US-based global corporation switches from NetDocuments to iManage

A US-based global corporation with annual revenue of $16 billion has a legal operations department of about 100 employees across the globe, including attorneys, compliance, and other legal professionals. The department needed a document management solution and, having no experience choosing this type of application, they engaged a partner, Kroll, to help them evaluate the top two players in the market for legal users.

After seeing demos of iManage and NetDocuments, they went with the latter, noting it was 100 percent cloud-based and seemed to have more AI-driven features. After implementation, however, the team faced administrative challenges in setting things up and difficulty training users, along with a persistent lack of support from the vendor. Two and a half years after implementing NetDocuments, most users were either dissatisfied or had stopped using it. After doing the work to identify the problems they needed solved, they engaged with iManage. Once persuaded that the switch to iManage Work 10 in the Cloud would be a night and day difference for the team, the rest was easy. They look forward to a long and rewarding partnership.

The business challenge

Evaluating the options

“Tiny but mighty” is how the Head of Global Legal Operations describes the department. About half of the team are attorneys, and the rest are compliance and other legal professionals. The team’s budget is approximately 70 percent outsourced, which makes them “a bit unique, as an internal in-house team,” in their needs.

The team had no prior experience in using or evaluating document management solutions. So when it became clear that the department needed one, they engaged a partner, Kroll, to help them. After looking at the top two players in the market for legal users the Head of Global Legal Operations said it was not an easy or obvious decision, but they felt NetDocuments might be slightly more cutting edge. It wasn’t until after the implementation that things went a bit sideways.

A rough start for admin and users

They thought the administration of the system was unnecessarily cumbersome. System complexity also plagued users and negatively impacted training outcomes and adoption. The interface was not user-friendly. The software vendor seemed unmotivated to help them solve problems or keep them as a customer, despite persistent efforts to obtain support. Usability was so daunting that, after 2.5 years, they could only count
about a year during which people were legitimately using the tool — and most of them were either dissatisfied or had stopped trying.

Laundry list of issues

There were difficulties around email syncing, where folders would randomly become unsynchronized.

ndMail also requires the ability to impersonate users in the Exchange domain to retrieve and file email for subscribed users. A litigation attorney with a large archive file was struggling to get it merged because no specific email address or account was associated with it. The attorney’s reaction was, “I don’t
even want to use this.”

A significant group of attorneys maintain deep folder structures, it’s how they prefer to work. But in NetDocuments, the deeper your folders go the more challenging it is to search for things. So that’s 20+ attorneys who are unable to effectively search.

The AI features were intriguing until they did the cost-benefit analysis. They decided it wasn’t worth buying an expensive module with limited out-of-the-box features and then spending more money building out the desired capabilities.

The system also went down a lot, to the point where people could not retrieve their documents. When they reported it to the vendor they were told that the resolution was coming, but insisted that it wasn’t technically a system outage. “We knew they were avoiding calling it a system outage for SLA purposes,” said the Head of Global Legal Operations, “but when people can’t get their documents, in the team’s view, the system is down. So communication with NetDocuments was particularly unhelpful when the system wasn’t functioning properly.”

People found the interface difficult to navigate. They didn’t understand why they couldn’t just click something from a dropdown to create a workspace for a matter. It had to come from the matter management system or a special intervention was needed from an admin. This was unacceptable, so the department had to create an interface so people could create a matter nimbly, at their speed, rather than waiting for someone else to do
it. They felt it shouldn’t be a back-end process just to create a matter or workspace.

Weighing next steps

Over the course of the year that the team was “actually using the software” there were enough issues that they began to think maybe this hadn’t been the best choice. The absence of any attempt at customer success and lackluster support overall from the NetDocuments side added to the problem. And that was evident to the team.

“NetDocuments just didn’t meet the mark for what was important to us,” admitted the Head of Global Legal Operations. “We began weighing the cost of changing course against what it would cost us in the long run to be without the solution and the capabilities that we needed.”

The solution

Deciding to switch to iManage

One day the frustration came to a head, prompting the question, “Should we switch?” And the answer was a resounding “Yes.” Adoption was slipping. NetDocuments wasn’t working for people and many just stopped using it, which was not a good outcome. And, fortunately, it was within the team’s means to make the switch.

“The prospect of moving to iManage was ‘music to the ears’ of the people who were unhappy with NetDocuments,” said the Head of Global Legal Operations. Some were a little surprised to learn they would be asked to change again; people don’t all love change. So, before the department cut their losses, they wanted to be certain they wouldn’t have the same issues with iManage.

They surveyed the team and put together a list of pain points, which they went through with their iManage representative. Then they arranged a demo so the team could see how iManage was going to solve that whole list of problems. Kroll helped them produce a short video on how iManage looks, feels, and works, and they asked people to watch it.

Then they asked people if they wanted to move to the iManage platform — and did they have concerns? A few people wanted more information, and the Head of Global Legal Operations met with them individually to answer their questions. After that it wasn’t a problem getting everybody on board.

iManage also invited two team members to attend ConnectLive, the annual conference iManage holds for its community members. At this event the Head of Global Legal Operations could talk with other customers and partners, hear from iManage subject matter experts and corporate leaders in a low-pressure setting, and see where iManage is headed as an organization. The Head of Global Legal Operations and a colleague attended the event, where they were able to do all of that. But they also experienced the energy, the relationships, and the unique sense of everyone pulling together to make the industry-leading iManage platform better.

Sealing the deal with customer success

The last piece clicked into place when the Head of Global Legal Operations connected with the iManage Customer Success team. After all the disappointing interactions with NetDocuments, building that relationship instilled confidence that iManage would work hard to meet the team’s needs and keep their business post-sale and post-implementation.

Making the case to the General Counsel for budget approval, the Head of Global Legal Operations explained how the team had been new to using a document management platform when they chose NetDocuments. With the benefit of experience, they could now make a more informed comparison. No, the switch wasn’t going to be free, but it was a relatively low price to pay for something everyone would be happy to use. And they had done their homework, so they had evidence for all of that, and it was go-time.