WORLDOX REPLACES GROUPWISE Document Management at Starnes & Atchison LLP, Birmingham, Alabama

Research Pays Off in Finding the Perfect Document Management Solution

by Charles P. Relfe

Our firm, Starnes & Atchison LLP, was using GroupWise 5.5, document management software that was no longer working for us. We found that GroupWise was not able to handle the large number of documents our firm needed to manage, and had unacceptably slow and very limited searching capabilities. We had between 750,000 and 800,000 documents, and it became a nightmare to manage them. Limiting searches for more accurate search results often tripled, even quadrupled, search time. Not only was searching a huge problem, but we also began realizing that documents were disappearing, being unrecoverable. This sort of thing is not tolerable in the practice of law, and is any lawyer's worst nightmare. Knowing that converting to another document management software was going to be extremely painful, I decided we had no other choice. I was in desperate need of a better solution.

As the President of a legal technology group in Birmingham, I decided to host a Document Management software "shootout". Through that, I thoroughly investigated PC Docs, iManage and WORLDOX. After hearing representatives from each company give their presentations, I requested large firm references from each company. I called not only the MIS Directors, but also the people in the firms who used the software all day, every day - senior associates and partners. I was particularly impressed with what I heard about WORLDOX. From end users to back office support staff, I heard nothing but praise. "I never have to think about it," and "It always works" was reflected by all those I contacted and visited. I found this hard to believe in a bug ridden software world. They seemed to stand out above the rest, and became my top candidate. WORLDOX was the only product in which I received absolutely no negative feedback. Our firm needed a robust, high-speed document management solution, and all of my investigations and research led me to WORLDOX.

We converted from GroupWise to WORLDOX in February 2000. The hassle of this lengthy conversion process was well worth the headache. Of course, hindsight being twenty-twenty, it would have been great to have avoided this all together by initially installing WORLDOX. Converting from GroupWise DMS was nearly impossible. Novell had no "official" export utility and had no intentions of creating one. Therefore, it became an extremely costly prospect - speaking both of time and money. A beta utility had to be written but was poorly supported and required much attention. This required a lot of overtime, not to mention an enormous bill from our Novell integrator for their time and resources. It also did not export all information out of the BLOB -including security and activity log information. Just when I thought I was free from the nightmare of
GroupWise DMS, I discovered that documents with special security were not exported. I have had to keep GroupWise DMS since our conversion in order to access and copy those documents into WORLDOX. If
GroupWise DMS had a report writer this would not be an issue. If the GroupWise DMS portion had gone a fraction as well as the WORLDOX portion, I would have been grateful. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

As installation of WORLDOX was very simple, so was training. WORLDOX Reseller Frank Jones and his assistant handled our initial training. Sandy Johnson created a professional training manual that I easily edited with Word. I added wording our users could relate to from our previous document management solutions. We trained in groups, and it took about an hour - less for more advanced users. I currently spend about forty-five minutes with new employees.

WORLDOX works well with any network including Windows 95/98 peer-to-peer. It works with Windows 3.1x/9x/NT workstation. A huge advantage of WORLDOX is that it does not rely on powerful and complex database technologies, like SQL, that require dedicated servers running Windows NT. Our main staple applications at Starnes & Atchison LLP are WordPerfect, Word, Excel, GroupWise, PowerPoint, and Access. Our platforms are Windows NT on the desktop and Netware and Windows NT servers.

With over 40 attorneys and two locations, our Alabama-based firm uses WORLDOX as a one-stop repository for all of our documents and images, close to one million total. Everyone in our firm, in both the Birmingham and Mobile offices, from secretaries to accounting personnel to lawyers, uses WORLDOX. We do not have client access…yet. Future plans include using WORLDOX/WEB to accomplish this. We primarily use it for word processing documents and spreadsheets - the bread and butter of any law practice. We also store images for use as trial exhibits and deposition exhibits. We generate reports to monitor such things as case activity and employee productivity. The viewers enable us to better interact with our clients who may send documents generated in applications outside of the mainstream. Integration with MAPI enables easy and powerful e-mailing functionality. We plan to roll out Prolaw for both time and billing as well as case management, which is also integrated with WORLDOX, in early October 2000.

Starnes & Atchison LLP has benefited from the use of WORLDOX in many ways. First and foremost, it is easy to use. It is intuitive, and most of our users can figure out how to search for something without having to call the Help Desk. Secondly, it is extremely efficient. Intelligent searches produce quick and accurate results. WORLDOX administration is also easy, intuitive and efficient. Other benefits include little to no maintenance costs, lowest total cost of ownership, and little to no downtime. We did not have to incorporate a single change to WORLDOX. We did incorporate one security option. We restricted access from summer interns, and it worked wonderfully without the normal headaches that go along with adding security.

One of the nicest surprises about WORLDOX was that we finally came across a product in which the technical support actually knows the product! The technical support is the best I have come across in the past fifteen years. At those times I have had to call technical support for instruction, I expected to be both on hold for a while and to get a first-line technician. To my surprise, each time I have called I got through immediately and spoke with people I would consider to be back-line engineers. Other system administrators I have talked to have had the same experience.

Installing WORLDOX was one of the best decisions I have made. Like breathing, I often don't have to think about it.