Largest South African Law Firm Makes
WORLDOX Their WAN Solution

"WORLDOX makes it easy to e-mail documents once they have been edited or located by me."  • Faan Coetzee "The search facility is advanced and provides various innovative options to locate documents, including documents on which you have little information."  • Paul Fouché

Hofmeyr Herbstein Gihwala Cluver & Walker Inc. is the largest law firm in South Africa. Based in Sandton with five offices and close to 500 employees, Hofmeyr was the first law firm in South Africa to use an electronic document management system back in 1991. They know now how extremely important and useful it is to manage the plethora of documents that is endemic to the legal industry.

Existing DMS a Dead End

Early in 1997, Hofmeyr took the decision to move from a DOS operation and a DOS-based word processor to a Windows 95 environment and Windows-based word processor. During the prototyping phase it soon became evident that there was a compatibility problem between their existing DMS and Windows 95. At the same time a number of disquieting events, directly related to the products they were using, took place and made them realize that their existing DMS was a product that had been abandoned and had become a dead-end. Moreover the word processor they were contemplating using had performance problems.

Hofmeyr continued to look towards their current software supplier to provide a solution to the problem as the promised new DMS was supposed to be a wonderful replacement. Unfortunately the first version turned out to be well below what the existing DMS already provided. Hofmeyr could not afford to wait for vague promises. They had to take a decision and fast.

In July 1997 the decision was made to completely convert to a Microsoft environment using Windows 95 and MS Word and the rest of the Office 97 suite, including MS Exchange. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn't have a DMS. At the same time the demise of a particular DMS and the inadequacy of its replacement was confirmed in various subscriber lists and press articles, and mention was made that a very adequate replacement could possibly have been found. A number of firms and people in the U.S. were very enthusiastic about this new up-and-coming product - WORLDOX - and had started using it with good effect.

The Promise of WORLDOX

Some research was done on the Internet and the technical aspects of WORLDOX; such as the dual database architecture, the ISYS search engine and the viewing technology were sound. That the database was also distributed was a very important bonus because of the remote offices. A demo version was requested and installed in 10 minutes, a typical legal profile was created and a few users started using it. The ease of use of WORLDOX and how friendly it was compared with the previous DMS was impressive.

In September 1997 a list of requirements was sent to Tom Burke, president of World Software. Even though certain features, such as archiving and the WAN operation, were not yet incorporated at the time, Tom's commitment to his product and its potential were very encouraging. The testing continued for some time on the product and in January 1998 the first 10 users were installed on a pilot scheme, but still in conjunction with the existing DOS-based word processor.

An Easy Transition

The planning, training, and implementation of MS Word were challenging because of the conversion of existing documents and templates and Word's different approach to word processing created a culture shock. It also took a long time as the users had very little prior exposure to the Windows environment. The change from the old DMS to WORLDOX was easier and the users did not have much difficulty in adapting to the new concepts. In December 1998, Hofmeyr completely converted from the old word processor and the old DMS to MS Word and WORLDOX respectively and 230 users across the WAN are presently using WORLDOX.

The risks taken and the faith in the product were well worth the wait.

Fast, Powerful, and Better Organized than Ever Before

Faan Coetzee:

"It is easy to find documents created by my secretary when I need to do some editing in her absence or when she urgently deals with other matters. WORLDOX makes it easy to e-mail documents once they have been edited or located by me. Naturally, WORLDOX assists in filing the documents in easily traceable directories. The facility to use templates through WORLDOX assists in creating documents when I need to do so. It also assists in finding the right template or precedent when needed."

Paul Fouché:

"I have found that WORLDOX provides an improved working environment in a number of areas. The organizing of the files or documents is more systematic and logical than before. It is easier to trace documents even when the search facility is not working. The search facility is advanced and provides various innovative options to locate documents, including documents on which you have little information."

André de Lange:

"In my view the benefits of WORLDOX include the following:

• It provides a categorization of different documents that facilitates the building of a database of different types of documents.
• Its search function provides fast and easy searches for documents and for precedents to work from. The variety of search queries helps to narrow down the search.
• It is easy to find a document and call it up to work from.
• The favorite file function speeds up a search for a document.
• The file filter is also handy to search from given that it identifies all categories of documents and the professionals who have created documents in a particular category."