Here is the seventh edition of our Weekly Office 2.0 Roundup. Today, we will review 7 online document management applications, from Blinksale to ShareMethods. We will identify some unique features that might help your own selection process, and you will get a chance to cast your vote for the best online document management application.

With the help of many contributors, we completed the Document Manager section of the Office 2.0 Database. From the 7 players we identified, all are actively developed by legitimate companies. Three can be characterized as general-purpose document management applications (docHarbor, Koral, and ShareMethods), while four tend to focus on specific document-centric workflow processes, such as document signing or invoice presentment (Blinksale, DocuSign, EchoSign, and FreshBooks). Six out of seven solutions are predominantly targeted at the small and midsize business (SMB) market, while one (docHarbor) is targeted at the larger enterprise market.

Functionality
From a functionality standpoint, an online document management application allows teams to store and share electronic documents online, while supporting some specific workflow processes, such as document review and approval for example. Some applications also provide support for paper based documents, either through the use of scanning and OCR technologies, or through the integration of a gateway for sending and receiving faxes. All the applications we reviewed support document sharing, but only 3 out of 7 provide facilities for document publishing as well. Syndication is only supported by one application (Koral). All the applications we reviewed provide support for data import and export, but only 4 offer a public API for integration with third-party applications, such as Salesforce.com with Koral, or Basecamp with FreshBooks.

Ease of Migration
Depending on the use you intend to get out of a document management system, migration could either be transparent, or require a fair amount of work. On one hand, if your intended use revolves around specific workflow processes such as document approval and signing, there should be no migration to speak of, but rather a simple adoption process, which will be limited to educating the parties you will involve in your collaborative workflow processes. On the other hand, if you decide to use the online document management application as a way to store a significant amount of existing documents, you will have to develop the appropriate migration strategy. Because most systems rely on tags and workspaces rather than folders, migrating a large collection of existing documents might require a significant amount of work. Furthermore, some applications do not let you import more than one document at a time, making this task even more difficult.

Price
All the applications we reviewed, at the exception of docHarbor, provide a free evaluation version, and all but docHarbor and DocuSign provide a free version as well. Nevertheless, all 7 applications also provide commercial versions, priced from $5 to $149 per month (pricing for docHarbor is not made publicly available). Overall, the applications we reviewed seemed to be priced fairly, and are built upon sound business models. When considering the adoption of a workflow-oriented document management application (Blinksale, DocuSign, EchoSign, and FreshBooks), customers should evaluate the number of documents to be processed each month, and the overall cost of processing each document, in order to come up with a meaningful Return on Investment model. For example, EchoSign has been used for signing all sponsorship agreements established for the Office 2.0 Conference [article], and the cost savings for this event alone paid for more than three years of subscription.

Alternatives
The main alternative to a storage-centric document management application is an online file manager. One would go for the former rather than the later in order to get better indexing and searching, pre-viewing and editing, as well as integration with a CRM system such as Salesforce.com. Finding alternatives to workflow-centric document management applications is a little bit more difficult. One could use online faxing applications for example, but it is not clear that there would be any benefits in doing so. More often than not, the alternative is to carry ad hoc workflow processes by attaching documents to emails, which is about as inefficient as it gets.

Top Players
Several online document management applications do make use of HTTPS, therefore the Alexa ranking is not as reliable as we would like it to be. Nevertheless, and according to this ranking, we can extrapolate a list of top players in the space, which is somehow corroborated by their respective Google PageRanks.

Quick Reviews
There are only 7 applications in our database, so all of them got a review.

Blinksale: Blinksale focuses exclusively on the management of invoices. It might sound limited at first, but the lifeblood of any business is cash, and invoices are the very last steps before collection, therefore the value of such an application should not be underestimated, especially for the smaller businesses that do not have a dedicated finances department. Blinksale supports the creation of branded invoices, the definition of recurring invoices, and the tracking of payments. It also provides a very clear dashboard, and an easy to use search interface for browsing through archives.

docHarbor: docHarbor is the only enterprise solution included in our review. It provides a wide range of services and solutions, tailored for multiple industries. Unfortunately, no evaluation version is offered, therefore we could not try the application directly. Pricing is also not publicly disclosed.

DocuSign: DocuSign is an online solution for secure document signing, with a strong focus on complex transactions such as mortgages, that require signatures on multiple pages. The user interface is clean and simple, and the overall solution fairly affordable, even though it does not offer a free version beyond the 30-day evaluation period.

EchoSign: EchoSign [review] is a direct competitor to DocuSign, but focuses on contract signature solutions in order to accelerate the sales process. EchoSign works with any web browser, without any browser extension, supports electronic signing as well as paper signing through fax, and is fully integrated with Salesforce.com.

FreshBooks: FreshBooks is a competitor to Blinksale, and focuses on invoicing and time tracking, making it especially useful to freelancers and service providers. It provides a clean interface for creating, sending, and managing invoices, as well as tracking time among team members. Invoices can be sent either by email or by US post, while payments can be accepted through PayPal and Authorize.Net. Recurring invoices can be created, and late payment notices automatically sent.

Koral: Koral [review] is a very powerful, yet easy to use document management system that can be used to store and retrieve any document. Documents can be uploaded onto the system by simply dragging and dropping files onto a desktop folder, then organized using a combination of tags and workspaces. Koral support full-text indexing, as well as direct previews for the most popular document formats, without the need for any third-party application. Koral is also fully integrated with Salesforce.com, allowing documents to be attached to virtually any Salesforce.com object.

ShareMethods: ShareMethods is one of the more advanced solutions we reviewed, even though it could be used by smaller businesses as well. It provides a secure place to store and share documents with full-text indexing, versioning, and document-level access control. It provides support for approval and review workflows, user ratings and comments, document tracking with change notification, analytics and reporting, and integration with Salesforce.com.

Personal Favorites
Currently, I am using Koral on a daily basis, and its integration with Salesforce.com was one of the primary motivations for migrating back to this platform. I am also using EchoSign for getting all my contract signed, and I am in the process of choosing between Blinksale and FreshBooks for managing all invoices related to the next edition of the Office 2.0 Conference.

What’s Missing
Two things: One, integration between storage-centric and workflow-centric solutions. There is no reason why a Koral should re-invent what an EchoSign already perfected, and I would love to get the two integrated together. Two, integration with Office 2.0 editing tools, first among them a good online word processor such as ThinkFree Write or Zoho Writer. Introductions to the respective players have been made, and I expect integrations to be completed sometime this year.

Best Online Document Management Application
Now that we know what’s out there, it’s time for a vote:

Note: if you cannot see the voting form, please follow this link.

Final results will be announced next week on Your Office 2.0 Setup and as an update to this post. In the meantime, please help me build next week’s roundup on Email. You can use this form courtesy of Wufoo for suggesting new applications, or providing additional information about existing ones. I would also welcome ideas for domain-specific criteria that could be used for evaluating the players on our list.

See you next week!

Disclaimer: I serve as an advisor for EchoSign.