How better document control cuts your risk, boosts your efficiency
Updated: July 28, 2006
If you work in a professional services firm today, you know well that document management entails far more than simple word processing and file sharing.
Document management today must take into account the complete life cycle of a document and its content—from creation, to collaboration among partners, employees and clients, to the eventual storage and harvesting of content for reuse.
In response to these needs, Microsoft partners are building systems based on Microsoft technologies that offer firms ways to create and control documents that were not possible in years past. Professional services firms can now increase productivity, enhance security through tighter controls over document creation and access, and improve document quality through the use of clear editing and review paths.
In addition, advances in collaboration and communication can help firms achieve the greatest return from their No. 1 asset—their people—as well as significantly increase their clients' satisfaction.
What follows is a listing of ways that Microsoft-based systems can help professional services firms reduce risks and gain efficiencies by taking control of their documents.
1. Create documents more quickly and efficiently.
Microsoft partner Microsystems has developed a document system called D3, which is built on Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft SharePoint and creates a central document storehouse for new documents. The Microsystems D3 solution is now being deployed by numerous firms because it streamlines the task of document creation—which is no small matter in areas such as law, where a new document must contain the latest information that's relevant to a client's case, as well as warranties, conditions of the contract, and other intelligence.
The Toronto-based law firm of Fogler, Rubinoff LLP is one such firm deploying D3, which is built on Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft SharePoint, and creates a central document storehouse for new documents. Previously, when Fogler, Rubinoff attorneys initiated a new document, they might open an old document that had some of the characteristics or language that would be needed in the new document. They would then save the document with a different name, and then delete the parts of it deemed not relevant to this document's purposes. Not only was this time-consuming, but it raised the risk that inappropriate client names or competitive information may accidentally be included in a new document.
Using D3, Fogler, Rubinoff attorneys now always start with a completely fresh document. They're able to view a list of sections of frequently used or required language. This language is stored in a central server and is always kept up-to-date with the latest legal requirements for contracts, matters, regulation requirements, and other issues.
With drag-and-drop functions, the needed sections of language are inserted in seconds. This saves time, improves document accuracy and currency, and allows an attorney to focus on the particular needs of a new client case. In addition, the firm can create templates based on precedents or best-practice documents and store them for easy reuse.
2. Boost client satisfaction with custom documents.
Microsystems' D3 product also enables an attorney to quickly import language used in past contracts or matters and tailor that language to reflect a particular client's preferences. In addition, with the D3 system, clients can be engaged more collaboratively in document creation. Documents can be sent easily to clients for review and comment and then, when they are returned to Fogler, Rubinoff, each client's changes can be incorporated quickly.
Today's document-control systems even allow client self-service. With D3, for instance, a professional services firm can set up an Internet portal that clients can use to browse for particular types of documents. Let's say a law firm has a commercial real-estate broker as a client. The broker can go to the firm's portal, access a particular type of contract template that already includes the necessary legal language, and customize it with specifics, such as square footage and lease rates. The document can then go directly to the client.
In exchange for hosting the Internet portal, the law firm may receive a fixed fee or a per-use fee, generating revenue with minimal attorney time.
3. Improve security by controlling access.
All professional services firms maintain confidential client information, as well as proprietary information about their own business performance and competitive positions. Much of this information winds up in legal papers, accounting reports, consultants' recommendations, and other documents. This method of storing information can burden a firm with unwanted security risks if a certain document is reused without being fully stripped of information the firm doesn't want released.
Today's document-control solutions greatly reduce these risks, starting at the point of document creation by ensuring every document starts with the same protocol.
But it doesn't stop there. Security has been enhanced throughout a document's entire life cycle. With D3, Fogler, Rubinoff attorneys can assign "rights" to a document so that some reviewers can make changes to the entire document, whereas others can only amend particular sections, and still others are authorized only to be able to read the document. And the system tracks all changes and identifies who made them, so that edits and additions are clearly marked. "This really puts document control back with the people who should have document control," says Becky Cabray, a training specialist who is helping Fogler, Rubinoff implement its D3 installation.
Document-control systems using Microsoft products also can be designed so that documents are stripped of confidential information before they are sent to clients.
4. Reduce document overload.
The Chicago-based law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP has more than 1,400 attorneys in seven U.S. and six European offices. Among the challenges it faces is having the ability to manage an extraordinary amount of case-related material.
Previously, copies of a single document at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw might go to 20 or more client representatives and attorneys at the same time, all of whom would comment on the document, suggest changes, and then return it. That meant the attorney or staff member who first sent it out for review had to scrutinize each copy of the document and compile all the comments and changes into a master version of the document. "We had a real problem with document proliferation," says Eric Levinson, desktop applications manager for Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. "The first one would come back and become Version 2, the next Version 3, and by the time they'd all come in, we'd be up to Version 20. Sometimes we'd be up to triple digits in revisions."
To improve its document management, Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw has installed Workshare Professional 4.5 from Workshare, a Microsoft Gold Certified partner and leading designer of document tools that integrate with the Microsoft Office system.
With Workshare Professional, a single master document resides on a Microsoft SharePoint server and gets tagged with an electronic label as it migrates from attorney to attorney, or from attorney to client, and back again. All changes are tracked and labeled. When an attorney or staff member reviews a master document, suggested changes are noted in a text box adjacent to the main document box. Changes can then be incorporated with a mouse click.
Workshare is helping Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw provide greater transparency to its clients, as well as to give those clients better access to the documents that relate to their own case work. "Clients today want to be more collaborative," Levinson says. "It used to be that law firms were very controlling; we'd control the documents, fax things out, or meet in conference calls to talk things over. But as word processing became simpler, clients have wanted better access to documents."
5. Become more productive without expensive training.
Document-control systems built on Microsoft technologies also reduce training time, because the software programs used are familiar to most people.
"It's hard to get people into training," Levinson says. "But Workshare Professional is pretty innocuous to the user; it doesn't really present itself until a document becomes part of the Workshare system. And then it practically teaches you how to use it. You click on a change and an arrow points right to the spot in the document where the change will go."
Workshare also enables professionals to work the way they always have worked, for example, sending documents to associates or clients as e-mail attachments from within Microsoft Office Outlook. But now the document-control server monitors each copy of the document and knows when changes have been made to the master.
Microsystems' D3 offers similar advantages of greatly reduced training time and a Microsoft Office-based interface that is familiar and easy to use.
Better document control is a key component to better service delivery and improving a professional services firm's competitiveness. Microsoft and its partners pledge to provide your firm with cost-effective tools that will enhance the security, accuracy, and accessibility of documents used by your professionals and clients.
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