Looking at my needs (listed below) it seems like a DMS may be the right solution. However I am not very sure if DMS is really the right solution and so I seek advice for experts. Important to mention that I dont have the budget for an extremely expensive solution (budget is around $15,000/-). I hope the following scenario helps you get an idea regarding my requirements:

Our organization deals with many different companies and contractors and issues various directives/notices etc. Sometimes many meetings take place as a result, and a updated status for each of the issued directive comes to light (which can be a reply from the company/contractor, a further new directive, key points discussed during the meeting and for each directive also). Now this in the worst case can go on for a long time. We would like to keep track of the status of each overall notice and then the latest status for each of the directive and the meetings that have taken place and the latest replies/status (with all the history and how many days have lapsed)….

I hope the above give you some sort of idea regarding what sort of solution will work. Yes the ideal solution will work in a LAN environment with multiple users (with different access rights) using the solution but I would not rule out the possibility of first trying a small and a single user version to say how well the solution solves our requirements. The advantage in the latter case is that the investment will be very low and if we end up finding the right solution, we can then go for its corporate/enterprise version.

We probably will not prefer to go with the idea of getting developed a customized solution as it will take much more time (as compared with getting a ready made product customized according to our needs).

Will be very thankful for your reply/advice and suggestion regarding which product(s) should I evaluate. BTW, am I right in assuming that probably a Document Management System is what we are looking for?

Thanks.

What are good products on each category