Hart Energy’s E&P Magazine published an article way back in 2012 which discussed how you can ensure effective document control particularly as it relates to the strategy behind the processes you use. One particular paragraph discusses how document control professionals approach the issue of building their own document control application:
Some project owners tend to focus on building their own internal document control systems. These often consist of an in-house document control team logging the arrival of information, capturing it electronically in a central database, and then disseminating it to the relevant parties around the organization. Many such systems are database-driven, supported by spreadsheets and requiring significant manual intervention.
The article went on to describe the potential downside of building your application especially as it pertains to scaling your business as the need requires as well as the increasingly customized nature of projects:
While having a predominantly internal system often takes care of integration with existing internal processes, it often lacks the necessary scalability to expand as more and more vendors come onboard and projects become more complex. It also can put increased pressures on internal resources.
The article also refers to the option of using a purpose-built system such as DocBoss in place of designing one yourself which tends to be more effective to avoid reinventing the wheel and facing the downsides mentioned in the first quote above.