Document management. Boring, but necessary, right? Just to spice it up, put it in the cloud on Salesforce.com's App Exchange platform or Oracle's OnDemand Suite, and what you get is document management that starts to mean something from a customer-centric point of view. What you've got is Sharemethods.This software runs as a standalone application (in the cloud), but can also be delivered via software as a service models. The software appears to have everything a normal document management system might have, including the ability to customize the user interface to documents, easily drag and drop virtually any document you already have, and workflow for electronic signatures and approvals, among other processes. Everything is tagged and indexed.

It also takes on a decidedly Web 2.0 flavor with community ratings and reviews. I like that you can store URLs as documents (sites or web files, which are also tag-able in the system), and conversely create public-facing URLs out of any existing document (which you might put on a web site or a blog or in a newsletter). You also get versioning and document analytics (like the number of times a document was downloaded or e-mailed). Even though the system runs in the cloud, you can back everything up inside your firewall.

The ability to link your document management system into something like Salesforce or Oracle CRM is also quite powerful. End users (let's say sales people) get to see documents as they relate to a CRM activity (lead development, contract negotiation or whatever).

You can view our ReviewCam of Sharemethods below.

Fritz Nelson is an Executive Editor at InformationWeek and the Executive Producer of TechWebTV. Fritz writes about startups and established companies alike, but likes to exploit multiple forms of media into his writing.

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