Bundledocs: Power to the paper-light
As lockdowns return in autumn 2020, all organisations must consider the complex combination of risks they present. At the same time, many have strongly indicated that significantly more frequent agile working will remain in the picture even when social distancing hopefully no longer does.
Listed legal and professional services business Knights had document process efficiency firmly in its sights for change long before a global pandemic drove significant investment in the area at many firms to facilitate their widespread homeworking.
Around five years ago a recently-joined litigator recommended Bundledocs as an alternative solution to the then-status quo for preparing documents for Court. “We went with it, and I have to say that we’ve never looked back,” says senior learning and development trainer Hilary Hallen.
Another way to document
As the name may suggest, Bundledocs automatically assembles very large collections of documents for presentation. It can produce transaction bibles at the close of corporate work, but for Knights, the standout use case has been creating Court bundles, explains Hallen.
“This was a very paper-driven activity for people before. Pages were often manually added, which was also labour-intensive. It wasn’t in line with our goal of becoming paper-light as a business
“Using Bundledocs people can simply tick a box, either to select a whole folder of relevant documents such as correspondence, or to identify individual ones from a set. This occurs in an app that connects with our practice management system (PMS).” Pages can also be reordered as necessary within the app, but more typically users will then log onto the Bundledocs website, where they can also add sections, redact and rotate material.
Hallen continues: “The website is the most powerful part of the tool. However, it’s probably the integration with our PMS that’s the most valuable of all to us, as we really didn’t want our colleagues saving documents outside the system.”
In addition to saving paper, there is also time-saving, which can be attributed to the technology of course – and which in turn means a better experience for the person carrying out the task as part of their working day. Hallen says: “This would typically be a paralegal within the business. Previously colleagues would be copying and numbering pages manually, while today that time can be reassigned to more career-enhancing opportunities.”
Easy understanding and adoption
Moreover, it doesn’t take a whole lot of time to train people to make the most of the tool.
“Bundledocs has some good videos, which we’ve now added to the training area of our intranet, with colleagues quickly able to pick up the basics,” Hallen says. The learning and development team is, however, focusing more on helping others to exploit more of the advanced features in the pdf suite more effectively, such as redaction.
She adds that use is by no means mandatory though – which means adoption is high. “It’s peer-to-peer recommendation, which can be much more powerful. Colleagues use it because they want it, and conversely we don’t want to waste a licence on somebody that won’t use it.”
On the other hand, this business is an acquisitive one – so as well as considering potential new use cases there will always be a drive to introduce the advantages to newcomers.
It’s particularly helpful, says Hallen, that Bundledocs developers are available to help troubleshoot around any challenges, such as with integration, as the business grows.
“Even the standard help – online chat – is excellent, but it’s clear that they haven’t lost the personal touch when it comes to customer service,” she says. “A developer has readily jumped on a call to explore an issue. And a quick and efficient response is very important, as at the end of it is a lawyer waiting to work on something.”
That’s more time that the business doesn’t have to waste.
This article was taken from Briefing February: Hybrid powers. Read the full issue here.
