Determine If An Off the Shelf Solution Will Trump Customization

If a system change is justified, then before customizing you will need to find out if there is already an off the shelf solution that meets your needs. You don't want to end up reinventing the wheel if you can buy an off the shelf product that does the same thing and hopefully at a lower cost. However, there are pit falls to that line of thinking. Although an off the shelf solution may sound more ideal than a customized solution, keep in mind that if you do find an off the shelf solution you need to ask what it will take to integrate and implement the solution. In the end it may cost you more to integrate and support an off the shelf solution then if you implemented a customization. There are many variables to factor into your decision besides just cost. For instance there needs to be very tight integration between your document management solution and the out of the box solution that takes the place of customization. Here is a simplified example. You have purchased and implemented SharePoint. But you need an easy and effective way to capture documents to feed into SharePoint. Now you could go to a reseller or consultant and ask them to build you a very simple customized data capture tool that will provide for scanning and importing of documents into SharePoint. But why would you do that when there are plenty of Data Capture applications on the market? So you start looking into simple Data Capture systems but you quickly realize that not all of them have good integration with SharePoint. Documents need an efficient entry point into the SharePoint repository that includes accurately building index data and correctly storing the documents within the associated SharePoint library. Not all data capture applications on the market today offer that needed integration. So if you were to buy one of those applications then you may get an unpleasant surprise when it does not integrate with Sharepoint. Fortunately, some data capture applications do, so in this case you can find data capture applications such as Quillix Capture that will integrate with Sharepoint at a low total cost of ownership. The point is that before you decide to customize your document management system, you should do your homework and see if there is another avenue that you can pursue that will provide the same solution but without the customization. Just remember that integration is key and if the plumbing is not done correctly, then the rest of the house will be more or less non-functional.