UK top 50 law firm RPC has selected iManage Work 10 as its cloud-based document management system, swapping out it legacy OpenText eDOCS DMS. The international law firm has 850 legal professionals spread across offices in London, Bristol, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
RPC selected iManage in 2018 but put the project on hold thanks to a number of transformation projects on the go. It ran another competitive selection process this year and IT director Ben Denison, who joined from the Serious Fraud Office at the start of 2020, said: “We decided iManage really is the best fit and that’s in terms of the tech being right, but also the fact that the iManage offering gives us the ability to buy SaaS. One of the key things with a distributed workforce is you want to restructure in line with that. You do still have this equipment on premises, and sometimes that is for performance reasons, but people are remote. Going with iManage gives us a consistent offering across all of our offices.”
The move to iManage Cloud is part of RPC’s wider strategy to modernise its technology infrastructure. Denison said: “There are positives to come out of the pandemic, especially for technology, which we’re more reliant on than ever before. We are trying to do things differently and modernise and the pandemic has given that momentum.”
He adds: “In RPC there is a recognition of the need to use better technology and a desire to transform and I’ve always had support at the highest levels, including from the senior partner, who has a number of technology clients.”
One of the things RPC liked about iManage is the location of its datacentres and Denison says in a statement out today (22 February): “iManage’s global data center locations and advanced scaling abilities ensure that all of our users across the UK and APAC will have a seamless, responsive user experience with no performance issues. It’s important that our people are able to easily access and share documents and data from any location and any device at any time. iManage Cloud will ensure we continue to deliver the highest level of client service.”
Another attraction, Denison says, was that, given that iManage is used by a majority of the top 50 law firms, that lateral hires will be familiar with the system and that it will be easier to find people who can train on the system.
Adopting iManage Cloud also reduces the burden of IT management, an important consideration for RPC. Updates are rolled out automatically, equipping users with the latest capabilities. Remote cloud management also eliminates many of the costs and challenges associated with in-office IT maintenance.