The Electronic Document Management System built on Microsoft 365

An Electronic Document Management System is software that captures, stores, organises, secures and tracks an organisation's documents through their entire life, from creation or scanning to eventual archiving or destruction. A true EDMS does more than store files: it applies metadata so documents can be found, enforces version control so there is one authoritative copy, routes documents through approval workflows, restricts access by role, records an audit trail of every action, and applies retention rules that govern how long each record is kept and what happens to it afterwards.

Not out of the box. SharePoint provides the platform: storage, versioning, permissions, search and integration with Microsoft 365. It does not arrive with your file plan, your retention schedules, your approval workflows, your metadata model or your registry processes — and those are what an EDMS actually is. EDMS by Sibasi is the product built on top: the configuration, intellectual property and governance layer that turns a SharePoint tenant into a working document and records management system, delivered as a defined deployment rather than a build-it-yourself project.

EDMS by Sibasi is priced as a deployment, not a per-user subscription. Basic Deployment starts from USD 5,000 and delivers a governed repository with metadata, search, versioning and access control. Standard Deployment starts from USD 25,000 and adds workflow automation, audit trails, Outlook and Teams integration and mobile access. Premium Deployment starts from USD 65,000 and adds AI classification, records management and retention, digitisation and migration, and integration with your line-of-business systems. Final pricing depends on scope — how many departments, how many processes, how much paper there is to digitise and how many systems to integrate.

No, and that usually works in your favour. Microsoft 365 or SharePoint licences are bought in your own name, from us or any partner you choose. Most organisations that need an EDMS already hold them: Microsoft 365 Business Premium, E3, E5 and the non-profit and academic equivalents all include SharePoint. Because the platform is already licensed, there is no second per-user subscription for the document system — which is the structural cost difference against a standalone EDMS product charged per user per month, indefinitely.

A Basic Deployment typically goes live in four to six weeks. A Standard Deployment with workflow automation typically runs eight to fourteen weeks. A Premium Deployment with AI processing, records management and integrations typically runs three to six months. The largest variable by far is digitisation of existing paper records, which runs in parallel and is sized from a sample survey rather than estimated.

The platform provides the controls the Act requires an organisation to have: access limited by role and logged, encryption in transit and at rest, sensitivity labelling and data loss prevention over personal data, retention limits applied automatically so data is not held longer than necessary, and an audit trail that lets you demonstrate all of it. Compliance is a property of the organisation rather than the software, so implementation includes mapping your retention schedule and access model to your obligations — but the technical controls a Data Commissioner would ask about are in place and evidenced.