In the legal industry the management and control of documents is an essential component to the development of law firms, particularly in an era when many of the larger firms are internationalising to respond to the demand for global legal services.
The 2011 Legal IT Landscapes report, which reflects the views and opinions of the legal industry towards technology, reported recently that 60% of those interviewed had a positive opinion of Microsoft SharePoint, collaboration software which helps simplify business intelligence, content and document management, search, and sharing for intranet and internet sites. The software is well suited for legal businesses of all sizes, especially as they aim to roll out more efficient and effective Document Management solutions.
The timing of this report is interesting. Readsoft recently inked a deal with partner ImageFast to provide an integrated solution of Readsoft’s products and SharePoint within one framework. Simply put, this enables legal firms to capture, store and share documents within SharePoint, taking advantage of Readsoft’s industry leading back office document capture and management.
However this explanation does not do justice to the seamless nature of the integration between Readsoft and SharePoint. ReadSoft solutions can be integrated with a number of finance, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and procurement systems, as well as Microsoft SharePoint, but it is not the capability but the depth of the integration that is the critical element.
Whilst software companies often describe how ‘seamlessly’ their software links with other programs, the reality can be disappointing. This is an area where Readsoft has much experience and expertise. Indeed the company already integrates products into SAP and Oracle as well as Sharepoint.
This experience has taught Readsoft that delivering a meaningful user experience is the most important part of integration. For lawyers this is critical as they are far more interested in the law than having a desire to understand how their software works, besides they are often time poor so do not want or need the distraction. Access to the right information needs to be at the click of a button, not through a series of complicated menus and difficult applications.
And this may be the key to SharePoint fulfilling the potential that legal IT managers clearly feel the product has. These managers understand that their in-house paper-driven legal processes are going to be further aggravated by significant pressures from consolidations, mergers, legal malpractice risks, and the dispersal of legal expertise across geographically distributed offices. Centralising paper document capture and secure electronic storage with robust processes and applications which can efficiently handle the flow of in and outgoing documents, as well as and managing them until the lifecycle is completed and the data can be destroyed delivers what they need.
These solutions must be easily integrated into existing systems to ensure minimal change and disruption to a practice’s day to day business processes, that is something ReadSoft, and partners with SharePoint expertise, such as ImageFast, understand. In the final analysis, the success of software is not about the code, but how that code delivers an enhanced experience for the user. The best technology serves the user; it does not demand the user serves it.
