We really didn't consider other vendors. It was pretty much, go with IBM. We had already finalized on IBM FileNet P8. Datacap was a natural choice. There was a little bit of consideration of Kofax, but that’s it. IBM Datacap was a natural choice. One reason for that was licencing cost as well. Kofax licensing cost is huge; it's very expensive.

As I’ve mentioned, solution development time with Kofax is very low compared to Datacap. However, the flexibility that Datacap offers, Kofax doesn't offer. Kofax rates a little bit better in terms of UI and so on; very user friendly; end-user friendly. Kofax is a stable solution too. It is scalable as well.

The Kofax solution needs customization. As long as the business requirements are straightforward, you can build solutions very fast with Kofax. However, if there are complicated requirements, then Kofax really becomes a challenge.

The decision-making process was 3-4 years ago. It didn't take long. Datacap was a natural choice for us. We had already finalized IBM FileNet P8 and didn’t have multiple options.

We did not consider building a solution in house. It doesn't make any sense.
When selecting a vendor to work with, my most important criteria are reliability and their ability to deliver product solutions on time. Those are the most important things.

We evaluated the platform that we were on. We were on a product that we had only owned for maybe two years. So, we had already done the evaluations and at that point, it was a quick move to IBM, which was one of the final two that we were considering.

I think that partnership is primary when selecting a vendor, in general, and working with us on where we're going. Additionally, having a product strategy that continues to evolve in licensing. As a bank, reducing expenses is a constant every year. Controlling expenses and helping us with controlling licensing and flexible licensing models is what I look for.

We're also looking at Box Solutions, for collaboration with external partners.
When selecting a vendor to work with, I look for a company that is reliable, responsive and easy to work with.

We actually did a big project to do a product selection, and ended up selecting IBM's ECM suite. We looked at Documentum from EMC. We looked at a hybrid Microsoft solution. We looked at some things from Lexmark, which had an offering. We looked at Hyland. ECM was the better choice of all four of those.

The decision-making process took about six months. I think it proceeded on track. We have a fairly robust decision-making process, so we just followed the process: RFIs, demos, and then an on-site bake off. ECM won out.

When selecting a vendor to work with, we put a lot of stock in customer references. We'll shrink it down to a shortlist, based on their reputation in the industry, based on our personal experience. We've got multiple mainframes, so we've been an IBM customer for many, many years. We'll look at vendor reputation, ability to deliver, and the actual platform itself or the product itself that they're trying to deliver. Then we go through as many customer references as we can find.

We did not consider building an in-house solution ourselves.

We considered another vendor’s solution, but I forget the other vendor's name.

We chose Datacap because it integrated with our current IBM system. We can go from Datacap right into the content engine. Our data has connectors into the content engine or to image services. At the time, it just seemed to make sense, to use something that can easily integrate with what we currently had.

I think the decision-making process took around three months. I wasn't involved with the other client. I was mostly involved with just the Datacap IBM piece of it; just only as a consultant. It took about three months to make a decision. I think the process took the normal length of time; it didn't go fast and it didn't go slow in my opinion.
We already had an in-house solution; what we wanted to get away with is not having our own in-house solution.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are definitely stability, the ability to integrate, scalability, security, and ease of deployment. How easy is it to integrate with what we currently have?

It's been a while since we did the research. We actually brought Datacap in before it was bought by IBM. We've had it for a while. I know we looked at it and a few other solutions. I think Documentum was one of them. I don't remember, and I don't know necessarily why. The architects liked the technology of Datacap enough that they decided that was where we should go.

It was BlueCross that slowed down the decision-making process. We were looking for a system that could do some of our documents all on its own in the background and Datacap was able to do that: take in our faxes; turn around and do stuff with them that no other system could do; and then just get the data we needed off of them and send them on their way, without us having to do anything with them.

I think it took six months to a year to decide what we were going to do with it.

We did not consider building a solution in-house.

We looked at all vendors in the Gartner's/Forrestor articles such as the Documentum, SharePoint,Hybase and IBM .

We had a small XT implementation of IBM . ICN/FCM met the maximum checkboxes as an integrated enterprise features ready integrated platform. We preferred this solution rather than getting into customization and trying to make all the moving parts work together to meet the enterprise business needs across the business areas.

We did not consider anyone else at that time; just an upgrade. We did not consider building a solution ourselves, in house.

We considered other solutions, but it has been so long, a few years, that I can't recall which ones, and things change. We have been pleased with IBM.

It was a just a matter of having a good decision process that consisted of knowing our requirements, plugging those in and seeing who came out on top. It was a process of about 4 or 5 months. It was quite extensive, a lot of research and due diligence there.

We thought about building a solution ourselves – we do have a robust IT shop – but we wanted an industry standard, we wanted to align ourselves with professionals that had been in the industry, that have worked with large corporations that knew more than we did, and we wanted to leverage that.

We evaluated IBM and a couple other vendors as well.