Legal Firms

Document Management for Legal & lawyers

Want your documents now?

We are all under pressure and this is especially so in the legal profession. There are deadlines and great workloads. Everything needs to be documented, version controlled and managed to achieve the required outcomes.

What if we could use technology to simplify the daily workings of your practice. With M-Files all incoming documents can be captured electronically through high speed scanners or multi-function devices.

A lot of this information arrives electronically via email and with our Outlook integration the emails and their attachments can be easily captured into the right file.

The second part of the solution is where you will see significant productivity gains and it all revolves around instant retrieval. Like a google search you can search for a matter number and get the whole file; search for a matter number and affidavit and get the right document instantly.

M-Files integrates into existing law practice databases like Filepro, Leap, LawMaster, etc. so all the client’s information and all the associated knowledge is in one place. It is one thing to find the document but how much more effective would it be if the phone number you need is also there right in front of you.

Managing matters is a breeze with M-Files

The third and last part of M-Files is where it all comes together.

Now that you have all the documents linked to all of your knowledge (contact details, crm, status of matter, etc.) you can do some amazing things.

The document collaboration features with handy annotations are great for preparing documents. The assignments are great as a to do list and the detailed step by step workflows with automated deadlines, reminders and email notifications mean you will never miss a process

manage-documents-legal-office-paperless

Why a document management solution is the answer for legal firms

Traditionally legal firms are slow to embrace the benefits of technology and I believe that this is because the partners have a lot of the grunt work completed for them by support staff.

Which makes sense of course. However, partners are often not aware of the inefficiencies associated with traditional file management systems.
Now is the time to review and work on your business, not just within it.

A ground up approach to a legal document management solution will not change the processes, it will simplify them, so you can provide a better level of service and not miss any opportunities that come your way.

Click on one of the buttons below to get a free trial or an instant quote. As lawyers you will be impressed with the small outlay and ease of use.

To read the full transcript of the video, please click here

Legal transcript

Overview

Hello and welcome to this presentation of M-Files for Legal Professionals. At the end of this demonstration, they’ll be an opportunity for you to download a fully functioning trial of the M-Files solution, that is set up with all the features and functionality that you’re about to see. There is also an opportunity to download an instant quote, so you can get an estimate of costing for this project for you as well. Both options are available from our home page. To give you an overview of where we’re headed today, what this is all about is a way to centralize all the company’s information. Whether that’s your paper-based files, electronic documents, your emails, invoices, reports. Whether it’s coming in or going out, it is all captured into a central system. We need to be able to capture it quicker and easier than your current manual processes, so we’re not adding a job to the day. In the second part of the system, we start to see the major productivity gains, which is instant retrieval, allowing you to find things based on what it is, not having to remember how it was named or saved. You might search for an invoice, or a number, a client name, a contact, a keyword off a document and you’ll have the information available to you instantly. In the third and the last part of the process is where it really all comes together. We’ll look at things like assignments, workflows, version control document collaboration, template creation, all the actionable items that you do with this information and how that can be tracked, managed and simplified.

Who we are

A little bit of information about ourselves and M-Files. We have been specializing in this for over 20 years. We do a lot of work with legal professionals across various different sectors and have been doing so for a long time. We have a wealth of knowledge that we can bring to the table to ensure you’re getting the best of practice.

Some of the processes that we find that we solve, and these are some of the current pain points across legal and I’m sure that some of these items would be resonating with you there, some more so than others no doubt. As we customize the solution for each site that we go into, we’ll build a solution to meet your needs.

Security/Access

Let’s now have a look at the system and go through the three main parts, the first part being capture. The whole system’s password-protected, so we’ve got a login which means we can set up different security levels for different people within the organization. There might be a general filing area that everyone can see. There might be a HR/Payroll that only two or three people can access, so different security levels depending on what’s required. From there we can set up individual user rights. Some people get to annotate, edit, append, delete. Other people get read-only rights. Behind the scenes every action that is taken within the system is automatically tracked and recorded. You will know who’s looked at what document when. Who’s approved a quote. Who’s updated a version. Any of those actionable items are now automatically tracked and recorded.

