business outcome depends upon the choices and decisions made during the process, then IBM Case Manager is the ideal solution for automation, tracking, and collaboration of such work.
With regards to Content Management, we are particularly fond of and adept at utilizing both IBM Content Collector, IBM Classification Manager, and IBM Enterprise Records. As business communications have changed over the last 20 years, the growth of digital content housed within the burgeoning storage silos located throughout a company's infrastructure has swelled to nearly unmanageable levels. This impacts them in numerous ways; from the direct costs associated with ever increasing storage, to the unknowable costs associated with the legal liability of content residing on their systems, to the lost opportunity of un-mined customer data residing on their systems. All of these impacts can be mitigated by the application of IBM Content Management and Content Analytics.
To me personally, I believe the greatest strength of products like these are their immense configurability. Depending upon the business requirements of the customer, systems such as those mentioned above can be configured in almost inexhaustible arrangements to accomplish just about any task that can be imagined - all to satisfy the needs and requirements of the demands of the business. From collecting email from mail servers and evaluating it for its context, not just it's content, in order to determine its worth to the organization, to creating File Plans for storing content in a smart repository which makes possible content lifecycle management and defensible disposal, IBM just does this better than any other products I am familiar with.

Cons

In terms of weaknesses or negatives associated with using IBM products, to me only the cost and complexity are barriers. The cost puts these solutions out of the range of many mid-size to smaller companies who could benefit from the solutions provided by their products. As a Systems Engineer with responsibility to design and deploy solutions, the learning curve is steep and lengthy. Well worth the effort, but it requires a commitment and dedication.
With regards to that, I'm always challenged when learning the technology.

Likelihood to Recommend

Again, I like to think of my association and usage of IBM Case Manager V.5.2. Please keep in mind that this is only one component of the IBM Enterprise Content Management suite of products. I believe IBM Case Manager is an ideal solution for medium to large companies looking to automate lnad

Gary Douglas

Systems Engineer in Product Management at Pyramid Solutions, Inc. (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

IBM ECM Rises to the Occasion

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 8, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I work with my customers to solve problems on both the line of business and whole enterprise scale. The IBM ECM suite is able to scale to meet a solution of any magnitude. The ECM suite is not only able to handle the secure storage of documents, but also is able to manage complex workflows, maintain data on records (both in the ECM system and external to the ECM system) and provide for the traceable disposition of those records. In addition the OOTB, included, Content Navigator UI is extremely flexible and highly configurable to allow implementation of complex, highly integrated solutions, with minimal custom code, and high maintainability.

Pros

Scalability
Flexibility
Security

Cons

As enterprise and mid-market systems go, the price is highly competitive (especially when you consider what's included in the license). That said, this product is not accessible for small businesses as a self hosted solution. The "Navigator on Cloud" solution is much more accessible, but gives less control over data.
To get all the features, there are many moving parts. For large enterprises, this is no problem, and the cloud solution obviates most of these concerns.

Likelihood to Recommend

Self-hosted IBM ECM Solutions are appropriate for any large organization with substantial internal infrastructure management teams and a commitment to training their staff. Other organizations should consider the Cloud based offerings.

Eric Walk

Sr. Technical Consultant, Enterprise Content Inteligence in Professional Services at Perficient (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

3 years of experience

View profile

IBM ECM - Filenet P8

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

September 29, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my organization IBM Enterprise Content Management is used across the organization by various departments. It is used to store all customer related documents. It also provides easy access to stored content. It also provides the business management capabilities. It is also used to eliminate the need to store the physical documents, hence saving lot of cost and human effort.

Pros

It provides easy to use administrative tools to work with the product.
Good documentation on the production is available which makes it easier to use.
It supports high availability architecture

Cons

There can be scope of improvement in the area of content modeling.

Likelihood to Recommend

The choice of the IBM ECM product mainly depends on the the following question. What type content you are planning to store and how you are going to use the content?

Prabhakar Digumarthi

Senior System Analyst in Information Technology at UST Global (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

IBM ECM feedback

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

September 23, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

--ECM is not a product, Enterprise Content Management is a technology area which address several content ,document, process related uses cases in large scale organizations.

IBM ECM comprise of several products, we used Content Engine(for managing content), Process Engine (for workflows) and of course Application Engine.

--We implemented in a large scale insurance company. Its used across the organization.

