Combining systems for an accelerated strategic advantage
Practice management systems and document management systems have distinct value that can combine to bring efficiency, security and productivity advantages – says Kaden Smith, director of inside sales, EMEA, at NetDocuments.
Among the many tools SME law firms rely on are solutions for practice management and document management. While some practice management systems (PMSs) come with a document management component, they cannot provide the complex security and governance features required for critical client documents and emails or the productivity boosters that can elevate your firm’s work.
That’s where a powerful document management system (DMS) comes in. And while some smaller firms are still discovering the overall benefits of a DMS, other firms have both a PMS and DMS but have yet to connect them to experience more efficiencies and realise even greater value from their technology investments.
Our recent eBook on combining the power of a PMS and DMS for small and midsize law firms is here to help. It provides a deep dive into why you need both systems, benefits of integrating these tools, best features to leverage in each, and case studies of firms finding success by integrating their PMS and DMS.
Here is a sneak peek into some of what gets covered.
Top benefits of integrating your PMS and DMS
Individually, legal practice management and document management platforms offer substantial benefits for law firms. But believe it or not, these two systems are better when connected and used together. Here are a few key advantages your firm can expect when you integrate a legal PM software and DMS.
Find the information you need quickly
How much time do you and your team spend looking for files, emails, and documents each day? According to a McKinsey report, employees spend 1.8 hours every day searching for and gathering information.
DMSs can dramatically reduce search time and increase productivity. With customisable home pages, ‘recent’ and ‘favourite’ documents lists, and advanced search capabilities like natural language processing, filters and boolean operators, DMS users can quickly and easily track down files in the DMS repository.
Integrating a DMS and PMS can make the process even faster by linking clients and matters, which comes with many benefits such as viewing documents saved in the DMS without leaving your PMS interface.
Access everything from anywhere
With integrated systems, you can easily access information from each system, no matter which one you’re currently working in. Just as you can pull data from your PMS into document templates, you can also retrieve matter-related documents and emails within the PMS workspace. You can also see different document versions, review security or user permissions, sort and organise documents, and achieve a lot more to help your work move smoothly and efficiently.
Increase productivity with more efficient workflows
When you improve the full document lifecycle by utilising technology, you experience major gains in productivity and reduction in frustration from having to move between multiple systems and shuffle documents around from place to place to get work done. Imagine if you could pull content into a document from the PMS, easily complete document edits online, instantly send a document for electronic signature, and then have the document automatically come back saved to your matter workspace in the DMS.
Secure and protect your data
Losing or exposing confidential data is not something your firm wants to deal with, whether it happens accidentally or maliciously. Operating without a DMS leaves your documents dangerously exposed to risk. PMS-based document components lack the rigorous security protocols needed to protect a law firm’s documents and data.
Your DMS can provide robust built-in security plus safeguards like document-level encryption, multifactor authentication (MFA), and data loss prevention (DLP), which provide greater protection against ransomware and malicious actors. You can also prevent actions like document sharing or printing. Integrating a DMS with your PMS provides stronger protection for your most confidential information while still enabling collaboration when needed.
Collaborate internally and externally
Both a PMS and DMS have tools to make collaboration smoother without cluttering up your email inbox. But a DMS makes it easy to share, edit, review, annotate, and discuss documents securely — all without the challenges of local copies, untracked changes and version conflicts, among others. As conversations move from email to platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack, a DMS can make securely sharing files with a group much easier.
Integrate with your other technology
Practice and document management aren’t the only systems your team relies on day to day. Fortunately, both PMSs and DMSs integrate with a variety of other products, such as time and billing software, project management solutions, electronic signature and filing platforms, contract management tools, Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat and many more. A fully integrated tech stack means less bouncing between platforms and less work for your team. Your software applications do the heavy lifting, so you can get back to focusing on clients.
Better together: create synergy between your PMS and DMS
The combination of practice management and document management yields more than the sum of each system’s parts. You can get more value from your PMS because of your DMS, and vice versa — and that synergy is something you can leverage to take your practice to the next level.
Where a PMS is ideal for things like calendar synchronization, timekeeping, and billing, many functions are better handled by a DMS, such as document automation and assembly, controlled document access with ethical walls and access rights, real-time messaging, advanced version control, integrations with Microsoft and other tools you use daily, and more.
Together, PMS and DMS solutions combine to enable you to optimise and even automate many time-consuming and repetitive processes, increase productivity, and create cost efficiency for your firm while increasing your security posture. This winning technology combo can even help your team improve client service and gain a strategic advantage over the competition.
