What Is Documentum?
An Overview Of Documentum
Documentum is a Content Management Software (CMS), which means that it provides a vault in which to store critical business documents rather than keeping important files on a fileserver. It allows for security, records management, and workflow for those documents.
Documentum is like a normal filesystem (hard drive) on steroids. Instead of storing your files on your own hard disk, you store them inside the Documentum system. This allows people to access your files if they need to and allows you to access their files. It’s kind of like a network file server, but much fancier.
Documentum was founded in 1990 and in the early 2000s it was considered the premier system for document management. Most larger companies had moved away from it by 2020 preferring a more modern approach.
Key Features of Documentum
1. Improved Security
Documentum provides better security than a file system. With a file system, if someone has access to your hard drive, they can pretty much read, edit, and even delete any file on that hard drive. With Documentum, you can prevent any individual user (or group of users) from seeing the file. In fact you can give Joe access to read the file but not change it while Bob can change it but not delete it, all while Fred can’t even see that it exists.
2. Version Control
In Documentum, each time you make a change to a file, it gets saved as a new version of the file, which means you can go back in time (at any time) to access any previous versions.
For example, imagine that you are writing a memo and it needs to be reviewed by your boss. You give it to your boss who has a lot of comments and requests severeal changes to it. You make these changes and then give him the modified file. He looks it over and decides he likes the first version better. If you were using Microsoft word, every time you press the save button, it would overwrite the existing file on your hard drive. In order to keep the first version intact, you would have to click Save As… from the menu bar and rename the file. After a few times of this, you have 5 files on your hard drive called memo.doc, memo2.doc, memo3.doc, etc. and you can’t remember which is which.
If you were using Documentum, when you want to edit a file, you “check it out” and this will prevent anyone else from editing the file while you are editing it. When you make a change, you check it back in each time and Documentum automatically keeps track of the different file versions. To you, it looks like you just have one file called memo.doc, but at any time you could bring up a list of all the previous iterations of the file, who modified them, and when they were modified. Plus, each time you check a file in, you can give a little description of what you did to it so that when you look at the version history, you can tell the difference between the different versions.
3. Built In Search Engine
You can search Documentum like you search the web by looking for a certain word or phrase in every file. But Documentum is even better than that. You can assign attributes (also called meta-data or properties) to the document. For example, you can specify a document’s author, title, subject, and any number of keywords to describe it. You can even make up special attributes – if the document is a report, you can put in the report number, or if the document is a letter, you could enter the date the letter was written. Then if someone is looking for the file and they know the report number and/or the date the letter was sent, they can bring it right up. Of course, you can do wild card searches and date range searches (for example, give me all the letters written last month that have the word computer in the subject).
4. Workflow Automation
You can route documents around for approval inside the Documentum system. Each user has his own inbox that shows all the files that s/he needs to look at. You can approve the file or reject it, and you can have a whole approval process where it goes to your boss first and then to his boss, etc. It’s kind of like email, but it’s more automated and it keeps track of everybody’s comments, who approved it, and when.
5. Event Notification
Let’s say that there’s a file in Documentum that someone else wrote but that you look at from time to time – like a price list for your company’s products, for example. Every now and then, some guy form the marketing group will change the prices in this price list, and you need to know about it. You can actually tell Documentum to send you an email whenever the document is modified. Rather than checking the file periodically to see if it has changed, you would only read it when you get an email that tells you that it has changed.
The flip side of this is that the marketing guy could tell Documentum that he wants an email anytime someone reads the document. This way he can get a feel for who is using it.
Upgrading From Documentum to a Modern Approach
Documentum was a pioneer in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) space. Many others followed with significantly more robust technology and functionality than the original Documentum. ECM has evolved from fairly simple “user managed file storage” to highly automated systems that provide a lot more value than simply being a digital filing cabinet. Most companies have already moved away from Documentum because the emphasis has shifted from storing and retrieving information to using information creatively to enhance profitability and growth.
Automating Business Processes on Content
Modern organizations are investing heavily in automating business processes. While content management remains fundamental, solutions for basic storage, security, searchability, and retention have become simpler and more cost-effective. Business value is realized when the movement of content through organizations is automated and still controlled to support efficient business processes that increase sales and reduce costs.