--Managing policy documents (storing,updating,retrieving), proof of documents for auto and fire policies and also managing the approval process whether the proof of document is satisfied inorder to apply a specific discount (e.g:good student needs college degree proof) and some docs to avoid policy cancellation/discount removal

Pros

The content engine which manages documents is the best part of IBM ECM suite. The Content Engine is pretty stable. We faced several issues with 3.5 version. But since 4.5 its pretty stable
The process engine part used to be really bad . But its improved a lot. I still believe there is opportunity to simplify the workflow development and deployment and debugging.
Custom application to access CE and PE (like providing web service to manage doc,initiate workflows etc.,) is also OK

Cons

Process engine is something that needs improvement . The workflow design ,development and debugging should be simplified. Currently its not as bad as it used to be in older versions (like 3.5) but still the PE should work smoothly and dev and admin life should be made easier
When you have complex workflows, managing the PE system is difficult. Making the application change is also very difficult.

Likelihood to Recommend

Overall we feel, IBM ECM is still a good ECM tool. Content Engine (CE) and Application Engine (AE) are smooth. If you use Process Engine (PE) and implement complex workflows, the managing environment will become slightly difficult. When we use other products like record manager, content collector , BPF (or case manager) etc., the environment will become complex.

Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

A sophisticated product set for complex processing needs

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

September 22, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pyramid Solutions is an IBM Premier Business Partner that implements ECM solutions primarily for banking, insurance and state government organizations. We help companies move manual, paper-based processes to capture solutions that convert paper to data and document images, and we couple the capture solutions with automated workflow processes.

Pros

IBM Case Manager is effective at taking complex processes with a lot of parallel activities and automating them into a seamless solution to improve productivity, information accuracy and retention of information.
Processes can be broken down into defined roles and tasks making it easier for companies to understand how transactions flow through their organization.
IBM Enterprise Content Management has become a robust suite of complimentary products so there is a "cafeteria plan" to choose from that allows a company to craft a solution that will align tremendously well with their business needs.

Cons

The product suite has tremendous flexibility, but along with flexibility comes complexity. Configuring environments and installing the software so solutions can be implemented requires a broad base of IT knowledge.
In recent releases, IBM has concentrated on making the UIs across the different software products in the ECM family more consistent, and this has been well received by customers.
IBM also focuses on making a lot of changes in each release to improve flexibility and collaboration for application developers.

Likelihood to Recommend

The IBM ECM suite of products is particularly well suited for deployments with larger numbers of users where there is a lot of complexity to their processes, the work passes between multiple departments or functions, and tasks being processed in parallel have to be completed before the transaction or request can move to the next step in the process.

Scott Maloney

Project Manager in Information Technology at Pyramid Solutions, Inc. (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

4 years of experience

IBM Content Management Review

Rating: 9 out of 10

May 12, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It was used by department. It really helps document management.

Pros

Stable
Easy to use
Efficient

Cons

The user interface needs significant improvement.

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Vice-President in Information Technology (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

20 years of experience

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Everything is a Case. Use IBM Case Manager.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 8, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Speaking of IBM Case Manager in particular, we believe that just about every business process involving the effort of knowledge workers can be enhanced and automated using IBM Case Manager. If a process or set of tasks requires the judgment, decision-making skills, and experience of a knowledge worker, then the process can be configured for IBM Case Manager. If the process is dynamic and requires flexibility such that the business outcome depends upon the choices and decisions made during the process, then IBM Case Manager is the ideal solution for automation, tracking, and collaboration of such work.
With regards to Content Management, we are particularly fond of and adept at utilizing both IBM Content Collector, IBM Classification Manager, and IBM Enterprise Records. As business communications have changed over the last 20 years, the growth of digital content housed within the burgeoning storage silos located throughout a company's infrastructure has swelled to nearly unmanageable levels. This impacts them in numerous ways; from the direct costs associated with ever increasing storage, to the unknowable costs associated with the legal liability of content residing on their systems, to the lost opportunity of un-mined customer data residing on their systems. All of these impacts can be mitigated by the application of IBM Content Management and Content Analytics.
To me personally, I believe the greatest strength of products like these are their immense configurability. Depending upon the business requirements of the customer, systems such as those mentioned above can be configured in almost inexhaustible arrangements to accomplish just about any task that can be imagined - all to satisfy the needs and requirements of the demands of the business. From collecting email from mail servers and evaluating it for its context, not just it's content, in order to determine its worth to the organization, to creating File Plans for storing content in a smart repository which makes possible content lifecycle management and defensible disposal, IBM just does this better than any other products I am familiar with.

Cons

In terms of weaknesses or negatives associated with using IBM products, to me only the cost and complexity are barriers. The cost puts these solutions out of the range of many mid-size to smaller companies who could benefit from the solutions provided by their products. As a Systems Engineer with responsibility to design and deploy solutions, the learning curve is steep and lengthy. Well worth the effort, but it requires a commitment and dedication.
With regards to that, I'm always challenged when learning the technology.

Likelihood to Recommend

Gary Douglas

Systems Engineer in Product Management at Pyramid Solutions, Inc. (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience