PLM Standalone document management

Question

Hi,
Has anyone implemented SAP PLM as a standalone document management solution? We are considering migrating from another doc mgmt system, but may not have budget to do a full ERP (ECC6) implementation at the same time.
Thanks
Dave

Answer 1

Hi Jennifer
I'd suggest you try get a DMS consultant in, even if its only for a blueprint confirmation or for some basic help on the implementation, SAP DMS is technically not a difficult module to implement but matching the business processes to the system is a little harder. Its also good because often things don't work quite as well in theory as they do in practice, and with the work required to migrate documents to a DMS, its not the sort of thing you want to do again. There are also a number of standard enhancements you should always add to SAP DMS for specific scenarios and without a history of working with SAP DMS, you wouldn't be aware of without a history with SAP DMS (SAP doesn't automatically supersede old versions of documents for example) so although it may seem like a lot of work to put these enhancements in place, its this exact flexibility that allows SAP DMS to be so good.
In my experience, there are very few bad document management systems, but lots of bad document management implementations.
If you want to play around with it, have a go, there are a number of config guides and blueprints floating around SDN.
Regards,
Athol