Customer Stories
ASX’s legal and listings compliance teams work smarter, not harder, in iManage Cloud
ASX empowers its employees with advanced features that improve efficiency and data governance while simplifying compliance
Australia’s primary securities exchange (ASX) operates markets for a wide range of asset classes, including equities, fixed income, commodities, and energy. It is one of the world’s top 10 listed exchange groups measured by market capitalization. The organization has more than 100 employees in its internal legal function and listings compliance team, ensuring that listed entities adhere to the applicable listing rules. After many years of using iManage on premises, ASX migrated to the cloud to enhance system reliability and reduce the maintenance requirements for its IT department. With support from partner OIA, ASX rolled out iManage Work 10 in the Cloud and iManage Drive. The move to cloud has provided enhancements to the management of data and improved efficiency and productivity by simplifying processes.
The business challenge
On-premises document management was approaching end of support
ASX’s internal legal team provides a broad range of support to ASX, including regulatory advice, contractual review and negotiations, and legal counsel. ASX’s listings compliance team is responsible for enforcing ASX’s listing rules and monitoring compliance with these rules by listed entities. Both teams work in a hybrid environment, and they all need access to a single source of trusted documents.
ASX’s internal legal team had used iManage to meet its document management needs for many years, but the legacy on-premises setup was approaching the end of support. Employees accessed iManage through Outlook, limiting them to viewing only one email at a time.
The legacy on-premises solution also had limited functionality. “On occasion, multiple colleagues need to work on the same documents, so it’s important they know it’s the most recent version and can access it at all times,” says Dennis Fang, Senior Legal Counsel at ASX. “We need tight governance over our documents, whether concerning version control or restricting access to sensitive information.”
ASX lawyers had to be vigilant about sharing documents. While it was technically possible to use individual document settings to configure access, this process relied on team members having the technical know-how to configure document protection settings correctly.
Headquarters
Sydney, Australia
Industry
Legal
Products
Benefits
- Modern, reliable knowledge work management
- Enhanced productivity and efficiency
- Simplified filing processes
- Reduced operational overhead
About partner
OIA has more than 30 years’ experience helping businesses modernize their work management platforms. It provides end-to-end solutions so customers can focus on running their businesses.
iManage is the best of the breed for document management. It’s more mature than other competing products and it’s supported by a vendor with a history of innovation.
Dennis Fang, Senior Legal Counsel, ASX
The solution
Rolling out new features in the iManage Cloud
ASX decided to upgrade to iManage Work 10 in the Cloud. “We had a quick look at the solutions on the market, but iManage is the leading solution in Australia. It felt natural to upgrade it,” recalls Fang. “It didn’t make sense to introduce a brand-new system when the legal team is so familiar with iManage, which has all the features we need.”
The company worked with implementation partner OIA to update the system and support the data migration.
“We decided to roll out iManage for our listings compliance team, too, but we needed to keep our instances separate,” explains Fang. “We created separate libraries for legal and listings compliance and the listings compliance team had to migrate their data from SharePoint and other sources.”
ASX offered training to help the listings compliance and legal teams quickly incorporate iManage into their workflows. The company has over 100 employees working on the platform and has achieved an impressive user adoption rate.
The teams are looking to take advantage of the tight integration iManage has with Microsoft 365 to further streamline their workflows and may also integrate their respective matter management solutions in the future.
Better visibility of every document and every version
With iManage Work 10, ASX’s legal and listings compliance teams have control over document versions and where they’re stored. This makes it easy to share documents with the right people internally and removes the need to distribute them manually. Now, employees can simply enter the document ID number to generate a sharing link.
iManage automatically files emails in the right place. If someone sends an updated version of a document, iManage notifies them that there are differences between the stored document and the attachment. The employee can then save it as a new version to avoid overwriting the original document.
The platform provides a detailed audit trail of every edit made to a document and helps protect legal privilege. “If a secure document was accidentally shared with an unauthorized person, then legal privilege might be waived, and that would be a huge problem,” says Fang. “iManage is set up to prevent that from happening.”
ASX also rolled out iManage Drive for employees who need to do bulk uploads, a task made significantly easier thanks to drag-and-drop functionality. Users can mark documents as favorites for fast access to the information they’re currently working with.
Business outcomes
Empowering legal and compliance teams to work smarter
“iManage Work 10 in the Cloud is more modern,” notes Fang. “It works well on multiple devices and uses fewer resources.”
The search tool, for example, is much more powerful and allows users to search using multiple parameters. Despite its more advanced functionality, the system remains easy to use, and employees can narrow down their searches to generate fewer, more relevant results.
This, along with decommissioning on-premises servers, helps reduce operational costs.
“iManage Work 10 in the Cloud is easy to use and we don’t have to worry about looking after the infrastructure anymore,” says Fang. “It’s the best of the breed for document management. It’s more mature than other competing products, and it’s supported by a vendor with a history of innovation. There are always new features and enhancements in the pipeline.”
Fang has been freed from the burden of manually filing his emails at the end of each day. “The faster, more intelligent iManage Cloud platform saves me 30 to 60 minutes daily,” he says, “and I can use that time to be more productive.”
“I’m proud of what we’ve achieved with iManage and OIA. We get ongoing support, and the team is very knowledgeable. It’s not easy to adopt new technology in large organizations, but together, we delivered the project on time and within budget,” concludes Fang.
And it is an achievement. ASX teams are now more productive, more efficient, and have stronger document security and compliance capabilities — all with less effort.
Looking ahead
The ASX team plans to use the co-authoring feature in Work 10 to further simplify and enhance collaboration. They also look forward to introducing even greater efficiencies by connecting the iManage platform with more systems and giving team members a streamlined experience of accessing documents.
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