Content Automation
Content Automation is the most intriguing aspect of enterprise content management (ECM), where business processes and the data needed for their automation are considered holistically when the solution is developed. Modern enterprise solutions to this type of automation seamlessly combine an Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) or Business Process Management (BPM) platform with a content management environment. That content management environment can still be an ECM platform, or it could be a less feature-rich and more affordable content storage platform.
Here are a few of our happy clients:
Why ArgonDigital?
Our secret sauce is the product management approach we bring to 100% of our projects. We’ve published two books on product management techniques and contributed to three industry guides. We use this methodology to make sure we implement the right solution for your company.
Frequently Asked Documentum Questions
Documentum is a Content Management Software, which means that it provides a vault in which to store critical business documents rather than keeping important files on a fileserver. It allows for security, records management, and workflow for those documents.
Key features include:
- Improved Security
- Version Control
- Built In Search Engine
- Workflow Automation
- Event Notification
The best CMS will depend upon your companies specific needs. To arrive at a recommendation for you, ArgonDigital prioritizes eight factors through the lens of user adoption: Functional Requirements, Integrations, Workflows, Records Management, Use Case Requirements, System Requirements, and Pricing and Usability, with each of those having more detailed separate requirements to be evaluated. Our 20+ years of experience in product management can help you select the right solution faster.
Key benefits include:
- Reduce Operational Costs – If your organization processes a lot of paper documents manually, there is an inherent cost in handling, entering the data from, and storing those documents.
- Reduce Risk – Manually processing and storing paper documents comes with built-in risks, such as data entry mistakes, lost documents, slow processing, security breaches, and even the risk of flood or fire destroying your archives.
- Increase Regulatory Compliance – Organizations operating in a regulated space (banks, educational institutions, government agencies, insurance companies, medical practices, etc.) can respond to audits or meet regulatory requirements much easier with an enterprise content management system in place.
- Improve and Speed Up Decision Making – The time lag involved in manual document processing means that up-to-date information isn’t available for decision makers.
Speak with a Content Management Pro
How it Works
1. Schedule a call
We will discuss your companies specific needs and which Content Management Solution could be best for you.
2. Prioritize and Evaluate
To arrive at a recommendation for you, ArgonDigital prioritizes eight factors through the lens of user adoption: Functional Requirements, Integrations, Workflows, Records Management, Use Case Requirements, System Requirements, and Pricing and Usability, with each of them containing between five and thirty-five separate requirements to be evaluated.
3. Implement the New CMS
We will configure the CMS based on your unique requirements and business rules. The configuration will be lightweight and easy to maintain with your existing ecosystem.
Documentum
EMC Documentum allows organizations to securely organize and access documents. While Documentum was the pioneer in Document Management Systems and offered a significant upgrade from fileservers, now there are better technologies that allow companies automate business processes on content.
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9 Comments
It’s a very relevent article and it really helped me in knowing ‘What is Documentum’ as I had no clue about it prior going through this article.
Kudos to Michael Trafton for coming up with such article.
Thanks and keep on posting more such articles which would help more people like me.
Regards,
Amit Sinha.
The way it explained “Documentum” and its features is great. It is more helpful to know what actullay is “documentum” . Why do we need it.
It’s a relevant article what i am looking about “Documentum” that give brief description to me. Thanks to “Michael Trafton”. Keep posting such articles that helps people like me.
Regards,
Manoj Kumar
Thanx for ur various articles on Documentum..I am new to Documentum and more, I am needed to integrate it with SharePoint 2007. Can u plz help me in knowing more of this integration? What and HOw to do…. Thanking you in advance
Thanx for ur various articles on Documentum..I am looking forward to information on Documentum and its integratation it with SharePoint 2007. Can u plz help me in knowing more of this integration? What and HOw to do….
Thanks and regards
nice one for overview of Documentum
its nice ..its easy to understand for every one who does know the basics of Documentum,..we need further article
Its very nice. its helped me lot to knowing about the documentum overview. keeps on posting like this article