Respected technology law firm Kemp Little has signed up to iManage Cloud document and email management solution, despite the fact that iManage was not originally on Kemp Little’s short list when it sent out its RFPs.
The UK top 200 firm started looking at a new DMS seriously around a year ago, after it’s then provider, KnowledgeMill failed and was acquired by Black Caviar IT.
Currently a Thomson Reuters Elite Envision customer, chief operating officer Siddhartha Mankad (pictured) told Legal IT Insider: “We looked at whether we could use Envision but it has been end-of-lifed and its functionality wasn’t enough for our needs.
“We had a discussion: do we stay on premise, having invested in all the infrastructure, or do we go to the cloud?”
While Mankad is keen to stress that the circa 100-user firm doesn’t adopt tech for tech’s sake, it already has a strong cloud policy: it is on Office 365, its exchange environment is in the cloud, and (also ahead of most UK law firms) it uses Office 2016. In what was perhaps a no brainer of a decision, then, the firm decided to look at a cloud-based DMS and sent out RFPs, although iManage was not its top priority.
Mankad said: “When we met with iManage years ago, when they were part of HP, I wasn’t interested in talking to them.” However, he adds: “This time, they had White Rabbit in the pipeline and a proper cloud offering. Most importantly they had a vision again, and I was impressed by the stuff coming out of iManage Labs.”
After a number of demos across the firm, it was the user interface that helped to seal the deal. Mankad said: “The clincher was the user feedback to the demo – users loved the look and feel of it. If the feedback had not been overwhelmingly positive and they hadn’t been satisfied, it wouldn’t matter what I thought.”
The firm has opted for a hybrid cloud platform, with some of its documents retained on premises. Echoing iManage’s own arguments as to why firms ought to adopt a hybrid model, Mankad says: “Hybrid is important for many reasons, but the biggest is that it gives flexibility and therefore comfort to our clients. I also don’t see the point of paying extra to put old files in the cloud when I already have the infrastructure on premises – why not leave it here?”
With iManage Cloud, Kemp Little will have access to iManage Work and iManage Share for a monthly subscription fee and Mankad adds: “Functionally iManage Cloud offered me everything I needed and dealt with the security concerns.”
Having ticked all the necessary boxes and on the assumption that iManage provides a rock solid base performance, it is the company’s roadmap for its work product management platform, its data analytics and its R&D that Mankad says will add most value going forward.
“At the end of the day, document management is becoming a commodity; I should be able to plug in and forget about it. The question is, what I can do with the data I gather? Can I turn it into valuable information and actionable data? If I can, and if my vendor is in the same headspace, then I have something I can really work with.”