How to Know The Best Electronic Document Management Solution

You are likely considering an EDM/ECM/BPM solution that will suit your organisation or you are probably thinking about it as a future undertaking. The truth is that if your organization still receives, generates physical documents frequently or your staff still spend considerable time trying to get those documents, or your auditors, customers/clients, workers still have to depend on business processes that are manual routines for service delivery, you are wasting resources and time running your business.
Whether you are considering it now or in the future, EDM/ECM/BPM solution creates a smarter way to be more efficient and effective in a cruelly competitive business era. Let me warn you that not all EDM/ECM/BPM solutions can meet your need; hence you need, at worst, a suitable one or at best a custom-built/flexible suit.
At worst, an EDM/ECM/BPM solution should be an easy-to-use yet extremely powerful integrated document and workflow management system. It should be able to capture, organise, and share any type of digital or paper-based document within a secure, central repository. Usage should be easy, document retrieval instant, integration with existing applications seamless, with an ability to support as few or as many enterprise users as your firm requires.
The solution should enable your privileged staff gain instant access to critical documents and files 24/7, regardless of their physical location. Documents scanned should be made available to secured, authorised staff via an EDM/ECM/BPM solution with highly secure electronic versioning capabilities.
Not only should an EDM/ECM/BPM solution be able to easily track and control client-sensitive information but also stores all of your firm's most critical content in a highly secure repository and provides comprehensive audit trail capabilities, including date/time stamps, task originators/descriptions, and related document activities such as who worked on or reviewed the document. Ability to manage privileges such as viewing (read-only), printing, editing, deleting, storing should be basic functionalities. This would virtually eliminate any possibility that the documents stored in your system will be altered without detection, ensuring the undisputed authenticity of records.
At best, an EDM/ECM/BPM solution should be custom-built or has the flexibility for such. Good EDM/ECM/BPM solution comes with Software Development Kits (SDK) which would enable your IT department (if you have one) adjust the solution and build on it to suit your firm or integrate it to the most ‘stubborn’ applications ever developed. Integration with existing applications as well as support is very important. Some EDM/ECM/BPM solutions come with web-based forms that enable firms capture and work with information. These forms could also be used to automate basic business processes using Business Process Model and Notation, and enable participation to users beyond your organisation

Central to all these, if not the deciding factor, is the cost of purchase and maintenance thereafter. No good EDM/ECM/BPM solution comes cheap – nothing good comes cheap after all. Continuous usage should not be contingent on supports from the developer as this can be financially draining at the long run. You should have the option to choose when to pay for supports.
Requests for a Proof of Concept (PoC) and visits to existing users of the solutions would enable you to conduct comprehensive comparative analyses.