Why and why not Alfresco ECM
December 14, 2017
Why and why not Alfresco ECM
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Alfresco Enterprise Edition
Overall Satisfaction with Alfresco Enterprise Content Management
We implemented Alfresco ECM to replace Documentum system which is used in different departments across the organization.
The users vary from Sales, HR, Legal, Records management, IT etc, to store employee records, legal documents, project specific documents.
Main business problems Alfresco addressed were:
- We had to replace Documentum system which has 70 TB of content and more than 1000 active users in a shorter time. Alfresco licensing is affordable and we implemented ECM with Alfresco.
- Integrations with the third party are easy and flexible, ex: SFDC, Reporting tools, external publishing systems.
- The workflow is so flexible and can develop small to big complicated business processes. The business users can have a single user interface to finish the workflow having interacted with other third-party tools.
The users vary from Sales, HR, Legal, Records management, IT etc, to store employee records, legal documents, project specific documents.
Main business problems Alfresco addressed were:
- We had to replace Documentum system which has 70 TB of content and more than 1000 active users in a shorter time. Alfresco licensing is affordable and we implemented ECM with Alfresco.
- Integrations with the third party are easy and flexible, ex: SFDC, Reporting tools, external publishing systems.
- The workflow is so flexible and can develop small to big complicated business processes. The business users can have a single user interface to finish the workflow having interacted with other third-party tools.
- The organizations demand a hybrid approach, running the same software applications on-premise and on-cloud with the same architecture. The local which can act as a master, can be synced with the cloud. This allows collaboration between internal and external users with selective privileges and access control.
- The Workflow architecture is quite robust and scalable platform. The business users can create business processes easily without any technical knowledge.
- The service integrations comprised in BPM paves the way to develop complex BPM solutions.
- ECM and BPM have different licenses and different user interfaces. The users often gets confused about which one to use and it plays a bigger factor in deciding the ECM platform. The workflow engines in Alfresco are redundant, the inbuilt ECM has workflow engine and Alfresco offers activity product as BPM.
- The UI development is little complicated, the knowledge of UI framework is required. These are not simple java technologies to learn.
- Documentation of Alfresco really sucks. There is no single place to refer the architecture, development/deployment guides. The information is scattered across multiple websites with different login credentials.
- One company has replaced the Documentum with Alfresco and it has created a positive impact on ROI, as the cost of Alfresco is less compared to Documentum.
- Another company has used this platform to store Statement of work documents with integration of SFDC., The business is happy to see the integration is seamless.
- Alfresco provides more capabilities by leveraging open source components. The core architecture itself is JCR compliant which gives easy options for future migrations.
- The PDF rendition in Alfresco comes with LibreOffice at no additional cost.
- Alfresco support integrations using common industry standards like CMIS, REST, CIFS, FTP, WebDAV, SharePoint Protocol etc.
- Workflow development much easier in Alfresco.
- The PDF rendition in Alfresco comes with LibreOffice at no additional cost.
- Alfresco support integrations using common industry standards like CMIS, REST, CIFS, FTP, WebDAV, SharePoint Protocol etc.
- Workflow development much easier in Alfresco.