I wonder what people think of the following thoughts:

 

An EDRM system is not a complex piece of software. It is in fact very similar to Windows Explorer or any other file management system with the addition of enhanced security and retention capabilities. None of this is technically difficult and should be a lot cheaper than it currently seems to be. Such systems will inevitably become much cheaper as usage increases.

Where the real complexity occurs is in the automation file structure creation (and/or application of metadata) and in the interface between the systems creating the documents and the EDRMS itself. By these systems I mean email software, CRM systems, web forms, scanners, etc

 

I would assume that the basic EDRM being technically fairly straightforward, the greatest ongoing costs will be in the integration of these other systems with it. Therefore when choosing an EDRM, one of the most important aspects will be the ease of integration with other pre-existing or proposed packages.

 

For example, we seem to be going down a route where our file structure will be based on UPRN (Universal Property Reference Number). It seems critical to me that the EDRMS should therefore be chosen primarily for its ability to integrate with the software which creates and indexes these UPRN’s. By doing this there is no need to recreate the file structure as it is already held indexed and “de-duped” within the Property Gazetteer Module of the System creating the UPRN’s.

 

Does this seem to make sense to you? Does anyone have any comments about things I might be missing?

 

Thanks,

Martin Anderson