Looks familiar

The nice thing about M-Files is it looks and feels like Windows Explorer, so there’s really no learning curve. Where you’ve got server drives and folders down to our M drive, under client files, our client Bloggs and the piece of litigation we’re doing for them. If we click on this folder, just like Windows Explorer, we get a list of documents and like Windows Explorer, if we click on a document, you get a preview of it on the right-hand side. The nice thing about that, being based on a folder structure is, it’s instantly usable and we’re all familiar with it.

Capturing your information/documents

Of course, the problem with folder-based systems is they don’t work. If you name it incorrectly, put it in the wrong spot or if you and I have differing opinions on how we think it should be named or saved, it can be difficult to find and retrieve. We take a vastly different approach. Instead of having to name this document correctly and put it in the right spot and everybody else in the office needs to know where that is to retrieve it, with M-Files what if we had dozens of different links that linked back to it and you could search for it by who it’s from, what it’s about, when it came in, via a keyword off a document and we have it up on the screen immediately. We call those links metadata. Metadata for this document is listed at the bottom, where we’ve noted who the client is, the matter and matter number, who your solicitor is looking after them, perhaps invoice numbers, document types, dates, workflows etc. Because we tend to file and find using metadata, the old folder-based search method generally becomes redundant. This example of metadata is just that, an example. We will custom build this specifically based around your organization, your procedures, your processes. We will use this as a generic example for today.

Looking at the first part of the system, let’s look at ways of capturing information to make sure that input process is quicker and easier. Let’s say, we’ve got some correspondence to one of your clients. This might be on letterhead, it might be a word document, it could be a spreadsheet, a PDF, it could be a photo or video, any file format whatsoever can be saved into the system. How do we save it? The same way you do. We simply click on save but instead of saving it in your folders on your server, we now save it in the M-Files system, which also lives on your server. M-Files then asks us to categorize this. Would you put this on the client files, company admin, HR? You have various groups and departments already established there and we’ll create the departments for and with you. Inside one of your departments, you have document types. You might have client documents, reports, file notes, correspondence etc. Not only will we create the departments for and with you but will also then create all your document types to marry up with your existing naming conventions. In this example we’re going to call it client correspondence and it says well great, which matter is that for? Instead of having to type them all in, what if we could pick it from a pre-set list? What if this list could come from your existing client databases? Instead of having to type them all in, you can pick it from a list and when we select litigation 1234 Bloggs, it says, I know things about this matter. I know who the overriding client is, and I know who our solicitor is managing them, do you want me to fill out Auto fields. We say yes. These are what we call parent-child fields. When we’re selecting one piece of information, it fills out the rest. You can have any combination you want and any other types of additional metadata that you require. This is just an example. We pop in today’s date, hit create and that one’s added to the filing system. You continue to work on the document as you normally do and now that we’re finished with it, it is saved into the system and we’ve captured our first document, our letter to Bill Bloggs. The metadata for it is listed at the bottom and the preview for this document is on the right.

Using Templates

Let’s now do this again, but a far quicker and easier way. Because M-Files runs all day, you can build new documents from within the system. Instead of building a document from scratch, under client files, a client of ours has requested a report and it launches your Client Status Report Template. The nice thing about managing templates in here is, if you changed our reporting template, it is then globally changed and everybody’s on that new version moving forward. This is great for leave applications, quotes and safety documents, policies, any common templates that you’re using all the time can all be managed here. M-Files fills out the bulk of the filing fields for me, so all I have to do is pop in today’s date and it even sets up an automatic naming convention, which I’ll come back to. Our report is launched. We’ve got your letterhead on top and here’s your standard report. These items in dark grey are metadata that’s come from M-Files and been inserted into your document. These items from M-Files have often come from your existing client databases. If you wanted to put in additional metadata, like perhaps the documents version number, using the M-Files tab which follows you around through the office suite, we can insert additional metadata, in this case our documents version number and that’s another item in dark grey. Later I’m going to change this version and you’ll see that we’ll go from version 1 up to version 2. We’re finished with this one, so we saved this into the system. Its preview is shown on the right and its metadata is listed at the bottom. I’ve set up automatic naming, where it named it by what it is, the date, the litigation number, who the client is and a description. I didn’t have to fill any of that out. I didn’t have to spell it correctly. I didn’t have to adhere to your crazy rules about how we’re supposed to file things. It just does it all for me and it also means that everything going in and out of the building is named in a consistent method.

