IBM FileNet Review

We use it to store policies and claims documents.

What is most valuable?

We use FileNet as an enterprise content management storage for our underwriting policies and our claims documents. The major products of FileNet that we use are Content Manager and ICC for SAP.

It's very robust. It's very good at document retrieval and storage, as well. The solution that we deployed is really good and it works fine.

How has it helped my organization?

FileNet provides secured facilities, which helps a lot.

A few products that we use in FileNet that really help our organization a lot. For example, Capture Pro and ICC are the important products that we use. They save us a lot of time.

We also use Image Services, which is another strong product from IBM. That also has a lot of features. It helps a lot to do annotations and then print services. The other features on that are excellent.

What needs improvement?

My thought process is that, we use a lot of FileNet products, and with the new versions that come from IBM, we were expecting IBM to provide some extended support for the products that we use at the customer's level. To make sure when we go to upgrade, we should have enough time to do any kind of upgrades or migrations.

I attended an IBM World of Watson conference to find out what new products they have. For example, we need more data analytics than we have now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Some days, stability’s really good, especially with the product running with AIX and DB2. We have never had any bad experiences; it runs very well along with that operating system and that database.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

For scalability, we have a load balancer and the AIX systems, which really help us to handle the volume and the user input also.

How is customer service and technical support?

Technical support is 10/10.

Which solutions did we use previously?

It has been there for many years; they've been using it in our organization for more than 12-13 years.

They have been using a few products, but definitely the features and because it is an IBM product. We are basically an IBM shop, so we just prefer to use IBM products. That's why we are moving towards going to the ECM solutions from IBM.

How was the initial setup?

Over time, initial setup has become more simple. Initially, with previous versions, it was harder. Now, it's getting very simple, because IBM has come up with a new hardware architecture, which helps a lot to simplify upgrades and installations.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

They do have SharePoint for a few applications, but that doesn't really solve what the business needs. IBM FileNet is the right solution and we are currently using it. We'll be adding more features and more products into it to make it better for our customers.
We also have custom developments on top of FileNet.

The decision-making process takes about 6 months. We have a process to be followed. It takes a minimum of about 6 months to go through all the approvals; the business as well as our directors have to approve it.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is most likely the complexity. When there's any kind of situation with any architecture being introduced, that's when we need to have IBM or anyone to be involved directly to help us out.

What other advice do I have?

Depending on the business needs, I would suggest FileNet and the architecture, as well as the features that it has. I would definitely recommend it.

According to my experience, over time, it has become perfect. The early versions had a lot of issues. It was running on different platforms, which had some issues. We had terrible outages in a back in 2008-2009. Over time, the new version upgrades really helped out a lot. With the current versions that we use, it's really great.

We are considering using IBM cloud, hybrid and box solutions. Those are leading features that IBM is coming up with. We definitely look forward to utilizing those products in the future.

We have a few analytical products, Hadoop and a few other products. They be working with a different group of teams, so they are definitely looking forward into it.
There aren’t really any existing services that we're able to provide better than we were before.

We do not have any plans to include mobile at this moment.

Most of our customers are in Dunwoody and external customers only use very few applications. We provide external login access to them, which helps a lot. We mainly now use FileNet to store the policy documents and the underwriting and claims documents. From a retrieval point of view, it's very fast. The security is very good.

We have about 6,000-8,000 users and there are no complaints from the usability perspective. With some other products, such as Case Manager, when the new thing comes out, we need to make sure that the users are comfortable using it. Then, we look forward to switching to that.

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