Most searches for an OpenText alternative start the same way: an implementation that needs outside specialists, a support experience that changed after a platform move, or a workflow requirement that turned into a second purchase. OpenText is a large company with several content platforms, including Documentum and Content Manager, and plenty of organizations run them. But the choice of a document management system usually gets made on feature checklists, and the things that decide whether you’re happy three years later rarely show up on a checklist.
Here are five questions worth asking any document management vendor, OpenText and Mindwrap included, along with what users say in their own reviews.
1. When something breaks, who actually picks up?
Support is the question buyers skip until they need it. A consultant who works with OpenText products described how quickly it can change, in a PeerSpot review:
“A few years ago, it would have rated as a ten, but there was a shift to a new support platform that led to significant issues.” — Consulting Director, SAP and OpenText consultancy
Optix does it differently. Our support team sits at our corporate headquarters in Virginia, not in an offshore call center and not at a third-party partner. The team has decades of combined experience with Optix, and many of them are engineers in their own right. When a problem needs a deeper look, they walk a few doors down and talk to the developers who wrote the code. Responses typically come within minutes, and response commitments are written into our contracts as a service-level agreement.
Customers notice. From Optix reviews on Capterra:
“Technical support is always top notch and has a personal approach.” — IT Director, Food Production
“Both the server and client have been rock-solid, and backed up by similarly rock-solid technical support.” — Director of IT, Education
What to ask any vendor: Where is your support team located? Who employs them? Can they reach a developer? Is response time in the contract, and what happens to support if your platform changes?
2. How long will setup take, and who does the work?
Enterprise platforms can do a great deal, and that depth has a price in setup time. A team lead at a manufacturer put it plainly in a PeerSpot review of OpenText Content Management:
“The initial setup can get really complicated, and it takes time.” — Team Lead, Manufacturing
A project manager at a software company, reviewing OpenText Documentum on Capterra, pointed at the bill: implementation “can generate important costs of specialized personnel.” A pharmaceuticals reviewer called Documentum “outdated, and costly to maintain, and support.”
With Optix, we walk through exactly what you need during the sales process, before anything is signed, so the quote you approve is the system you get.
What to ask any vendor: Who does the installation, your staff, the vendor, or a consultant? How many hours is that? Give me a line-item quote for year one, and tell me what year two costs.
3. Can the workflow engine do the job, or is there another product to buy?
Workflow automation is where document management pays for itself. It is also where buyers find out what wasn’t in the original quote. A technical lead at a financial services firm wrote in a PeerSpot review of OpenText Content Management:
“We ended up purchasing an additional OpenText product called AppWorks because we started to run into some limitations with the workflow.” — Technical Lead, Financial Services
Optix Workflow is a database-driven, rules-based workflow engine with a graphical setup tool. You define the steps, the routing rules, and the approvals visually, with no programming. A straightforward new process can be built in minutes. Optix Workflow is an add-on module, and we explain exactly what it covers during the sales process, so nothing turns up later.
“The workflows we have implemented using Optix have vastly improved our productivity and processes.” — Donations Processing Manager, Non-Profit
What to ask any vendor: Show me someone building a new workflow live. Does it need a developer? If my process outgrows it, what do I buy next, and what does it cost?
4. Will it connect to the systems we already run?
Most organizations already have an ERP, a CRM, or a homegrown application that holds part of the picture. A senior business systems analyst in oil and energy wrote about OpenText Documentum on Capterra:
“The integration with other software is limited and difficult.” — Senior Business Systems Analyst, Oil & Energy
At any step, Optix Workflow can hand off to your other systems, including SAP, Salesforce, SyteLine, or a homegrown application. It can also reach directly into another system’s database to pull the data a step needs, so staff aren’t re-keying information that already exists somewhere else.
What to ask any vendor: Which of our systems have you connected to before? Does integration need custom programming? Can you show it working with a system like ours?
5. Will it find your documents the way your people search?
Digitizing documents is only half the job. The other half is getting them back. One business process consultant reviewing OpenText Documentum on Capterra wrote that they sometimes “need to reindex” documents before search will find them, which is a problem when staff expect a search box to just work.
Search results are only as good as what the system captured on the way in. Optix is built around document imaging and OCR, including the complex, high-volume capture work that accounts payable and records departments depend on. One IT director uses Optix for “complex OCR tasks for our AP processing.”
What to ask any vendor: Let me run a batch of my own messy, real-world documents through your system and search for them the way my staff would. Do I ever have to rebuild an index by hand?
One More Step: Talk to a Customer Like You
Review sites are a useful starting point, but they have a blind spot in this category. Many document management customers, including government agencies, healthcare organizations, financial firms, and large corporations, have policies that bar employees from posting public software reviews. Review counts end up reflecting vendor marketing programs as much as customer satisfaction.
A reference call tells you more than a star rating. Ask to speak with an organization of your size, in your industry, that has been on the system for a few years. Ask them what support looks like on a bad day.
Where OpenText Fits
OpenText tends to fit organizations that already run other OpenText products and have dedicated IT and implementation staff.
Optix tends to fit organizations that want direct access to the people who build and support the product, workflows their own staff can build and change, and serious document capture and OCR without a long implementation project. Optix also serves large enterprises worldwide.
See It for Yourself
The best way to answer all five questions is to watch them answered live. Bring your messiest documents and the process your current system struggles with. We’ll build a workflow in front of you, run your documents through capture, and introduce you to the support team you’d be working with. Request a demo here.