ECM | The 3 Reasons Why Clients Choose M-Files

Are you tired of traditional content management solutions slowing down your business?

Chances are you have finally decided there is a better way to manage your content or to pull the plug on your current content management system. You’ve lost time and possibly clients searching for documents you need in real time only to come up short.

So you start researching options only to grind to a halt when you realise how many options you have.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Choice Paralysis

Do you know what choice paralysis is?

It’s a cognitive hiccup that transforms easy choices into difficult ones. It works by adding lots of options that overwhelm the decision making part of your brain. Your mind perceives the mass of options and freezes up.
 

There are nearly forty different ECM options available, and after about five minutes of reading, your eyes glaze over.

We get it. Most ECM sites are unreadable. Here’s why.

Why ECM Can Be Confusing

The ECM companies you want to review have websites that are complex and confusing. They are filled with walls of text crammed edge to edge with technical industry jargon.

The reason vendors do this is they want to promote every speed and feed but this can lead to data overwhelm. The ECM journey does not have to be this complex. 

We want you to make decisions with the right information about ECM systems.

That is why, to help you decide on the best option for your company, we collected the three most commonly praised things from our M-Files clients.

This way you can decide if the solutions our clients enjoy fit your company’s needs.

3 Reasons M-Files Is Right For Your Company: Praise Direct From Users’ Mouth

Before we start, we should disclose that we sell and implement M-Files and we have been using it internally for nearly a decade. We are one of the early adopters in Australia and we had the same issues and frustrations as many companies face today.

These are some of the challenges we experienced

• Documents stored in many different places / silos

• Difficult and slow to find the document we needed

• Duplicated documents

• Difficult to recover documents without restoring from backups

• Manual processes

• No version control / Different versions of the same document

• Employees found it hard to collaborate on projects

There are a lot of ECM options available and we've used and implemented quite a few of them. Despite that, we only promote and help clients implement just one. Why?

Because M-Files is the most business friendly option available. To help you understand this claim we have included the top 3-reasons that cause our clients to rave about the software.

Reason 1: M-Files Is Easy To Adopt Due To An Easy To Use And Familiar Interface

Most ECM’s have difficult to learn interfaces. M-Files doesn’t. Actually, M-Files has great user adoption rates because it looks like your current system. Users don't feel like they have to learn another new tool to use. Below is an example of an M-Files vault, it looks like a regular networked drive. 

Another benefit is M-Files enables finding, accessing and managing information residing virtually within any system, without disturbing existing processes and users. This means you don't have to rip and replace your existing systems. It integrates with popular software like Microsoft Office and Sharepoint. See just some of the integrations here.

This is important. Why?

Because when you introduce a new software, you experience resistance. People don’t like change. With M-Files they will. 

The interface is easy to use and intuitive. This means teams adopt it much faster and the benefits of being able to find the documents they need reinforces the positive user experience. 

Reason 2: M-Files Works Fast In Real Time

Imagine this.

Your team is out of the office and needs a document.

M-Files gives your employees instant access to everything they need from a mobile device or laptop. They can also make a document available offline if they don't have internet access.

This is powerful! Think about how much your clients will value seamless engagement in real time.

Reason 3: It Increases Efficiency 

You and your employees will no longer waste time looking for documents. This will save you time and improve efficiency. Read how a South Australian food manufacturer - Mitani improved efficiency, traceability and compliance.

One of the things that clients don’t expect but get excited about when they realise it’s included with M-Files is workflows. A common example is the Accounts Payable function. When an invoice is received by email it is automatically processed through M-Files, all of the invoice information such as customer and cost information is captured via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and the invoice is routed to the right person to approve. All of this is done automatically with transparency, an audit trail and notifications. Automating manual processes will make you more efficient and approvals can also be done on the go via mobile devices, so no more waiting.

The best part about M-Files is that these three reasons to use it only skim the surface of everything that sets it apart from the competition.

Recommended by Industry Analysts

Industry analysts have also recognised the M-Files approach to intelligent information management.

• “Visionary” in the Gartner 2017 Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms

• “Leader” in the Forrester Wave: Enterprise Content Services, Q2 2017

• “Leader” in the Nucleus Research ECM Technology Value Matrix 20

But don’t take our word for it. Schedule a call with one of our experts. They can answer your questions live and share real life examples of how M-Files has helped companies become more efficient.

Schedule My FREE Call Today - Click here

Do You Know Your Current Content Management System Is Losing You Money?

Worried that this is the case?

If you use a traditional content management system, then you are going to want to read the next article. It covers everything about how your current systems are losing you money.
 

ECM | Never Waste Time Looking For The Right Document Again

Never Waste Time Looking For The Right Document By Using The Best Information Management Tool: M-Files

Are you tired of wasting time looking for documents you need?

Your business moves quickly. When you need a document you don’t want to spend hours searching through content silos to find the information you need-especially if you need multiple documents.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

You start a project and realise you need some documents. You look in the folders scattered on your desktop, in email, the network drive and cloud storage and end up losing hours searching for the documents you need.

Or worse.

You find the document but it’s behind an access wall, and the person with the clearance you need isn’t available. What do you do?

If you are using traditional information management systems, this is more of a problem than you like to admit. 

So why haven’t you switched to a new system? 

When asked this, most companies explain they:

1. Didn’t know solutions were available

2. Didn’t know the available solutions were affordable

3. Didn’t realise there was one solution so easy to use they could instantly integrate it into their day-to-day

Thankfully, there is a solution-one that is so easy to use you can instantly implement it and start seeing results right away. What is it?

M-Files.

What Is M-Files

On the surface, M-Files is an ECM.

What is an ECM? It is an Enterprise Content Management system. They are the more robust grown-up cousins to traditional systems.
 

What sets them apart is that they are built to be tailored to an enterprise’s specific needs. That means instead of getting a system you plug your content into, the ECM adapts to your document needs and erects a system around it.

M-Files is a metadata based, repository neutral, intelligent acting solution companies can enlist to quickly and safely find the content they want-right away. 

How does it work?

Simple.

M-Files manages information by "what" it is versus "where" it's stored. No more guessing where to store a document, just tag it and relate it to other important business objects, such as customer, project, case and so on. 

The Missing Keys Example

M-files searches for content you need based on what the data you are searching for is in place of where it’s stored.

To understand how it works, imagine you lost your keys in your house.

Your house has ten rooms. Traditional content management systems would require you to go room to room to search for your keys. 

The old system could tell you if the keys were in the room you searched, but not what room had your keys. Worse still, the old system does not help you with managing duplicates or old redundant keys laying around causing clutter. 

This is where you waste your time. If you have multiple silos of content, you could waste hours searching through each one before finally landing on the right one.
 

If you need multiple documents and search in a random order, you can waste even more time.
Using M-files you would immediately know both:

1. The exact room your keys are in

2. Where in the room the keys are

So how does this help you?

How M-Files Information Management Helps Your Business

Your company is larger than most businesses.

This places unique demand for specific needs on your business-like content management.

For your company to get and keep the edge-both over your rivals and startups-you need your team to respond in real time. Traditional content management systems keep you from doing that.

Every hour you waste looking for documents is another hour your competitor looks better. 

Take back the edge, succeed at the speed of demand, and get ahead of the competition by using M-Files.

Discover 3 Key Reasons M-Files Is The Best ECM Tool Available

You want to know why M-Files is the best option available on the market today?

Then you are going to want to check out our next article. In it we share the top three things our clients rave about when they switch over to M-Files.

By - Matthew Heinrich - Senior ECM Consultant at Advance