Throw away your text books, stop going to seminars. The confusion is over. SharePoint can be sorted out with a firm, corporate handshake.
Its my business to try and understand the rudiments of legal tech offerings and sometimes it takes a while. You do what? It plugs in where? You are the greatest, most innovative software company ever seen?
Although MOSS (see explanation for what it is below) is taking rather a grip in law firms now, if you don’t get MOSS, you aren’t the only one. Sometimes as Citytech has discovered, IT directors really want to understand and buy from vendors but they might just not ‘get it’ or have the time to spend ‘getting it.’
So who’s doing what? Well it seems for the most part (from information from Tikit) that firms are liking the fact that intranets and extranets can be managed automatically through Sharepoint. If statistics are to be believed then up to around ¾’s of most intranets have out of date material on them. I imagine this doesn’t apply to those of you who’ve already invested in ‘search and delete’ style applications. You can sit smugly and view the inefficient kingdom below you. In addition although business intelligence is making waves, its not freely available within law firms so Sharepoint offers all that on a plate in an easy to use, one, two click, kind of viewing. For instance client rings lawyer ‘hmmm, you’ve overbilled me’, lawyer clicks into Sharepoint, inputs client name, client records come up and he/she can click again and see who worked on the matter, see who billed what and why, with no further involvement from finance or IT or asking a secretary to get back to the client.
I’ve had a look at the demo and its very intuitive, we will all know how to use this except our gran, who is too busy eating Jammy Dodgers and drinking cups of tea anyway. So top tip: if you are wondering what the hell to do with your intranets and want better ‘drill down’ info available to fee earners then this could be the application for you. The unusual thing about the financial information offered to the user is that they can check up on their own billable hours. No more surprises from management “Watson can I see you in my office.!” Fee earners can see what they’ve billed that month, for whom, compare with previous months and get a real feel for how they are doing internally before any trouble hits. A little bit of self management heaven.
There is also a self service HR section and I hear one big law firm has taken this up. Staff have an area where a bank of forms sit to allow them to fill in holiday or sick forms and ping them off for collation and automated record keeping.
If you are starting to get any creeping impressions that there is a lot of cross over with other applications then you are not far wrong. It seems all software suppliers have something that criss-crosses on someone elses turf these days and Microsoft Office Sharepoint is no exception. The general response to this doubling up is that you still need the Lexis Nexis InterAction, the OpenTexts, Interwovens, the Metastorms… well just about everyone else if you plan to do more complex work. Sharepoint are mainly offering an ‘ease of use’ interface with simplistic tools like DM which are perhaps useful if you don’t play in big boy vendor land.
The search gold rush. The 80 /20 rule.
Up until now most of us have been told about ‘searching’, in fact we may almost be obsessed. Its not about searching we hear, its about finding. Then its not about finding, its about finding what you want. Now its only about searching for things you don’t know about, which apparently is about 20% of all the items you need. The idea with Microsoft Office Sharepoint is that we mainly know where stuff is, so we want it it to be around two to three clicks away and then instantly viewed.
So now if you want to sound bright, ‘with it’ and generally techno savvy you need to say: “80% of all searching is really just about navigation.” Is it a eureka moment? I’m not sure but it certainly seems a step somewhere.
There are some key areas: financial, people and documents are your core and they leak into the intranet for staff to review everything necessary to complete their work and similarly can flow into the extranets or onto the internet for clients to have access to mini billing areas or knowledge.
The good bit. There is some free software called WSS in the whole deal (check still available) that allows you to create these billing areas or client rooms willy nilly. Apparently it’s a hook to get you interested. I have to say rather than a hook its more like a serious competitive advantage tool particularly if you get in early. I completely love the idea that I can click onto my lawyers website and see what, when, who, how in real time and without any fuss. This stuff is now not just for the big boys: anyone can get involved. Uses so far include one firm bringing seventy applications down into just a handful through use of this technology.
The main drive from Tikit is the reduction of time wasting and bringing together disparate data. Although others have this, also said this, like Solcara (less bespoke) it seems that the Handshake part of the outfit does really enable this to happen and with the easy recognizable template for users (modeled on law firm websites) its going to be difficult to ignore and might even catch on.
If we can only work out what its all about. If still unsure see me after class.
So what is the Tikit pitch?
Drag and drop functionality
saves a lot of copy and pasting.
Reduces “brain drain.” (☺)
Don’t be put off because you think its an enormous project, you can tackle small things at a time like a ‘desperate’ intranet site.
Increases fee earner access to real time financials
Intranets were the number 1 reason people were buying this but expansion is now rapid with a lot of buy in from law firms - particularly Lewis Silkin in the UK with a more complex DM project that says no to OpenText/Interwoven and yes to SharePoint on its own. Another reason is building a financial intranet on the back of the knowledge one. □
What is MOSS?
Sharepoint or as it’s now called Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) has been around for a while but despite seminars and lots of ‘oh my god, it’s the Next Big Thing’ type of information, unless you see a demo you will probably be a bit puzzled about what it is so don’t be worried if you still haven’t got a clue. Its essentially an interface (or one button or one initial screen) that clips onto some middle software like Handshake which then clips onto or ‘talks to’ your essential tech software like Lexis Nexis InterAction, OpenText (formerly Hummingbird) or Interwoven, Thomson Elite or Aderant to deliver all your current applications through a simple icon on the desktop. Within Outlook for instance you can have a Microsoft Office Sharepoint button that connects to everything without the user needing special skills and their view is not the InterAction or Thomson Elite view, it’s the Sharepoint view. The Sharepoint part is that its all blindingly obvious for fee earners: if they know how to use Outlook then they can navigate all the stuff they need for client billing, contacts, knowledge and even have their own little world that provides a unique space for their type of news, matters and office announcements. (You set rules to achieve the look and feel required).
Points of note.
Its not the same as OpenText or Interwoven Sharepoint: their Sharepoint integration only brings their software to the party. You need Handshake (who are reselling through Tikit in the UK) to connect to all your other applications like Lexis Nexis InterAction, Thomson Elite and the other main players.
Who is the star in the Microsoft Office Sharepoint, Handshake, Tikit trio?
Its hard to say, Tikit for being influential in the UK and clever enough to explain it and sell it to you? Microsoft Office Sharepoint for developing such an easy interface and perhaps for coming down off their hobby horse and really working with legal vendors? Or Handshake for developing some communications software that just worked it all out for everyone?
Probably they all get equal votes but Handshake is undoubtedly garnering some serious respect for developing software that has brought to life the Sharepoint concept. In my view companies working on bridging applications are the ‘ones to watch’ for they are beginning to rule the world.
www.microsoft.com/sharepoint
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