Sharepoint VS Laserfiche Dilemma
Overall Satisfaction with MS SharePoint
SharePoint is being used as a repository for all commercials throughout all divisions at our organisation. It governs compliance, risk and records management within the SharePoint farm. Records Management has also alleviated the manual task of having to manage this process manually and do the time consuming shredding of documents.
Through workflow process, we now have automated processes in place that has eliminated the risk associated to paper and the actual printing cost. Tasks are scheduled and can be tracked by user. Audit trails and versioning keeps our business compliant and transparent.
With POPI, SharePoint has allowed us to put restrictions on certain documents within the SharePoint farm, allowing us to navigate what rights each user should have right down to a read only right.
SharePoint has provided us with a company Intranet and it has been a value add in terms of a collaboration tool, when sharing and working on documents between the various departments.
I highly recommend this product. I have worked with many similar products and this for me is by far the best when it comes to license cost and customization. There is also a lot of support and IP readily available online and at various service providers. Many other products are only marketed by a few companies and restricts the after sales support to minimal options within the various regions or countries....with a Microsoft product you will always have a span of companies that can assist you, which equals less downtime and frustration at the end of the day.
With the right service provider, your repository will not land up like a glorified file share, like I have seen in so many instances with other products - like Laserfiche etc.
If you are a Microsoft client and have software assurance, you can also request deployment day vouchers and with the right accredited service provider you can get services and scoping resources for free - Microsoft pay the service provider to do it on their behalf - costing the client nothing...show me another product that allows for this!
- Records Management
- Business Process Automation
- Audit Trail
- Versioning
- Customized
- Collaboration
- Intranet
- Website Deployment
- Excel documents can sometimes be problematic with some users to open from SharePoint.
- Adding an OCR engine for multifunctional printers, as opposed to using third party products. Especially now that devices can scan directly to SharePoint these days.
- Reduced paper cost
- Reduced risk attached to paper
- Prevented staff copying confidential company data
- Given compliance
- Reduced time it takes to search for documents
MS Sharepoint, as described earlier, has an array of skills in every country and region. I have worked with Laserfiche before and within South Africa, the resources and expertise are very limited, making it very difficult to get back to clients quickly with solutions. A lot of the queries are raised directly to Laserfiche in the States and there is no system in place with a service provider to track or govern response times, making it difficult to adhere to SLAs in terms of mean time to repair/ respond.
I have clients that have been paying for Laserfiche, but as it was never set up properly they do not use it. Finance companies sign a legal binding contract to 'lease' the software over a term and if the supplier does not deploy effectively, the finance company still holds the client responsible to pay - regardless.
MS SharePoint is not a financed or capex outlay, it is a monthly annuity billing per user.
Laserfiche cannot supply an Intranet or advanced Collaboration like SharePoint.
There are tools that can work with SharePoint where as Laserfiche cannot. For example via a module that SharePoint is compatible with, your unstructured data can be monitored 24/7 and highlight risk within this environment. For example: where credit card details reside and who has access to them and what permissions, it can also detail stale data which assists in migration from file share to SharePoint or assist with capacity planning/back ups.
Whether it is POPI, PCI2 or HIPAA compliance that you need, SharePoint can give you a broad array of solutions that supersedes the Laserfiche offering. The Laserfiche license model is very complex and can become very costly if not investigated properly.
I have sold both, worked with both and deployed both...so speak from experience.