Capture emails quickly and easily

Let’s have a look at Outlook. Emails are notoriously difficult to capture and file. Some of the problems of the emails is first, they are an editable type of document, so they don’t comply with the electronics acts. They’re sent to you as an individual. They have attachments. I’ve no idea whether you’ve dealt with it or not and then six months later you run out of space and you delete them and company information is disappearing from Outlook, which is the disaster. Luckily M-Files integrates into the Outlook filing system. To file something, all we do is drag and drop it. This email is an IT agreement from our IT supplier to me. This sounds like company correspondence, so I just pop it in that folder and M-Files files it for me. It fills out the subject line based on the subject line of your email, the dates, email addresses so there’s nothing to do but hit create. That one’s added to the system. You’ve automatically complied with the electronic acts. It’s all backed up on the server and you can delete it from your PC if you wish. A couple of nice things to note when you file something in the M-Files system, it’s automatically given a blue category, so visually I can see that one out of four emails have been captured. If I emailed this through to you and say Michelle in your office, then who’s responsible for filing it? Of course, you have no idea. Both might do it, none of you may do it. Let’s say Michelle’s filed it. When you go to file it, it tells you it’s already been done. This saves on email duplication. How much time and space is wasted capturing duplicate emails? The file format that we saved this in, is an Outlook email, so you can open it, reply, forward, open attachments. We’ve got it as a useful email message, not as a piece of paper in a filing cabinet. I’m going to file another email but do this one a slightly different way. This one has an attachment in it and often when people email you an attachment, it’s not so much the email you’re after, it’s more the attachments that you’re after. I’m going to ask M-Files to separate and file all the attachments for me. Because this is from one of our clients, I’m going to put this under client correspondence and M-Files asks me to fill out which matter it’s for. I pop in those details and M-Files fills out everything else. If I was dealing with Litigation 1234 all the time, I would have a folder for it on the side and it wouldn’t ask me any questions. In this case, we hit create and it’s added to M-Files. It too gets a blue category. When we go into M-Files however, instead of simply having an email which I can click on open and use, this one has been put in a folder, where we have our email which is available to us of course, but more importantly, the attachment is there. If you want to search your database for the word cabinets, it would take you straight to the attachment, which is what you wanted but you’ve also got the email there as well should you need to open and reply.

Scanning documents

If it’s a piece of paper, we can run it through a high-speed scanner. Something like this, as an example, where you load up a stack of pages and it’ll scan them through 70 pages a minute, straight up onto the screen. We can make use of your existing photo copiers or other scanning devices, but this is a great ergonomic unit for the person who’s opening the mail, so they’re not having to hog the back-office photocopier. There are many ways of scanning into the system. One way is to right-click and add document from scanner. I’m not going to do that but if I did scan in the mail, it would ask me who’s it from, what’s it about, where would you like to file it?

Importing existing documents

Speaking of batch scanning, I’m going to do batch importing, which is effectively the same thing. I’ve put together some example documents that we’re going to file away as a batch. The first document you’ll see is opened on the right as a preview and the name of this document, letter of authority, is made available to us at the top of the document, so our naming convention is maintained. I fill out our usual metadata fields like I had previously and when I hit create, on the first one you’ll see the first document is added to the left and the next one is opened. Its preview is shown on the right. Its name is maintained, but of course the whole point of your folders is they’re groups of documents. We know this is the correspondence folder for this matter. Why don’t we say create all and file them all at once and when we do that each of the documents are part of the system. The original file format is maintained, your original naming conventions and document dates are maintained, but now you can also search for a variety of the keywords off the document as well as via any other metadata. This takes around ten seconds to capture a folder. If you look at how many folders and subfolders you have, you’ll be able to very quickly capture all that information.

Linking to your existing folders

What if we could just map back to your existing network drives? What if you had say, a Z Drive, which we call a traditional folder, that had all your folders and subfolders and documents in them. We call this a traditional folder. We have mapped back to your Z Drive and there are all your folders and documents as they look today. Your entire folder structure can be made available in M-Files from day one.

