An international alliance of iManage partners officially launches today (17 December) in a move designed to help them win large global implementations – and has already won a top four global accountant firm pitch. The Global Efficiency Group incudes Ascertus in the UK and mainland Europe; Office Information Australia (OIA), covering the Asia Pacific region; Eficio, with a presence in Canada and France; Lexsoft covering Spain and Latin America; Ounet Sistemi, based in Italy; and Co-Operative Computing in South Africa.
All are specialists in information and document lifecycle management and speaking to Legal IT Insider, Roy Russell, founder and CEO of Ascertus said: “We’ve created the group to address the fact that there wasn’t a single partner that could provide a global implementation for iManage – iManage can’t do it themselves and no other partner has the spread or cover. Our relationship with the other partners goes back many years and we know we each other well and have worked together informally. It came to a head earlier this year when we were asked to tender for a top four accounting practice but there was no way could respond ourselves – we could do the bulk but needed people for the likes of China and Asia Pacific. This group just gelled together and it’s the old cliché about the sum being greater than its parts: it is.”
The group have already commenced the accounting firm roll out, which will incorporate over 80 countries.
The alliance offers a unified system and follow the sun support and speaking to Legal IT Insider, Ascertus sales director Jon Wainwright said: “As far as the client is concerned it’s one provider it just happens to be different partners. They are all trusted by iManage and this alliance gets the seal of approval from them. It is new and exciting, and we have been successful with the first pitch.”
Each deal inevitably won’t include all the partners and who is involved will be determined by geographical location. Wainwright says: “It will be a discussion and if the head office is in Australia, it will be OIA that leads, it just depends where the client is based.”
Wainwright says the group has been deliberately selected because it has no conflicts.
Support will be a big part of the offering on the same basis, and as TGE is a separate company, revenue generated by the partnership collectively will be payable to the TGE.
In terms of ensuring that TGE has capacity to service new business, Wainwright says: “We have weekly calls to talk about what we’re doing and we have a separate project management meeting.” TGE uses Microsoft Teams and has created unified documentation and shared legal project management tools, plus uses Smartsheets to provide the client with a single point of information (including graphics and a dashboard).
Russell said: “No other entity has the resources available to them that TGE does.”
In a statement out today, Carlos García-Egoceaga, CEO of Lexsoft Systems, said: “We are now the perfect partners for organisations who aspire for international expansion, especially outside of the US and European markets. We are finding that Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia and even Russia are major target markets for organisations. We can now deliver projects on a global scale.”
Stephen Litton, managing director of OIA, commented: “As a collective, now our resources and capabilities are evenly spread globally. This means that we can simultaneously support customers wherever they are in the world without diluting our APAC-based talent pool. Crucially, due to local resourcing, it is a more cost-effective approach for our customers.”