Transform your organisation with Ovations, FileNet P8

Ovations has aligned itself as a ValueNet Partner of FileNet Corporation to supply enterprise content management (ECM) and business process management (BPM) solutions to organisations in the Africa region.

Drawing on FileNet`s more than 20 years` experience in the ECM and BPM space, Ovations offers a suite of fully integrated, scaleable and leading-edge products based upon the latest FileNet P8 architecture.

"FileNet ECM solutions are designed to solve real world business problems, with all of their exceptions and mission-critical operational demands, making them highly customisable functionally, and easy to integrate with existing enterprise applications and systems," says Emile Pepermans, Ovations Products Director.

"As more of a company`s systems and functions are integrated and transformed into an extended ECM solution, the benefits are multiplied. The organisation will operate with more coordination, minimising wasted motion, raising its overall productivity and customer service levels."

"The consistent theme in FileNet`s next-generation ECM product is supporting business processes with tight integration and what we call `active content`," says Pepermans.

Offered in five pre-packaged suites, P8 is three parts state-of-the-art Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and XML-enabled content platform with electronic forms management and enterprise imaging brought into the modern architecture. The first three parts are the P8 Content Manager Suite, the Business Process Manager Suite and the Web Content Manager Suite, all of which share the same code set and unified back-end management. Image Manager Suite and Forms Manager Suite make up the remaining two parts to the FileNet P8 offering.

The Content Manager Suite provides the basics of ECM, including document review and approval, classification, search, content lifecycle management, events, process tracking and system connectivity for managing, controlling and delivering a broad range of content types. The connectivity options include integration with Microsoft Office as well as the many desktop applications that support the WebDAV standard. At the enterprise level, support for the Java and Microsoft.NET platforms and built-in XML and simple object access protocol (SOAP) integration capabilities simplify the challenge of exposing content to and dynamically interacting with portals, ERP, CRM and other third-party systems.

In addition, there is pre-built integration to BEA`s WebLogic Portal and portal connectors for mySAP, Siebel, Plumtree and the IBM WebSphere Portal. The Business Process Manager Suite and Web Content Management Suite include all the components of the CM Suite as well as additional features and functions required for their respective purposes.

The FileNet BPM Suite is aimed at enterprise business transaction centric process applications, such as claims processing and loan or commercial lending, as well as workflow and document-centric environments in financial services, manufacturing, government and telecommunications. The suite adds the business process management, process design, process simulation and process analysis features needed to automate and optimise complex business processes. The platform`s built-in integration capabilities can be extended with an optional enterprise application integration (EAI) server based on IBM CrossWorlds.

Organisations can also work with Vitria or SeeBeyond EAI technology. The partnership with iLog brings a fully integrated rules engine into the Business Process Manager suite and allows for complex business logic or rules to be modelled and integrated with the business process.

The Web Content Manager Suite adds the features needed to manage robust Web sites and intranets. Content contribution can be handled through templates, wizard-driven tools or the Microsoft Office and WebDAV integrations available across the FileNet P8 platform. Management extends to HTML, XML, rich media, PDFs, e-mails and images, and revisions are handled at the object (rather than page) level, easing site changes, versioning and rollback. Automatic link navigation builds and maintains the links between content sources and Web pages, ensuring their ongoing integrity.

The Image Manager Suite is a document imaging platform evolved largely from FileNet`s Panagon Image Services platform. Aimed at high-volume, high-performance applications, such as insurance claims, lending and tax processing, the Image Manager Suite incorporates capture, workflow, output and report management, and support for magnetic and optical storage. While this suite has a separate repository with provisions for high availability, scalability and security as well as integrations with SAP and Siebel, it is tied to the P8 Content Manager repository through the FileNet Image Services Resource Adapter. This Adapter is a set of enterprise Java classes for querying, retrieving and creating documents in Image Services.

The Forms Manager suite is a Web-based eForms management solution designed to streamline form-driven processes by simplifying the design, deployment and processing of eForms. The Forms Manager suite is fully integrated into FileNet P8 and takes advantage of XML for integration. Forms Manager can act as the front end into the Business Process Manager suite, delivering superior scalability, maintainability and performance. Each of FileNet Forms Manager`s four components is fully integrated to provide a seamless environment for designing, managing and using eForms.

Another unifying element of the entire platform is the FileNet P8 Workplace, a Web-based portal. Running from a J2EE application server, this single interface lets users, administrators and developers perform all their document management, business process management and Web content management tasks. Users can browse, search, version, create folders and renditions, and personalise views of content from within either the Content Manager or Image Services content stores. P8 Workplace is also used to launch and track workflows, perform and route tasks, and create and approve content for delivery to a Web site. Administrators, analysts and developers use Workplace to customise user interfaces, create templates, define and manage business processes, analyse performance and build and test new processes.

Pepermans emphasises that "FileNet P8 is not about simply storing and retrieving content on an enterprise wide scale; it`s about supporting processes and applications with dynamic content. With its support for integration through XML Web services, an open Java API and optional EAI technology. The platform can harness content from anywhere, anytime and interact with systems to automate content-dependent processes.

Using tools including pre-built solutions templates, predefined events and event subscriptions (rather than custom code), the platform can use the creation, modification or deletion of content as a trigger for workflows, tasks, messages and updates within P8 or integrated applications. Underscoring the concept of active content, these interactions might result in new or updated content and further downstream interactions."