Customer Stories
Leading Indian law firm stands out from the crowd by moving to iManage Cloud
Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas relieves IT from on-premises maintenance and introduces modern innovations for its lawyers and staff
Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas is India’s leading full-service law firm. When they found that keeping up their on-premises infrastructure was likely to impact productivity, they decided to migrate document management to the cloud. The transition from iManage on-site
to iManage Work 10 frees the IT team from the time-consuming chore and expense of maintaining and backing up servers while providing assurance that the firm’s lawyers can always access the documents they need. In addition to relieving IT of its burden, the iManage Cloud platform is faster and more responsive, all teams across the organization can access the central document repository, and the user experience for lawyers is much improved with features available only in the cloud. Trusted iManage partner Business Network Solutions was pivotal to the firm’s successful migration.
With an illustrious legacy of more than 100 years, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) is dedicated to shaping the finest lawyers for the just world. Headquartered in Mumbai, its more than 1,600 members are distributed across six locations in India and two offices abroad. The firm serves a diverse range of clients and combines great technology with skilled legal practice to stand out from the crowd.
The business challenge
Turn a technical boundary into an opportunity to level up
As India’s first legal tech incubator, CAM is known for pushing boundaries to stay ahead of the curve and produce outstanding results for its clients; so when on-premises infrastructure faced IT productivity challenges, the firm turned a technical boundary into an opportunity to level up.
“Managing on-premises infrastructure is time-intensive. We were maintaining 12 servers, including six for indexing, and had 25 terabytes of data to back up,” says Pravin Pandey, Head of IT Infrastructure and Systems at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas. Beyond the maintenance, Pandey says, “There is always a risk of outages with on-premises systems; we resolved that by moving document management to the cloud.”
The IT team was using multiple tools to monitor the threat environment and another third-party solution for sharing documents. iManage offers integrated solutions for all of that, enabling the firm to greatly simplify its IT ecosystem.
“The firm’s global reputation as a trusted advisor rests on a foundation of excellence in which iManage plays a role,” says Pandey. “Moving document management from iManage on-premises to the iManage Cloud platform has introduced modern and innovative features for our lawyers and reduced busy work like patching servers for the IT team.”
Headquarters
Mumbai, India
Industry
Legal
Products
- IT maintenance slashed
- Outage risk reduced
- Boosts usage and productivity
- Enhances security and governance
About partner
Business Network Solutions (BNS) was founded in 1996. Since then, it has evolved to focus on legal, consulting, accounting verticals, and SMEs, helping customers optimize their digital workplaces to be more efficient, secure, and cost effective.
I would recommend iManage to everyone, and if you are currently on-premises, it’s definitely worth making the leap to iManage Cloud. I say with total confidence that we’re proactively protecting our intellectual property. We know where our data is, how it’s stored, who has access to it, and that it’s secure.
Pravin Pandey, Head of IT Infrastructure and Operations, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas
The solution
40 days, 25 terabytes, 1,600 happy iManage Cloud users
“We can get everything we need in terms of knowledge and documents from iManage,” says Pandey. “We considered building a custom solution, but that would have been a massive project. We also looked at some other DMS solutions. We could not find anything that compares to the functionality of iManage Cloud, which comes with a suite of apps to centralize knowledge management on one platform.”
Some of the functionality CAM needed were co-authoring capability, collaboration options, and offline availability, and they worked with Business Network Solutions (BNS) to implement iManage Work 10 in the Cloud, iManage Share, and iManage Drive.
BNS used native integrations to connect the ERP system, transaction management platform, Microsoft applications, and Adobe Acrobat. “iManage Work gives lawyers a better user experience. iManage Share embeds security into everything we distribute internally, and iManage Drive keeps documents accessible without an internet connection,” says Pandey.
The firm also rolled out iManage Threat Manager to replace the systems it had been using to monitor behavior and enforce data governance.
It took just 40 days to migrate 25 terabytes to iManage Cloud, and the move went smoothly. Pandey credits the skills and knowledge of BNS for the successful transition. BNS also provided simple user training, and since the interface was already familiar, people only needed to be introduced to the exciting new cloud-based features to get them up to speed.
iManage gives more than 1,200 CAM lawyers a secure central place in the cloud to store their legal documents. Another 400 users in HR, marketing, business development, IT, and other business services professionals use the platform to keep other CAM documents in order.
Business outcomes
Total confidence we can pass on to clients
The move to the cloud relieves the pressure on the IT team and delivers a seamless employee experience for lawyers, resulting in productivity gains across the firm. The firm also relies on iManage to control access and monitor usage with Threat Manager, which sends alerts and notifications if someone is downloading or printing more than they should be. As an added layer of protection, IT has configured Share so that only users with specified domain names can share documents.
“The IT team feels a lot more comfortable. We’re not maintaining loads of servers or multiple solutions, and we only need to manage user access in iManage,” says Mahabaleshwara Holla, Manager of IT at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas. “The amount of work we had to do on- remises was becoming unsustainable as the firm grew, but with iManage Cloud we can always handle more data.”
Now the CAM IT team can work on more satisfying projects and better support their colleagues. “The support cases don’t come from issues with iManage,” Pandey emphasizes. “I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved by launching iManage in the Cloud with no complaints at all from staff.”
Lawyers have increased their iManage usage and given positive user feedback, enjoying a faster, more responsive system with features that help them work more efficiently. And productivity is just the beginning; the more staff use iManage, the easier it is to establish firm-wide document governance and security — and overall efficiency gains improve the client experience as well.
“I would recommend iManage to everyone, and if you are currently on- remises, it’s definitely worth making the leap to iManage Cloud,” advises Pandey. “I say with total confidence that we’re proactively protecting our intellectual property. We know where our data is, how it’s stored, who has access to it, and that it’s secure.”
Looking ahead
In their continuing partnership with BNS, CAM is exploring adding more iManage integrations in the near future. iManage Security Policy Manager will enforce need-to-know access and further protect their sensitive information by deploying information barriers at scale across client, department, or project levels. Ask iManage, an AI-powered legal assistant that transforms how people engage with documents, emails, and content in iManage Work 10, is also intriguing to them. The firm plans to use iManage training to educate their staff in using the new apps and features as they go live.
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