Bundledocs: Mills & Reeve case study – Bundles of joy
Bundledocs is a popular solution at Mills & Reeve for its cost effectiveness, paired with a human touch, according to Andrew Anthony and James Coote in the law firm’s IT department.
It was at a tech exhibition in London that Mills & Reeve’s IT team first spotted a Bundledocs stand, and – with the high licensing costs of their then document-bundling solution at the back of the mind – made an enquiry. Things then moved at a fair clip.
Andrew Anthony, IT Applications Manager at Mills & Reeve, explains: “Bundledocs just ticks all the boxes – it works really well, the user interface is nice and simple to use, it’s all web-based, and the users like it as it’s feature-rich and it can do everything they need to do.”
Like wildfire
Armed with a login to the cloud-based system, the law firm kicked off its Bundledocs implementation with the 25-strong legal support team, which carries a heavy load of administrative work for other legal departments and had been struggling with the existing bundling solution.
Uptake soon extended to other teams throughout the business. “We have never needed to actively promote Bundledocs as a product,” says Anthony. “It’s really grown just through word-of-mouth, and we’ve probably got about 200 people – around one in five in the business – using it now.”
Requests are still flowing in, Anthony notes, adding that many of those who haven’t yet hopped on board are unlikely to work with bundles on a regular basis. Practice areas such as employment, commercial and insurance, on the other hand, are among many parts of the business that have seen a high adoption rate.
Welcome change
For the many who have made the switch, the decision seems to be paying off quickly. One benefit is a big cut in the processing time – bundles that previously took all day to compile, according to Anthony, are now put together in between five minutes and half an hour with a single push of a button.
It has really grown just through word-of-mouth, and we’ve probably got about 200 people – around one in five in the business – using it now
Then there’s more efficiency. “It also does automatic indexing, and it does that chronologically, so people don’t have to keep moving pdfs and the pages within them, which is another big time saving.”
And according to Mills & Reeve technical support analyst, James Coote, Bundledocs achieves all this without taking up too much space – something that could hamper people’s productivity. “It’s cloud-based, so it’s not resource-heavy. There is little to no impact on their own system, so people can carry on doing other things while it’s working in the background.”
A trusted partner
Designed as a handy, unassuming enabler of process efficiency, which can be switched on and ready-to-go, according to Anthony, with minimal instruction needed for the user, the Bundledocs team also perform very well if the firm does have a query.
“I’ve found them very responsive,” he says, noting that the rare request or problem is usually resolved within a day. He cites help received for a recurring problem that the law firm was having – where peaks and troughs in workloads meant that Mills & Reeve’s Bundledocs use would go well above its assigned bundle capacity in some weeks, but easily stay below in others.
“If we exceed the capacity, it stops working, and you have to contact them either to upgrade the plan to the next tier, or delete some data,” he explains. But instead of paying the difference every time, Mills & Reeve jumped on a call with the team at Bundledocs to explain their use can vary significantly.
“They were quite accommodating, and in fact suspended the cap completely, so we could go over the number of gigabytes we paid for – on the condition that we review it periodically and ensure we are broadly in line with what we’re paying for.”
This flexibility has manifested elsewhere too, according to Coote. “We get feedback from users where they might have an idea for a process to be easier – where a button could be added perhaps – and they’ve gone as far as to add new features following our feedback,” he said.
This accommodating relationship, plus the technical excellence of the software, have resulted in half a decade – and counting – of association between Mills & Reeve and Bundledocs, with no indication of any need for change.
