Document Management - White Paper (ID 5277).pdf Jul. 2014 | Page 35

The DMS Hunt
Superconductor maker Tabula shares its DMS selection process
In many major life purchases in life (such as cars or real estate), sales tactics attempt to steer
you towards higher price tags and away from a clear comparison of alternatives.
Mangers at Tabula, Inc. discovered the same is true with a recent IT purchase, a document
management solution.
Tabula, a privately-held, venture-funded semiconductor company based in Silicon Valley,
develops 3D programmable logic devices. Shortly before it introduced its semiconductor
product last year, Tabula needed to find a suitable document management system for the
110-employee company.
The search for a simple software product, however, was far from simple. Dr. Sridhar
Kasichainula, Senior Manager of Quality and Reliability, shares Tabula’s experience and offers
some advice for managers in a similar position.
Q: What requirements did Tabula have for document management?
SK: Even though our company is making a complex product, our file handling requirements
were pretty much a textbook case and not much different from any other company. We
needed all of the very typical features associated with digital document management, such
as version control, access permissions, workflow for file changes and approvals, archiving,
and history logs. Basically, all of the classic bullet points of a document management system.
Q: How did you identify suitable candidate solutions?
SK: We essentially did all our research through the Internet. There are a lot of products and
services out there, all claiming to do pretty much everything. It was challenging just sorting
through all the alternatives, not to mention getting more than very high-level information or
feature lists, and getting past the marketing hype. Many vendors are almost intentionally
supplying minimal information to force you to engage with their sales teams.
When we searched for information management software or document management
systems, a lot of the generic business sites would come up. As for reviews, we really couldn’t
find any. The only information these business-related sites would have would be a generic
introduction—a paragraph or two that was pretty much copied from the software vendors’
websites or marketing materials—then just a few blanket statements and bullet points
Q: How did you go about the process of selection?
SK: What we finally had to do was compile a list of ten candidates and do our own
comparison-shopping. Our list focused initially on the offerings that contained all the features
Tabula needed, even though we were unsure on costs in the beginning. We found some
prospects that looked like they might fit and we then worked down the list, installing and
evaluating each one before we came across a product that we eventually decided to go with.

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EASY DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT