Hello good people of the world! Today we’re talking about a specific Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product: Montrium’s Connect. Montrium offers a number of modules in their Connect software (Document Management, Training, CAPA, Incidents, etc.) Today I’ll focus on the Document Management module.
What makes Montrium’s offering unique is that is it built on top of Microsoft Sharepoint. I previously talked about Sharepoint Online with respect to compliance concerns here (a little out-of-date, but still relevant).
The first point I’ll make is having the application built on Sharepoint brings some significant advantages and disadvantages. The primary advantage I see, in comparison with other electronic Document Management Systems (eDMS), is that Sharepoint uses Microsoft’s Office Online suite, and arguably the world’s best online word processor: Word. I am not aware of any online word processor as fully featured as this one. I have used other eDMSs that have their own word processor and having less features can be really frustrating.
That said, Sharepoint also brings it’s clunky user interface and outdated Active Server Page (.aspx) architecture. The application won’t feel as snappy as modern websites, and you’ll see page reloads for things that would be handled by a component re-render in more modern applications. Overall the application feels very slow. I found myself having to wait minutes sometimes for items moving through a workflow to pop up in my task list.
The first thing that struck me with the compliance aspect of Montrium’s offering is that they have categorized their Connect SOP (which is the brand name for the Document Management Module) as GAMP category 3 software. GAMP category 3 is commerical-off-the-shelf (COTS) non-configurable software. I don’t know how they consider this software non-configurable, because there is a lot of configuration options that change how it functions, including workflows. This results in end-users not creating a configuration specification and not testing the configuration to their specific intended use. This could be a compliance risk.
Another thing I noticed is the audit trail functionality. There is no interface for audit trail, instead it is automatically exported a protected Excel file every 28 days. I find it strange that the audit trail would not be available in real-time, and think this could introduce some compliance risk. It also falls into the trap of including at least some non-human readable data. See the example below:
So just a couple points of concern with Montrium’s Connect software in a regulated use case.
What has your experience with Montrium Connect been? What is your favorite eDMS? Comment below.
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