Retrieving Documents/Information

That’s the first part of the system, which is capture. That input process should be quicker and easier than what we’re doing manually. We’re not physically moving information around the office anymore. The real benefits come, however, in the second side of the system, which is retrieval. If you wanted to know what time the sunset was in your location, then in Google you’d put in the word sunset and your suburb. You’d get yourself an instant answer. You don’t need to know that that information came from a spreadsheet, twenty folders deep on a server in Darwin. You don’t really care. You just want an answer. Wouldn’t it be nice if your filing system worked the same way, so that you could ask for what it is you remember so that you don’t have to remember how it was named or which folder it was put in? That’s how M-Files works, finding things based on what it is you know, but not having to remember which folder. Now very vaguely I remember, I spoke to someone called Bloggs. I do a search for that. That’s all I know, and I get documents totalling twenty-seven. It highlights where the word appears in the naming convention, where it appears multiple times throughout our metadata, and it even highlights each of the words throughout our document. I got 27 and that’s too many. I now remember it has something to do with Bloggs, is an invoice, so I’ll add in a second word and that it narrows it down just to one. It shows me where both words appear in the name, the metadata and throughout our document. 99 times out of 100, you know who you’re talking to. You know what you’re looking for and you drill it down to one or two documents every time. No more telephone tag. Any inquiry, you can say, yep looking at it, what would you like to know?

Customized shortcuts for searching

Depending on where you’re sitting within the organization, if you were in general admin versus litigation, versus HR, there are varying things that we require or don’t require depending on where we are. What we’ve tried to do in the past is, we’ve tried to squeeze everybody into one filing system, which of course, didn’t really work and everybody’s gone off and done their own things. They’ve got their own information silos. They save things on their desktops etc. What if we could now bring all that together? What if we could give you a filing system for each of you as an individual, as if the business revolved around your role? We do that by setting up common searches on the side. This is an example of searches across the whole business. Depending on you who you are, they’ll be customized to meet your specific needs. In this example, we might say look at the client files and these are all the current clients we’re working with. If we click on our client Bloggs, we can see they have different pieces of litigation. If we were to go into each one, we have all our documents and folders available to us. Perhaps you’d like to look at it from a client point of view. If we look at our client Bloggs, we have metadata for them. I can see their accountants, their phone numbers, contact details, email addresses etc. We can have all our contact or CRM information available here as well, even though it’s available in your other databases, wouldn’t it be nice if it appeared here? Maybe from a HR point of view, you’d like to look at our employee Angela? I can see that she has an employee contract, leave application and performance appraisal. If we go into her performance appraisal, it is automatically named by what it is, who it’s for, what it was. A preview of that appraisal is shown on the right-hand side. Maybe you’d like to look at it from an asset register point of view? I can see that this PC, who we bought it from, how much it was, when we bought it, serial numbers, whose desk it’s on and even warranty expiration dates can be listed there as well. Maybe you’d like to look at it from an accounts point of view and I might say show me your supplier invoices that have been entered ready for payment this week. There’s three and if we click on one of them we can see who the supplier was, invoice numbers, accounting codes, even whose desk it’s on to pay it. One that I use all the time is recently accessed by me.

Processing Documents

Annotations

I’m always going back to things I’ve recently worked on and one of those items is our report. Again, when we click on our report, we get our reports preview on the right and our reports metadata is showing again at the bottom. What we’re trying to illustrate is, however you’d like this information displayed, it’s made available to you instantly, every single time. Now that we found some information, we often want to work on it. If I had sent this report to two of you in the office and I asked you for your thoughts, you would make some changes, send it back to me and I’ve somehow got to collate those. What if you could just do all that electronically, without having to create duplicate copies? What if you could use highlighter pens to highlight sections? What if we scrub out this part, draw arrows on it, maybe put a post-it note on it that doesn’t fall off? We’re annotating over the top of the document, not on the original. You can print this with or without these notes. I can rubber stamp it saying it’s been approved for payment and I can even assign it with a signature, that’s only available on my machine. We’re annotating over the top of the document, not on the original.

