Lotus Notes is Ready for Retirement! And, your Enterprise Needs a World-Class EQMS like ComplianceQuest for Document Management

In December 2018, IBM announced the sale of the remaining parts of Lotus Notes & Domino to HCL, signaling its exit from the legacy Document Management System. Once a dominant entity that was embraced by organizations to ease collaborations between remote teams, Lotus Notes now finds itself irrelevant. In this era of SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud), Notes does fall short of expectations. There are several challenges users of Lotus Notes face as they try to move ahead of competition and create a differentiation:

Outdated User Experience: Today’s enterprise user wants to access documents through various channels – their smartphone, desktop, laptop or tablet. Next general enterprise products like ComplianceQuest offer world-class, intuitive experience across all these devices. With Lotus Notes, the user experience was outdated.

Too Many Add-On Applications: As a legacy product, Lotus Notes obviously needed a whole lot of custom apps, making it hard to manage and govern. Additionally, it wasn’t easy to connect Lotus Note with other ERP or CRM dashboards. Thus enterprise-wide visibility of documents on Lotus Notes was a challenge.

Version Control Became Cumbersome: With multiple instances of the same document, enterprises had to add newer business processes to ensure version control, especially for quality and compliance reasons.

More Expensive than Cloud-Based Products: In this era of cloud, Lotus Notes, because of the proliferation of apps, local servers and data sources, became an expensive proposition to maintain.

Moreover, in 2016, IBM had declared that while Notes would continue until 2021, there would be no fresh releases or updates. Post the HCL acquisition, there is lack of clarity on the future of Lotus Notes.

Meeting Regulatory Requirements

Across industries, regulations have become more dynamic and fines for not complying have become steep. In such an environment, technology and automation is the key to quality and compliance.

The document management scenario has seen a major shift since Lotus Notes went live (initially launched in 1989!), with compliance requiring tracking of each and every change to a document and also assigning responsibilities.

Due to lack of visibility in Notes, Version Control of Documents is a nightmare. More importantly, critical documents may get lost, even costing organizations millions of dollars due to non-compliance.

There is No Doubt – Your Enterprise Needs an EQMS

An EQMS like ComplianceQuest can double up as a modern Document Management Solutions System that understands versioning, data visibility, audit trails, compliance and security.

Enabling version control of documents, it tracks and manages change along with registering the details of the time at which the change was made and the person responsible for it.

Its flexible workflows facilitate easy review and approval processes with system messaging that integrates with the email system. Moreover, it is integrated with the ERP, HR, financial and CRM functions through flexible APIs and web services.

Of course, the task of migrating documents from Notes to EQMS can seem daunting. But, an experienced EQMS partner such ComplianceQuest can help with the migration using a process-oriented approach designed first by understanding the existing systems and by mapping it to the desired goal.

Making the Right Choice

Being cloud-based, ComplianceQuest not only enables collaboration but takes the worry about upgradations off the heads of CTOs & CIO, who can instead continue to focus on their core business requirements.

Needless to add, the customer does not have to spend on infrastructure or worry about obsolescence, thus making it cost effective.

Its user interface is designed for multiple devices, enabling the executive on the move to access information from anywhere, anytime. Designed for the modern era, on the Salesforce.com platform, the ComplianceQuest EQMS is the right destination to migrate from Notes. We have deep experience in serving clients from healthcare, automotive, manufacturing, hi-tech, CPG, life sciences and medical devices and have built deep domain understanding of the latest regulatory requirements in these sectors.

To request for a demo or read one of our case studies, please write to us at marketing@compliancequest.com