ECM Briefs

This week we're at the ILTA '09 Conference near Washington where we've announced several additions to the Open Text portfolio of legal solutions, including new integrations with the Open Text ECM Suite.

In the press release issued today, Mohit Thawani, Director of Legal Solutions for Open Text said: "ECM is about much more than just document management. More than ever, law firms expect solutions that help them manage all of their matter content, whether it is located in Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, a corporate web site, or a document management system."

So with that, here is a rundown of the new capabilities we announced today that will help law firms manage all of their content, but be sure to visit us at booth #307, or come to the Open Text Demo area in Room Baltimore 5 to get a real sense of what these really offer.

eDOCS Integration with the Open Text ECM Suite
• Open Text has furthered its integration of its eDOCS product line with the Open Text ECM Suite, allowing customers to take advantage of a wider range of new ECM capabilities in the company's flagship ECM suite.

• Recently, the company successfully completed DoD certification for Open Text Records Management and Open Text Document Management, eDOCS Edition (eDOCS DM) with Enterprise Connect as the desktop client for the integration. eDOCS DM has also achieved integration with the archiving functionality of Open Text's Enterprise Library.

• Open Text has also launched the latest version of Email Filing, eDOCS Edition which offers updated email archiving support enabling emails archived by Open Text Email Archiving to be flagged and categorized the same way as normal Microsoft Outlook items. Additionally, "clean up" rules can be defined that automatically delete items from Microsoft Outlook that have been saved to the document management system.

Open Text Enterprise Connect and Microsoft SharePoint Integrations
• The latest version for Enterprise Connect offers new plug-ins for Microsoft SharePoint and eDOCS DM; as well as support for subscriptions with views.

• Open Text eDOCS Integration for Microsoft SharePoint enables law firms to capture content created in SharePoint so that it can be centrally managed in accordance with regulatory and business requirements. The latest version of Open Text's eDOCS Integration for Microsoft SharePoint includes support for matter-centric views.

• Open Text also announced the latest version of its Legal Information Management offering which provides users with exclusionary ethical walls, automated Microsoft SharePoint site archiving upon close of a matter; support for multiple-site collections; and support for locking content and making it read-only. This offering was also a finalist in Microsoft's most recent Information Worker Solutions, Enterprise Content Management and Forms Development Partner of the Year Award.

Matrix Logic Announces Wireless DMS for eDOCS
• Open Text Wireless DMS for eDOCS is a new offering from long-standing partner Matrix Logic that extends the reach of a document repository allowing users to access key information from a BlackBerry, iPhone, pagers, PALMs and PocketPCs and Windows CE handheld devices. Wireless DMS for eDOCS translates requests to and from a wireless device and any changes in eDOCS DM are immediately shown on a user's handheld. Users can also search document libraries and fax or email retrieved documents. Read more here: http://tinyurl.com/mupexg

We don't typically post many items without the name of the customer, but this story was just too good to pass up. This one is about an aerospace and defense systems giant (and Fortune 500 company), that has many types of contracts in each of its business units, and needed help with its contract lifecycle management. The company added a contract management solution that offered a centralized system that tracked and managed the lifecycle of its contracts, in addition to identifying trends and opportunities for the company.

Before the implementation, most of the users in the organization used Excel spreadsheets for tracking their contracts or they used SharePoint sites, but there was no notification mechanism. They wanted a contract management system with a central electronic repository, access control, reporting, workflow automation, and contract notifications. The primary goal was to standardize the management of contracts and create one cohesive repository for those contracts. By doing that, it would make the contracts easier to find by all of the different parts of the company.

The supply chain and legal departments drove the initial request for a contract management solution. They found there were many signed contracts that contained some non-standard clauses in them, and contracts and agreements underpin almost every business transaction in the organization.

After looking at five different vendors, the company decided to leverage its existing platform with Open Text for a contract management solution. The roll-out of the initial two of its 10 business units was completed in just five months.

The company considered workflows to be very important to a smoothly functioning department, leading to better visibility into task completion, streamlining of the approval process, and the identifying of bottlenecks in the negotiation cycle. But the biggest benefit of the contract management system by far is the notification mechanisms, according to the IT Project Manager. Misunderstanding key dates can lead to financial implications.

Users also love the convenience of one system which archives all of their contracts, which makes finding contracts easier. This contract management solution allows for standard terms and conditions, resulting in better negotiation power, and minimal maverick spends.

The management tool is lending the company flexibility, scalability, and core functionality when dealing with contracts. Instead of having to adapt to an out-of-the-box application with only a few functions, users have an application that they can adapt to their own needs. By mid-2010 the company expects to double the amount of contract management users.

With this system in place, this global supplier to the aerospace, defence, and homeland security markets gained new control and full support over its contracts, and was able to reduce costs and increase revenue in ways its paper-based system couldn't. Read more about this company's success with contract management here.