Document Management & Record Lifecycle Software
Introduction
This material is designed for customers who are seeking competitive bids on an electronic document management software and record management systems including the optional entry of data via document imaging and scanning.
Every customer will have somewhat different requirements so this document is designed to be modified to meet those needs. The document is broken into three parts:
- Customer (your) information - The information you should supply about your company and systems in order to receive a good response.
- General Supplier Information - The general information you would like to receive from potential suppliers.
- Document Management Software feature check list - A sample set of specific questions to be asked about the vendor's document management software.
If you would like an electronic version of the features check list shown below, in an easy to use excel format, just send a request to sales@filehold.com
1. Customer (your) Information
a. Tell the suppliers about your company and give a link to your web site. Suppliers do not need to have the general information found on your site but it is very helpful to know if this is a company wide initiative or a departmental one.
b. Tell the suppliers what your decision making process. And what your time frames are for a decision. When do you need the responses to the RFP and what formal do they have to be in (printed, electronic).
c. What are your Librarian and IT, administrative and IT resources to implement the project? Will you be looking for consulting / implementation assistance from the supplier?
d. Is there a budget in place for this project or does it have to be justified? The suppliers might be able to help with this.
e. Tell the suppliers about the business problem(s) you are trying to solve relative to document and record management. Sometimes it is a specific issue such as "contract control" or it is just a general desire to move toward a paperless office.
f. What are your time frames for implementation and do you need assistance creating a project plan.
g. Give the supplier needed information to understand the size of the project that will enable them to give you an estimate of costs:
- How many users of the system will there be?
- Of the total users how many do you think might use the system at the same time - concurrently?
- Are the users casual of intensive, are some "read only'?
- How many electronic records might you have to start with?
- Where are the electronic documents that you want to add to the system located?
- What format are the documents in (PDF, TIFF, JPG)?
- How many records do you think you will add per month?
- If you are adding scanned documents, how many per month?
- If you already have scanners - what type?
- Would you be considering contracting scanning out to a service bureau?
- Do you require more than 1 server installation (back up or load balancing)
h. Will you be phasing in the project or is it "big bang" approach?
i. What is your IT infrastructure - what are your preferred technology environments? Are you insistent upon a certain data base or operating system? (suppliers really appreciate this information because it can save them a lot of work in responding if they do not have a technology match)
j. Do you have any requirements such as access to source code, or putting source code in escrow that might effect the software licensing agreement? Do you have any agreements the supplier must sign.
k. Provide your payment terms and conditions if you are inflexible in this regard. Do you have a travel expense reimbursement policy you would like the supplier to comply with?
2. General Supplier Information
a. who is the person responsible for the response? Who is the sales contact and who is the technical contact?
b. How long have you been in business, what is your main business relative to document management software, are you the developers, or resellers of the system?
c. Do you provide consulting, conversion and installation services?
d. Will you make references available if you are short listed?
e. Will you provide proof of financial viability if short listed?
f. What skill sets does your organization possess that would be available to support this installation?
g. What is your approach to implementation; provide a typical project plan for a project the size of the one described in the introduction?
h. What is your technology roadmap for the next 2 years?
i. Describe your support programs specifically related to product upgrades, bug fixes and general support.
j. Provide an estimate of cost for the software licensing and the support agreement based on the number of users and documents that have been described above.
k. Provide an estimate of cost for any modifications that may be required if your product does not match the required features list.
l. Describe the system hardware / software installation requirements and if you are required to supply them or can they be sourced elsewhere.
m. Provide any brochures or other collateral information that will help with this decision. Provide your standard software licensing agreement and Service Level Agreement.
3. Document Management Software Features Requirements
The following is a features check list that represents the generic minimum requirements of an electronic document management system. FileHold can provide you with this list in easy to use excel format with additional columns that ask suppliers to indicate if each of these features is a "Standard" or "optional" feature and to provide any comments or clarifications.
| Document Management Requirements | Standard | Optional | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| The system has the ability to import existing documents from existing network drives and file servers. | |||
| The system has the ability to classify documents with metadata to make them easier to search and retrieve in the future. | |||
| The system has the ability to track the location of hardcopy paper documents. | |||
| The system has simple Integration with of 3rd party scanning and imaging software to import basic scanned documents. | |||
| The system supports complex scanning integration for high-speed scanning, image enhancement, OCR, viewing, annotation, printing, and storing images for both black-and-white and color pages, barcode and patchcode recognition for automatic document separation when processing large numbers of documents. | |||
| The software is configurable to watch for files created by the scanning process and streamline the indexing and addition of scanned files to the library. | |||
| The systems allows the administrator to set the structure so that users can browse for documents in a logical and efficient fashion. | |||
| The system provides check in / check out ability preventing documents from being overwritten or deleted as documents are updated. | |||
| Previous versions of documents are maintained by the system in the event that a rollback is required. | |||
| The system has document to document linking, or document to folder shortcuts to allow users to bundle files into logical groups. | |||
| The system has the ability to create bookmarks or shortcuts to documents frequently accessed. | |||
| Users can subscribe to be notified of edits / changes / version updates to files or changes to watched folders. | |||
| When an existing file is updated or a file is added to a folder, the user receives email notification that the change has occurred, who has changed it, and a secure link to directly access the document. | |||
| Users can set reminders on documents that need attention in the future. | |||
| The system has the ability to save searches for re-use. | |||
