When Optimal Systems approached us around a year and a half ago, the focus was on the Business Central side of an integration with enaio. They already had the document management expertise. What they were looking for was a partner who would not simply connect Business Central once, but continue to develop the solution over the years. My first reaction was not a technical one. We have been working with Continia Document Capture for years, and the solution works well for our customers. So my question was simple: Why do we need a second one?
It Was the Wrong Question
We were comparing two products that cannot really be compared on a like-for-like basis. The answer did not come from comparing features, but from the process workshops – and it ultimately comes down to a single question: Where does the process originate? With Document Capture, the process begins and ends in the ERP system. The document comes in, is captured, reviewed and posted. Business Central is where the work happens; the document is a means to an end. With enaio, it is the other way round. The document takes the lead, the DMS drives the process, and Business Central is one stage within it – an important one, but not the starting point.
This becomes particularly clear in areas where enaio has traditionally been strong: public-sector organisations and organisations with extensive administrative structures. If a process passes through several approval stages, if it must be documented who made which decision and when, and if the traceability of the process matters just as much as the outcome, then the process belongs in the document management system. Business Central comes into play when that process results in a document that needs to be posted. I say this explicitly from the perspective of an ERP partner, not a DMS expert. The depth of document management expertise lies with Optimal Systems, not with us. That is exactly why we are doing this together rather than on our own. At that point, it was clear to me that the integration made sense. Not as a replacement for something we already have, but for projects where Document Capture would not be the right fit in the first place.
Define the Roles Before You Start Developing
Once we had made that decision, we did not start developing straight away. First, we worked through the use cases with Optimal Systems: What information needs to flow between the systems? Which system is responsible for which task? Where does the document process end, and where does the ERP process begin? These questions may sound like preliminary work. In reality, they determine things that become expensive to correct later: Who cleans things up if a posting fails? What happens if the same document goes through the process a second time? Which support team does the user contact if something gets stuck? Once responsibilities are clearly defined, the technical implementation is usually the easier part.
One Use Case Instead of a Long List of Features
We could have tried to cover as much as possible from the outset. We deliberately chose not to. The pilot project focuses on processing incoming invoices – a process both sides know well and one that allows us to see how the systems work together under real-world conditions. The project is currently in the testing phase, with the production launch planned for early 2027. We are planning further development stages together as part of a roadmap. It was to be expected that new requirements would emerge during implementation. That does not mean the scope was wrong – quite the opposite. Those requirements are now coming from real-world experience rather than from a concept document.
About the Partnership
Optimal Systems brings its document management expertise; we bring our experience with Business Central and our customers’ ERP processes. What makes the collaboration work well is something that sounds obvious but is surprisingly rare: neither side tries to explain the other’s product to them.
What We Don’t Know Yet
Whether the distinction we have developed works as intended in practice will only become clear once the solution is in production. I expect there will be cases that cannot be neatly assigned to one side or the other – and that the roadmap will look different afterwards than it does today. Even so, the initial scepticism served a purpose. For a year and a half, it stopped us from building a solution before we had properly understood the problem.
Which Solution Fits Your Process?
Depending on where your processes originate and how documents are integrated into them, different approaches may make sense. Find out more about enaio and Continia Document Capture, and how both solutions can be used with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
