Technology
2012 Review of Treeno Document Management 4.0
Apr. 04, 2012
Best Firm Fit
Treeno is a good fit for small to mid-size firms that don’t want to deal with all of the technology issues and capital investments by leveraging the SaaS option. If your practice uses software from a variety of vendors, then the integration tools provided to help you leverage the functionality of Treeno from a multitude of applications is a real plus.
Strengths
- Option to deploy as a SaaS or on-premise solution
- Customized bar code scanning utility to streamline the scan and store process
- Comprehensive workflow module with rules based routing
- Built-in annotation tools, including redaction
- 100+ file format previewer
- Integrated portal
Potential Limitations
- Limited penetration of accounting firm market
Overview
Treeno Document Management 4.0 is the most recent release of this comprehensive DMS solution. There is a wide array of features provided that help you streamline your management and processing of documents.
Some of the more notable features of Treeno include:
- A customizable “document dashboard” that serves as your home page for the application to access document cabinets and review workflows tasks.
- The “document center” is where you manage all of your files including uploading files and organizing them, initiating a document workflow, searching and editing documents. Users can customize the document listing interface for their individual preferences to eliminate unnecessary file information.
- Treeno boasts “19 simple methods to upload documents and files.” These include: drag and drop from your desktop, creating custom bar codes with your metadata values for automating the scanning and filing process, a file upload button that can be accessed from any application and more.
- Searching can be done at the metadata and full text level.
- The Treeno Virtual Viewer lets you preview files in over 100 formats without having to launch the native application. This significantly reduces the time it takes to access the document information you are looking for.
- Document access controls include view only access, versioning to archive and track multiple iterations of the file. A detailed access audit log is maintained.
- Built-in annotation tools include redaction, highlighting, image stamps and drawing. A log of who recorded an annotation with a date/time stamp is included.
- A built-in document workflow application allows you to establish your business processes using a graphical configuration tool. As a document works its way through the process, it can be automatically routed to the next person in line, who then receives an alert via email notification.
- Documents can be published directly to a secure portal.
Summary & Pricing
Treeno falls into the category of “horizontal” DMS solutions. This means that is designed to be deployed in a variety of industries, reaching well beyond accounting and tax practices. It does not have direct integration with client accounting and tax preparation software out of the box. These will have to be configured as part of the implementation process.
You have the ability to deploy Treeno as either a hosted SaaS application for $50 per month for each concurrent user license, or as an on-premise version which starts at $3,995 for small firms needing four concurrent users or less. A 10 concurrent user license is $6,995. Treeno Vault is a bundled version that is delivered pre-installed on a server and is priced at $7,995.
Best Firm Fit
Treeno is a good fit for small to mid-size firms that don’t want to deal with all of the technology issues and capital investments by leveraging the SaaS option. If your practice uses software from a variety of vendors, then the integration tools provided to help you leverage the functionality of Treeno from a multitude of applications is a real plus.
Strengths
- Option to deploy as a SaaS or on-premise solution
- Customized bar code scanning utility to streamline the scan and store process
- Comprehensive workflow module with rules based routing
- Built-in annotation tools, including redaction
- 100+ file format previewer
- Integrated portal
Potential Limitations
- Limited penetration of accounting firm market
Case Study
Firm Profile
University Foundations – University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
Contacts – Susan Smith, CPA and Kim Elliott, CPA
This organization is a nonprofit foundation providing accounting and financial services support to the entire university. There are currently seven active users of Treeno with plans to expand to the full foundation staff of twenty-three and ultimately the various university departments which will result in approximately 200 users.
The system is being deployed in phases. Phase I focused on scanning and filing 4,600 permanent files and the multitude of documents within each of them. Phase II was to set up Treeno to push information to the outside auditors, resulting in significant time savings. Phase III will be focused on managing the documents that support the numerous journal entries that the foundation processes on a monthly basis.
Scanning Model
At this stage of the implementation all scanning is “back end” at the end of the business process. This facilitates electronic archival and retrieval. In the next phase some documents will be scanned on the front end. They have not decided on their annotation approach yet since they are only in back end scanning model at this point.
Benefits Achieved
Bottom line is that it is so much more efficient in terms of locating files. No more time wasted searching for them. Foundation staff members have been able to minimize their role of facilitating access to documents by external users by providing them with direct and secured access. They have been very happy with the security features, which is extremely important with the confidential nature of the documents they work with. The security process is streamlined by adding users to groups and establishing access rights at the group level. The multiple fields available for metadata tagging provides a great deal of flexibility to organize files according to their unique needs.
Favorite Features
- Treeno customer service has been “really good.”
- Outlook integration works really well and is “seamless.”
- Running as a SaaS application has been a real positive. They were concerned about privacy and security at first. However, after conducting their due diligence, it was determined that there was no way they could justify the cost differential of an on-premise deployment.
- Ability to get a DVD with their files in their native format on demand.
Lessons Learned
- It is very important to think through what you want ahead of time. Particularly the metadata values and where they will come from.
- Communicate with the Treeno team and “ask questions.” Things they thought were undoable turned out to be doable after consulting with Treeno personnel.
- Everyone was concerned with speed, but it has not been an issue.
- They highly recommend the Fujitsu Fi-6130 scanner.