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July 08, 2008

What should you watch out for when purchasing a Document Management solution? 5. Smoke and Mirrors.

In my past life as a consultant preparing clients for acquisition and implementation of large scale Document Management Solutions, I witnessed some very interesting product demonstrations. Right after graduating from College, I worked for a BIG INTEGRATOR and was involved in a bid to the Air Force. It was a very large acquisition, over $1 Billion. The Air Force had a great concept, if you want me to buy your stuff, then you have to show it in action. They developed scenarios that would simulate what they needed in the field. It was up to the vendor to show that with their solution. "You mean it actually has to work! That's not fair. Trust us that it will work." During this particular demo, which took place over a full week, there was one task that we could not get to function automatically as required. Given a little more time, it would have worked; we just didn't have it ready for the Live Test Demo (LTD). During the demo the presenter; we called her Gail Force Winds because she could direct the reviewers' attention anywhere she wanted, had to get 6 evaluators to look away from the works station for just a few seconds so that the programmer/operator could enter a keystroke sequence to manually execute the task. Well, she did it and we passed the test. (Smoke and Mirrors refers to magic shows that use tricks to get you to pay attention to something else while they perform the "magic".)

As I moved into consulting, I decided to take this LTD concept with me. I did make one minor change; the vendors had to install everything on the customer's equipment instead of their own. Nothing could be pre-staged, especially since the demo requirements document was not delivered until the vendor arrived for the demo. Funny thing, the three vendors on the short list were in the correct quadrant, remember what I said about great sales and marketing. The trouble with the LTD was that it actually required the product to work. That's not fair! Trust Us. The first market leader went home after the 3rd day. The allotted 10 days was just not going to be enough. Odd thing to happen to a vendor with an "out of the box" solution. The second vendor didn't realize that the LTD spec. was an EXACT copy of the spec for a Pilot system that they had recently delivered to this very customer. They spent ten days rebuilding it from scratch with a team of programmers. At the end of day 9, they sent the programmers home. Oops! They forgot to get the programmers to install the code on the customer's equipment. Day 10 was a short one. Vendor 3 worked around the clock for 2 weeks and got the demo to work, but during this time, we knew that the product was full of holes. The integrated suite was just a bunch of separate programs cobbled together in the same colored boxes. They had to jump through hoops to get it to work. No vendor met the minimum requirements. No purchase was made. Why would you purchase something that either does not work or doesn't meet your requirements? The smoke and mirrors will not be available to you when you turn the solution loose on your end users. It will actually have to work.

Before buying a Document Management solution, take a very close look at it. If you insist on having an on-premise solution, then install it on your own equipment or see it working in a similar environment. Even when you realize that you should be implementing Software as a Service Electronic Document Solution, don't just watch the flash video. See it in action and ask questions. More later on what qualifies as real Software as a Service (SaaS). No, this is not the same as ASP.

July 8, 2008 | Comments (0)
Posted by Dave