The Pros and Cons: FormKiQ vs. Building It Yourself

Content and document management functionality is nothing like most software features.

Uploading, storing, processing, and transformation documents and other files in an efficient and secure manner requires specific expertise, especially when including optical character recognition, intelligent document classification, and full-text search.

This expertise is required not just at the application level, but in the infrastructure itself; a robust system for enterprise content management or advanced document management is not well-suited to an architecture made up of virtual machines running Docker containers and a relational database. Object storage needs to be reliable, robust, and in many cases, versioned, and that is not easily done by saving uploaded files on a server. Scaleable and cost-efficient document management solution performs best with object storage, a key-value/document database, events and asynchronous tasks, and a RESTful API.

While it's possible for this entire process to be created by a team of engineers, it's a long process that will likely take longer than planned, especially when considerations like encryption, anti-malware protection, and audit capability are included.

In cases where document management functionality is required but is not a core competency, offloading these features to an existing solution makes sense, especially when that existing solution deploys directly into your infrastructure and is designed specifically for integration and customization.

And even in cases where document management is a core component of the overall application, having that functionality backed by an experienced and specialized team, including support, updates, and prioritized bug fixes, can become the key difference between the success and failure of a project.

Here are ten of most common pitfalls of developing document management functionality in-house:

1. Resource Intensity:

   A significant investment is required in terms of time, money, and people resources, not just for the initial development, but for testing, delivery, and ongoing updates and maintenance.

2. Lack of Expertise:

   An effective DMS or ECM requires a deep understanding of document management principles and the technologies required. Without this expertise available, the project team is likely to develop a system that lacks key features or does not function optimally, both in terms of performance and cost effectiveness.

3. Security Vulnerabilities:

   To prevent security incidents, including data breaches, extensive experience is required in document management and infrastructure security. This importance is increased whenever a system is expected to handle sensitive information, especially within heavily-regulated industries.

4. Scalability Issues:

   Document management systems grow not only as organizations grow, but even in the regular course of operation, as documents are rarely removed completely from storage. A good understanding of how to scale as object storage or usage grows is essential to prevent system bottlenecks.

5. Regulatory Compliance:

   Depending on the industry, document management may need to meet specific regulatory requirements, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or Sarbanes-Oxley. Creating a system that's compliant can be complex and require specialist knowledge.

6. Longer Time to Market / Release:

   Developing in-house will take significantly longer than implementing existing document management components. This may delay other projects or initiatives.

7. Opportunity Costs:

   The resources dedicated to developing document management functionality could potentially be better-used on core competencies and your competitive advantage.

8. Maintenance and Support Challenges:

   Once released, a custom-built document management system will require in-house support, updates, and maintenance. Any issues affecting end users will need be triaged and resolved within internal SLAs, and this will either need to take time away from other development initiatives, or will require a specific team to be created to maintain the system, likely with some redundancy to handle time off, illness, and attrition.

9. Lack of Vendor Support:

   Without working with an experienced vendor, there is no external support available. Not only does this increase the pressure on internal development teams, it also means that enhancements, bug fixes, or additional work required by regulatory changes will take resources away from other initiatives.

10. Risk of Project Failure:

    As with any large, complex IT project, there's a risk that an in-house document management project may fail to meet its objectives, run over budget, or exceed the timeline. This risk can be magnified by several factors, such as a team attrition, priority shifts over the project timeline, and inexperience with the architecture and tools required for effective enterprise content management.

FormKiQ's flexible document management platform stands separate from other content and document management systems by being fully customizable, fully integratable, and fully under your organization's control.

Contact us to discuss how FormKiQ can provide a more effective solution to in-house, while vastly reducing the risk of project failure.