Europe’s leading human rights organisation has selected NetDocuments in partnership with Tikit, in a huge win for the two vendors that first partnered in 2017.
The Council of Europe selected the new document management system after a year-long competitive process that looked at “several suppliers” of document management systems.
A release out from Tikit today (6 February) will say “The Council of Europe selected the NetDocuments platform from Tikit because they were looking for a mature cloud-based solution to meet their needs.”
Founded in 1949, the Council of Europe currently includes 47 member states, 28 of which are members of the European Union. The organisation assists these states in fighting corruption, terrorism and undertaking necessary judicial reforms. In addition, the Council of Europe promotes human rights through international conventions and makes recommendations through independent expert monitoring bodies, as well as the Committee of Ministers, Parliamentary Assembly European Court of Human Rights, Commissioner for Human Rights and the, Congress of Local and Regional Authorities.
John Hunter, CIO at the Council of Europe, said: “We went through a rigorous process in which DMS providers were invited to showcase their software to us and take part in an extensive proof of concept. We wanted a best of breed, highly customisable system that could support our user base of approximately 2,500 employees. Tikit and NetDocuments were selected after an extensive call for tender process and demonstrated that they were the best fit for our diverse and complex needs.”
Hunter, formerly head of IT at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) was appointed as CIO in 2017, as we revealed in May of that year. His stated aim, he told Legal IT Insider at the time, was “to implement innovative and cost effective systems that will enhance the efficiency and productivity of the CoE as well as providing both internal and external users with systems that will enhance their overall productivity and user experience.”
Hunter said in the release out today: “The documents we produce are highly sensitive and need to be accessed remotely from our offices in over twenty- three countries and by over 6,000 external users,” continued Hunter. “NetDocuments ticked the right boxes in terms of our overall needs, in particular security, collaboration, mobility and compliance and have a solid, proven multi-tenant platform solution. We are confident that with Tikit’s implementation and project management expertise, the implementation will be a success.”
Tikit was formerly iManage’s leading DMS supplier but in 2017 that relationship ended when Tikit announced that it would also partner with NetDocuments. There have been few publicly announced wins since then and this is by far the largest, in what Tikit will say is a sign of things to come.
John Hunter and Simon Hill, CEO of Tikit, signed the contract yesterday at the Council of Europe offices in Strasbourg. We have photographic evidence for the doubters.