Great product, but it can always improve!
Updated January 24, 2022

Great product, but it can always improve!

Emily Davies | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with PowerDMS

PowerDMS is being used as our primary document management system. Within PowerDMS we are housing all training documentation, orders, past shift schedules, and anything and everything to do with our department policies. PowerDMS has helped us to address major document management and retention issues within the department and it has helped our Training Unit become more effective in our daily work. We are now able to pull records within seconds instead of needing hours at a time to review paper files. It has helped us streamline the training process by allowing us to offer courses online that once had to be reviewed in a classroom setting. Instead of being out of compliance we are now fully in compliance and that in itself makes the product worth every penny. This has also helped us to address other document management needs within the department. All of our files are kept in one place and it's helped us keep things much more organized.
  • PowerDMS makes collaborative policy writing easy. It allows you to have multiple sign-off options which help to ensure that users agree before a policy is fully approved. The notes section allows for changes to be suggested without multiple people accessing the document at a given time.
  • Training and Documentation Storage is wonderful inside PowerDMS. The folders feature allows you to sort material and different types of documentation as if you had a copyright in front of you. The different file type uploading option for documents makes it so we can also store videos.
  • Accreditation assessments are a breeze with PowerDMS. I love all of the features of the assessment. I am able to schedule task reminders to pop up for standards that are coming due. You can choose a file that you've already uploaded on PowerDMS as a proof and this feature is also very nice.
  • PowerDMS does not allow you the ability to reassign a document or policy to an individual without republishing an already signed off document. This makes remedial training very hard and cumbersome because everytime one individual needs to review a policy we have to republish it for the entire department.
  • Users cannot receive individual notifications for documents or policies. This is a big issue when it comes to our Personnel Orders which are stored within PowerDMS because people only receive a group notification. If the developers would create this it would make the product much more user-friendly.
  • As of right now, PowerDMS is a very functional, but basic software. The lack of customization, outside of website photos and material, is very problematic for end users. If users had a place to store and manage their own records it would be very helpful. As of right now, our training team is storing them under each user's file tab, but the users themselves do not have access. When we are in a situation where we need a person's entire file it makes it difficult to have to go through and print every certificate individually.
  • Accessibility
  • Training Management
  • Forms
  • Organization
  • Accreditation
  • Easier management of training documentation. It is now stored in one place.
  • Unable to customize dashboards or individual users views of items within PowerDMS. If it was customizable than everyday users may be more likely to log in.
  • We are 100 percent compliant with all training requirements versus when we started we were about 40 percent in compliance.
PowerDMS is a lot different than Linkedin Learnings. In PowerDMS you have to create your own courses versus in Linkedin Learnings they provide extensive content on a wide variety of subject matter. Linkedin Learnings is what we have used in our organization for Bias Training and Ethics Training. PowerDMS is the repository for documents and Trainings, so the systems work very differently.

Do you think PowerDMS by NEOGOV delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with PowerDMS by NEOGOV's feature set?

Yes

Did PowerDMS by NEOGOV live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of PowerDMS by NEOGOV go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy PowerDMS by NEOGOV again?

Yes

PowerDMS is a very good document management system. It is well suited for a company or organization looking to store departmental material such as training records or personnel records. It is not suitable to be used as a training tool for FTO's. There is no ability to customize the website to include add-ons such as FTO Training Software, social media add-ons, etc. If it was possible to add other elements to our page it would make the product even better.

Using PowerDMS

100 - We use PowerDMS for Training, Analytics, Disseminating Information, and Tracking documentation. As a whole our organization uses this system to release all important announcements called Personnel Orders. PowerDMS makes this process relatively easy since we can list the personnel orders and make changes as needed. The system works well for what we use it for.
2 - I am the Master Administrator and we have other functional administrators, but others are not familiar with the product.
  • Training
  • Archives
  • Assessing
  • Personnel Orders
  • Document Management
  • Video tracking
  • Training Requests
I give it this rating because PowerDMS in one of the best management tools I have ever used.

Evaluating PowerDMS and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
Product Usability was the biggest hurdle we had to overcome because we have many seasoned officers who were not familiar with the use of Online Trainings.
I would re-evaluate the newest products on the market against DMS.

PowerDMS Support

I give it this rating because although PowerDMS's support staff trying to do their best we have come across a lot of issues with the product as of late. Our system often is very slow, and we have been having a lot of issues with the Accrediting body not working with PowerDMS in order to get our standards manual in the system.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Knowledgeable team
Immediate help available
Not kept informed
Not that I know of.
Yes - yes
PowerDMS was incredible when I first started using the product five years ago because they helped me to completely set up the system and came to train my entire staff.

Using PowerDMS

I am giving them this rating because they still have room for improvement especially when it comes to overpromsing and under-delivering on launches of new products and joining of systems.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Lots to learn
  • Document viewing
  • Document Comparisons
  • trainings
  • Replacing old documents
  • Replacing policies
  • Starting a new accreditation cycle
Yes - It's okay for what it is, but the app has a lot of bugs.