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June 24, 2008

What should you watch out for when purchasing a Document Management solution? 4. Best of Breed

This should be a good one. Are you buying a dog or a document management solution? I have heard many of the BIG INTEGRATORS and even some of the smaller ones talk about their solutions being made up of the "Best of Breed" components. As if that meant that the overall solution would be the best. If you mix a champion Great Dane with a champion Yorkie, is the result going to be a champion dog? Is it even going to be a dog? You just never know. What they are really saying is that they took a bunch of parts and painted them all the same color and called it an integrated system. It may work well for you, but you also may find that it is just too complex to keep running.

In most situations that I have seen, the customer does not really need the "Best", they just need something that works and provides them a reasonable return on their investment. Since document management and workflow are typically complex solutions, how do you really define the best? Cheapest? Most expensive? Most sales? Prettiest brochures? Best booth bunnies? Best scanning? Best Workflow? There are so many ways to define the best that it does not really matter. What matters is whether or not it effectively and efficiently solves the problem. Anything beyond that is wasted money. Think about it like this, if you are buying a fleet of cars for your outside sales team, you're not going to put them in a '73 Lime Green Pinto, it won't do, but you are also not going to put them in a Bentley (Best of Breed), you are going to put them in a leased Ford Taurus, good enough.

The best approach is to define the problem you are trying to solve and then find the solution that you can afford that solves that problem. You will never use all of the bells and whistles that come with the best of breed. You are running a business, not a fashion show.

Posted by Dave on June 24, 2008 09:39 AM

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