SpringCM is on a roll, with a user base that doubled in 2007, $14 million in fresh funding and an aggressive release schedule (about every quarter, as of late) that is adding significant new features to its core document management system at a rapid rate. With version 4.3 of its software as a service (SaaS) flagship product, a number of these features caught my eye.The company has made multiple improvements to its document rules engine, which can help streamline workflow by tracking and detecting changes in content and metadata, and performing user-defined rules (forwarding for approval, archiving, etc.) based on these changes. This is fairly common functionality, but the easy-to-use interface makes the process particularly straightforward.

More interesting is its e-mail collaboration functionality, which allows any document in SpringCM to be e-mailed out for review and edits, even by users that don't use the system. Once the edits are complete, the system creates an audit trail tracking all of the changes that have occurred externally, and then updating the original. Since one of the main downfalls of document management systems is low user-adoption rates, enabling people to benefit from the tool's features without actively using it is pretty compelling.

Other improvements in SpringCM 4.3 include the ability to adjust the available feature set by user group, allowing system capabilities to be tailored to the user's function or skill set. Too many features can be intimidating to new users, and this should help alleviate that.

Overall, SpringCM's strengths lie with its ease of use and robust feature set. The SaaS model is a plus as well, since adding new features occurs on the back end, with minimal impact to users or administrators. It's certainly proving itself to be a DM solution to keep an eye on.