Independent regulator expedites decision-making, closes cases faster with iManage Insight+

This independent regulatory body manages crucial files with 10-year retention requirements alongside 50 years of accumulated knowledge and precedents. As long-time iManage customers, the regulator recently migrated its document management from iManage Work 10 on premises to iManage Cloud, gaining the added value of an enterprise-level cloud-native knowledge work platform. This lowered IT overheads, enhanced security, and increased operational resiliency. As part of this initiative, the regulator moved all user access to case files onto the iManage Cloud platform and removed the need to maintain paper files, resulting in further efficiencies..

The regulator also implemented iManage Insight+, with its powerful search and knowledge capabilities, to open the full spectrum of the regulator’s resources to its workers, including its library of templates and precedents, on a single platform. This greatly improves the ability to search library content as users work, dramatically increasing their efficiency and enabling them to close cases faster.

The business challenge

Update tools and accessibility to address people’s pain points

The regulator handles up to 100 cases at once with a team of about 35 people. Cases involve all case documents, including items submitted by either side, related emails, and publicly available information, as well as internally generated documents traditionally saved in iManage. The information must all be retained for 10 years.

“Staff need to document every conversation they have, and it’s crucial for us to store and manage all that information according to the regulatory framework,” says the Head of IT.

In addition to its paper case files, the regulator maintained a knowledge library of approximately 15,000 template, precedent, and best practices documents in a separate application. These materials help staff expedite their decision-making, but surfacing the necessary insights was not as quick or as easy as staff would have liked.

“To maintain a consistent approach, we need to check every case against our knowledge library of precedents, and the speed at which we locate those insights dictates how fast we can close each one,” the Head of IT explains.

To help them manage an increasingly complex and expanding workload, the regulator wanted to make access to this knowledge base more convenient for its staff, enabling faster, more efficient searches.

The solution

Manage documents, knowledge, and insights with iManage

The regulator envisioned consolidating the knowledge library with its case materials on the secure, centrally governed, and highly accessible iManage Cloud platform. This would greatly facilitate the essential work that regulator staff perform, making knowledge easier to find and use without compromising on security.

With iManage Insight+, a search and insights engine native to the iManage platform, the path to that goal became clear. But first, the tags and metadata associated with the knowledge library documentation needed to be preserved. Ensuring that the taxonomy of the knowledge library remained intact as it was imported to iManage Work 10 in the Cloud and made available to users via Insight+ was a team priority.

The regulator had iManage implementation partner, Tiger Eye Consulting, lead its cloud migration, and brought in legal technology consultancy Lexsoft Systems to provide targeted expertise for the transition and integration of the knowledge library data. Lexsoft enabled the regulator to retain the taxonomy of those 15,000 documents while making them accessible to Insight+ from within the protected environment of the iManage platform.

Insight+ holds the documents that record the basis for a specific decision, so it’s essentially a huge precedent library. The culture is knowledge-driven, with employees meeting frequently to share any documents or precedents they want to add to the knowledge library. That information is collated and input into the knowledge library that sits behind Insight+.

Achieving strategic goals and reaping the added benefits

Consolidating on fewer products and a single platform helps minimize the regulator’s IT estate, licensing expense, and risk exposure, another strategic goal for the IT team.

“We were licensing a specific software product for us to securely share content with third parties,” says the Head of IT, “and now we can share documents externally with iManage Share. It’s an easy add-on to Work 10, and another added efficiency of the upgrade.”

“Ideally,” they add, “everything is either iManage or Microsoft.” iManage Work integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365, so staff can file case-related emails directly from Outlook. iManage co-authoring will also be available to users very soon.

“I’m quite excited about being able to use the integrations in Power Automate, with iManage,” says the Head of IT. Currently, IT utilizes the Power Automate connector to extract content overnight from a feed and automatically file it in the corresponding workspaces in iManage.

A subset of regulator users also employs iManage Drive to handle filing publicly available information into iManage. “Using iManage Drive is a really effective way of saving information directly from the internet, which is something we need to do all the time,” they affirm.

The regulator finds iManage Threat Manager useful, as well, using it to monitor for potentially risky user behaviors like tracking usage on files provided by third parties. “iManage Threat Manager also enabled us to confirm that Insight+ adoption is high,” says the Head of IT.