Case Study: Lane Neave Evaluates Document Management Systems, Oct 28

Michelle Grant is the Knowledge Manager at the Christchurch-based law firm Lane Neave. Lane Neave has been in business for over 120 years, and offers a range of specialist legal services. Michelle spoke yesterday at the October branch meeting of NZKM Christchurch, on the subject of selecting a document management system.

This is what I gleaned from listening to Michelle's experience ...

Key Decision Criteria
A cross-functional project team from Lane Neave was given the responsibility to evaluate and recommend a document management system for the firm. There are 5 people on the team, including a representative for the legal PAs, a lawyer, Michelle as the knowledge manager, and two others. An external consultant has also been involved, adding expert input and insight to the team.

The team developed a set of key decision and evaluation criteria, some of those being:

• A centralized filing system ... a single repository for all types of content.


• An intelligent search capability, with relevancy ranking.


• Integration with existing systems, such as the practice management system.


• Version control over documents.


• Future proofing of the system architecture, particularly for extranet functionality, which means the ability to provide secure online access to in-progress documents for clients as an alternative to emailing stuff here, there and everywhere. During the Q&A, Michelle noted that they are not seeing demand for this from clients at the moment, but they wanted the assurance of investment protection if and when this becomes a priority.


• Ease of use.


• Ability to capture emails that are intentionally added into the system. At this point in time, Lane Neave does not want to automagically capture every email sent and received through the system.


• Financial viability and strength of the document management vendor. They want a partner that will be around in years ahead.


• Vendor experience in the legal sector. Lane Neave doesn't want to be the guinea pig.

During Q&A, I asked about the need for offline / disconnected access to documents in the repository. Michelle said that this was not a priority, due to the availability of remote access for partners and lawyers while traveling.

Based on this list, the project team looked at 17 different document management systems, and completed an indepth review of 9. Products reviewed included Interwoven WorkSite (which has a huge footprint in the legal industry globally), Hummingbird Enterprise, SilentOne, idocs, DNA Dashboard, and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server.

Michelle and her team standardized the pricing of each option for 60 users over a 5 year period, thereby including annual maintanence charges. Total five year cost ranged from NZ$25,000 (US$18,000) to NZ$170,000 (US$120,000).

Current Status
At the conclusion of the evaluation, and with a preferred solution in mind (at no point during the session yesterday did Michelle name the preferred solution), the team decided to delay making the decision for 6-12 months. This was driven by five factors:

1. The IT infrastructure was not ready for the new document management system. New servers were needed, and some overall re-architecting was planned. The team felt it would be better to have this in place and stable before embracing a document management system.


2. Microsoft Office upgrades, especially around Microsoft Word, were planned. Again, it was decided that the firm should roll these out before proceeding. (Peter will be pleased Michelle didn't read my manifesto about this).


3. Inconsistent document management discipline and enforcement, especially for requiring metadata for client and matter number. Some users add this information today; others don't. Michelle and the team decided to start requiring this of everyone immediately, so that when the new system is deployed, people will already have the new habits firmly entrenched.


4. The existing authoritative content at Lane Neave was not ready for migration to a document management system. Michelle gave the example of duplicated collections of precedents, due to merger and acquisition activity by Lane Neave.


5. The products needed some maturity for the "mid-market", a category into which Michelle put Lane Neave. Whilst that number is fine for New Zealand, a site with 60 users would classify as "small business" for many of the vendors involved. Regardless of the categorization, however, Michelle and the team wanted the products to "fit better", although details were not disclosed.

Change the Culture Investments
In order to get Lane Neave people ready for the document management system, a number of cultural change investments have been made, such as agreeing on a consistent "house-style" for all Microsoft Word documents, the delivery of training every 2 weeks in house-style usage, and metadata enforcement. Michelle randomly assesses documents for compliance with the house-style, and awards such as lunch for two at Rosebank Estate Winery and Restaurant are dished out.

Some Ideas for Lane Neave
There were a number of complementary technologies that stood out as being of potential value at Lane Neave. I recommend that Michelle and her team should investigate:

• NextPage 2.0, for coordination of documents across people at Lane Neave. I've written about NextPage 1.5 and 2.0, and think that this has global applicability.


• Authentica Secure Documents or something similar, for beyond-the-firewall enforcement of document confidentiality. With legal contracts being regularly sent by email to outside parties, an appropriate digital rights management platform would be a helpful addition.


• Workshare Professional, for the automatic stripping of metadata for documents emailed to outside parties. This prevents the unauthorized disclosure of internal information to external parties.


• AfterMail, for the auto-magic capturing of every email sent or received by the business. Getting people to manually choose which emails to save to the document management system isn't going to work at the business level ... I like AfterMail's capturing approach, and also the ability to leverage that information for specific business purposes.

What Do You Think?
Have you experienced a document management selection in recent months or years? How did your experience differ or align with Michelle's? I welcome your feedback through leaving a comment below, or by email.