| The system allows users to combine and aggregate files into their own personal "views" or custom folders. For example, a Project Manager might have a folder for project documentation, project legal contract documents, invoices, design documentation and emails from their customer all in one Virtual Folder, even though each individual piece of information is stored in various locations throughout the library. | |||
| Users can quickly create staging and collaboration areas for documents as they are being worked on. Once reviewed and approved, documents can be moved or linked to publishing folders for wider spread distribution. | |||
| The system provides a simple document review and approval workflow for documents needing to pass through several authors, reviewers and approvers before being ready for general distribution. | |||
| The Document Approval workflow allows documents to be sent to one or many users for sign off. Approvers are able to approve (or reject) the document providing comments and feedback where required. A sign-off top sheet for each document version is maintained so users can see who approved or rejected the document and the feedback they provided. | |||
| Individual document versions can be restricted from broader circulation until they have been Approved by appropriate parties. | |||
| The system has approval based publishing so that when the first version of a given document is added all files of that type must be approved before becoming publicly available. | |||
| Provides the ability to delegate review and/or approve tasks and signing authority to other users for individual tasks or for all tasks over a given time period. | |||
| The document review workflow provides for the organized collection of feedback on a document from one or many reviewers. Reviewers can provide feedback in the form of comments or attached documents. Reviewer feedback works hand in hand with the version control system as feedback is associated with an individual document version. | |||
| The system allows specific users to act as observers of review or approval workflows. Observers can track the progress of documents as they proceed through the workflow and view any comments and feedback as its provided. | |||
| Users participating in review or approval workflows are provided with a personalized task list for all tasks assigned to them. Users can see at a glance their tasks, a description of the work to be done, who assigned the task and it needs to be completed. | |||
| The Search capability can search the metadata associated with the document as well as the actual content of the document. | |||
| The Search capability has the ability to extract and search the content from file types including PDF, Microsoft Office, Zip and many more. | |||
| The search capability can be quickly restricted to a specific area of the library (e.g. Cabinet or Folder). | |||
| The full text search capabilities supports Fuzzy, Synonym, Phonic, Boolean, Wild Card. | |||
| Users can only search for and find (retrieve) find documents they are authorized to access. | |||
| Users can easily access the system using a standard web browser such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. | |||
| The system allows direct access to documents in the library through Microsoft Office applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook or Visio. | |||
| The system provides both a web browser and a desktop client interface for features like drag and drop and support for mass file/folder upload and import support. | |||
| The system allows power users, administrators and scanning/imaging specialists to categorize information using pre-defined metadata schemas. | |||
| The systems can send secured links to documents and files directly to team members, partners, suppliers, or customers. File security is maintained as only authorized system users can retrieve the file by using the link. | |||
| The systems provides the ability to personalize, the users dashboard as a starting point to their bookmarked list of documents, document change alerts, reminders, checked out documents, recently added or accessed documents and documents requiring review and / or approvals. | |||
| Based on document type, associated metadata, document age and archive policies, files are automatically designated as either active or inactive. | |||
| Inactive documents may be automatically archived by the system. | |||
| The system tracks how and when documents are accessed by system users and maintains a permanent record of who has read, updated the document, updated the metadata about the document, transferred or deleted documents from the library. | |||
| Files can be automatically deleted by the system based on easy to configure disposition rules. | |||
| Documents accidentally deleted by users (with delete permissions) can be quickly recovered by Library Administrators. | |||
| Records may only be deleted from the library in accordance with their retention / disposition schedules or by a designated corporate records manager / librarian. | |||
| Users may retrieve copies of records but not the original records themselves. | |||
| Changed versions of records added to the library will be designated as new records. | |||
| Users can quickly build unique metadata schemas for each type of document to be stored in the library. | |||
| The system ensures a mandatory amount of metadata is captured for each document or record in the library. As new documents are added, the user is prompted to classify the file using required metadata fields as defined by the controlled vocabulary, metadata menus and text fields. | |||
| The Library administrators can define optional metadata fields as well as the required fields. | |||
| Individual metadata schemas can be secured to individual or multiple system groups so that users only have to work with the metadata that pertains to their area of expertise, or department or organizational unit. | |||
| The system provides central management of the structure of the library, users document authorization rights and the system for capturing required metadata based on the document type. | |||
| The system provides quick creation and adherence to your organizations document and record naming conventions or standards. As documents are added to the library they are automatically renamed according to the naming conventions or policies that Library Administrators define. | |||
| The systems will integrate into your Microsoft front office applications like Microsoft Office and your desktop environment as well as back office systems and network domain authentication systems like Active Directory, LDAP and NT Domain. | |||
| The system can be understood and adopted by all types of users, from casual users of the system, document authors, publishers, reviewers and approvers all the way to power users and administrators. | |||
| The system is a highly available, scalable, redundant platform on which to support libraries containing millions of files and documents. | |||
| The system synchronizes users or groups from objects in Active Directory, LDAP or NT Domain directory servers. Once integrated, both users and groups can then be assigned to functional roles within the FileHold application. | |||
| The systems provides administrators with a flexible authorization management system that allows for roles or features to be enabled or disabled based on business need. Administrators can limit functionality of the system and add features to the user experience over time to minimize training and complexity. | |||
| All system and library administrative functionality can be accessed remotely using a standard web browser over the Internet or through the companies LAN or WAN. SSL and VPN support further secure remote user and administrator access to the system. |
FileHold Systems appreciates the opportunity to respond to customer requests for a document, record management or scanning solution. Please send your request to:
email:sales@filehold.com
mail:
Sales at FileHold
620 - 1090 West Pender
Vancouver, BC, Canada
V6E 2N7
telephone: 604-230-8355