Ascertus: Five reasons why corporates deploy iManage enterprise-wide
As a new team member at Ascertus, I’ve spent the last couple of months meeting corporate clients to see how we can support their most current commercial and operational requirements – be that through the services the company offers or indeed via some of the other business applications in our portfolio. After all, a lot has changed in the last two years and today we are all working and operating differently compared to pre-pandemic times. I have been heartened by clients’ generosity with their time, as well as their willingness to constructively talk about their technology issues.
The most resounding take away from my conversations is that corporates rely heavily on iManage – not just in the corporate legal departments, but across the enterprise, including functions such as tax, finance, HR and compliance. There are five fundamental reasons they give for why they love the iManage document and email management system (DMS):
- Microsoft is the way to go.The majority of corporates (if not all) have bought into Microsoft’s vision of how the “office” will evolve over the coming years. Their IT infrastructure is built on the Microsoft stack, and their employees live and breathe within Microsoft tools Word, Excel and PowerPoint, which are literally the default applications for business. So, the fact that iManage has a close collaboration with Microsoft gives them great comfort. With iManage and Microsoft working together to develop and deliver highly integrated solutions in the future is a big benefit to corporates as it means that they increase the returns from their overall investment in IT.
- The in-built security capability gives peace of mind. One of the major advantages of iManage is that the system provides data security without hindering employees flow of day-to-day work. Security is built into the fabric of the platform. Users are able to apply flexible security policies to a fairly granular level, which means that only those who are authorised are able to access documents. And all this can be managed and monitored from any device and from any location. There’s also an end-user console that allows professionals an at-a-glance view of all the sensitive projects they are authorised to work on.It’s no surprise then that the IT departments are actively recommending iManage to departments across the enterprise. They trust the inherent security capabilities of the platform, and the user self-maintaining rules enable automation of the processes – all of which significantly reduces user demands on help desk. It’s a win-win for the users and IT teams alike!
- Collaboration capability amongst departments is a boon. Especially in functional areas such as legal, HR, procurement and compliance, often there is a need for cross-department collaboration. Having all the business-critical documents in a single repository – i.e., iManage Work – means that it is very easy for employees to know which is the latest document, who last worked on it, what the contextual narrative is around the issues highlighted (as emails too can be saved), and so on. Additionally, with supporting solutions such as iManage Share and iManage Drive, sharing and collaborating on projects is seamless.This is perhaps why, in many of the corporates, some of the department heads I spoke to said that for selfish reasons (i.e., ease of cross-functional working), they had become self-appointed champions of iManage, encouraging and assisting other enterprise functions in adopting the solution. Few technology platforms can boast of such die-hard advocates!
- Integration of iManage and Teams can’t come fast enough. iManage’s announcement of the platform’s integration with Teams has been hugely welcomed, and corporates are eagerly working towards implementing this approach. Teams continues to do wonders for communication and collaboration during this pandemic, but once these organisations deploy the iManage app for Teams, it will enable employees to search iManage from inside Teams. Content from iManage will be included in Teams communications, and users will be able to file Teams conversations and content in iManage workspaces, just as they do for Outlook emails today.
- Intuitive to use. Without ease of use, even the best software in the world would come to naught. The iManage DMS is genuinely intuitive to use because, firstly it is designed with professionals in mind; and secondly it has the much-loved, modern and familiar Microsoft look and feel. For users who have wanted to take advantage of some of the more sophisticated capabilities, Ascertus’ well-crafted training programmes have enabled professionals to learn about the more advanced features through training formats that have been best suited to them individually.
In fact, I notice that the Ascertus training team is always busy as the more users at customer organisations use iManage, the more value they gain from the solution for their work and so learning about the advanced functionality becomes an obvious next step.
If you are a corporate exploring the adoption of a DMS, do get in touch with us via using the form below. We’d be happy to help you understand its value, not just from a product standpoint, but also from an organisational perspective. We can also put you in touch with many of our corporate customers to enable you to understand first-hand how such a platform has helped their organisation and hence what you can expect for your enterprise.