Version Control

If you wish to change the original document, we have a simple checkout process. Whilst this is checked out to me, only I can change it, everybody else can view it, but only I can make changes. I’ve decided to change the colour. I’m finished with my changes, so I save this back into the system so everybody else can use it again. We click on our report and we can see it’s red I also know now that we’re on version 2 and I think well that’s interesting, how did that come about? I can now ask for the documents history and I can see version 1 and 2. I can see they were created 12 minutes apart by the same user. Now in your case, of course, it might be weeks apart, by different staff members, but we’ll use this one as an example. I’d like to look at our current version, so I open this one up in Word and I can see our current version. M files have said wouldn’t it be nice if you could see the history of this document. Using our compare feature, I can open the original and at the current at the same time. I have the original opened on and the current opened on the bottom. You can see the differences between our documents. Well I think your version is awful and I want to go back to version 1. I close this down and click on the version that I like. I say, can I roll back to the earlier version and it says yes and it creates version 3. One minute later back to the colour it was. Instant and easy version control that cannot be circumvented by staff.

Distributing Documents

Now that we’ve worked on a document, you often want to send it to somebody. A common feature in any program of course, is to right-click and send as a copy by email. It opens it and attaches it as a Word document and you can hit Send. Maybe you don’t want to send this out as an editable Word document. You want to send it out as a PDF. In your world you open it in Word, convert it to a PDF, save it on the desktop, send it, delete it from the desktop. It’s way too hard. We know you want to do those sorts of things so with M-Files we give you the ability to right click and send as a PDF by email. M-Files opens it, converts it and attaches it as a PDF and you can simply hit Send. You’ll see niceties like that throughout the whole M-Files experience. Just simple day-to-day processes made much easier. When you’re sending this report off to your client, shouldn’t you be filing that? Isn’t that a business transaction and we give you the ability to do that with one button with our send and save to M-Files. You can do both at the same time.

The Power of Metadata

That’s the first two parts of the system filing and finding of documents using metadata and that within itself really, should look like a brilliant productivity result, having what you need for the 50 to 100 bits and pieces of information we all look for each day. To have it in front of you in seconds instead of minutes. In the third and last part of the process is where it’s all going to come together. What if we could apply this theory of metadata to other things within the business? What if you could have metadata around clients, contacts, suppliers, solicitors, departments? You’ll then start to see that everything can be related back to everything else and all your information, as well as all your knowledge, can now be brought together. The best way to start to show you the third and last part of the process is where first, we are still going to do a search by all staff. We search for all employees and there’s 12 of us. If you click on me as an example, there’s metadata for me, the employee. Where we had clicked on a document and we got documents metadata, we now have metadata for an employee. It says I’m a director and a solicitor. I have multiple roles. I have addresses, phone numbers, contact details. I have emergency contact information etc. Let’s now go down further. You’ll see these arrows everywhere throughout M-Files and it means there’s things connected to me. It says that I’m working on 10 matters, I have seven employees in my team, I’ve got five outstanding assignments to do. Let’s go down further. Of the matters that I’m working with, one of them was for Bloggs. If we go into this matter, who is the client? Bloggs Pty Ltd. When I click on their card, I get their metadata. This sort of contact information is available in your other databases, but it will now also be available here. In this matter, wasn’t there documents associated with it and one of those documents was our report that we worked on earlier. Because we’re clicking on our document again, we get our documents metadata and we’re getting our documents view showing again. What is linked to this document, as it turns out, is an annotation, our client, a solicitor, a matter. Even if we were to go into exclusively this client and all their documents, again it links back to our report. Wherever you are within the M-Files system, whether you’re within a job, client, contact, supplier, everything is related from any of those points for it. Now, all your information like documents, emails, reports and all your knowledge like phone numbers, email addresses, status of jobs, review dates, are now all brought together. A one-stop shop for all the information and knowledge.

Assignments – Approvals & Tasks

Where that becomes particularly useful is in a simple day-to-day example now if I asked you to call Blogs regarding that report, how do I get your attention? Do I send you a long email you don’t understand, or do I come and interrupt you, but you’re looking at this video? Do I put a post-it note on your screen? Even if I get your attention, how do I know you’ve done your job? Do I have to follow up with you tomorrow? That takes up your time and my time. Instead of having unmanaged plastic in trays, what if they could now be replaced with managed electronic in trays. These simple jobs are called assignments. My assignment for you is to call Blogs. I’m going to give you a bit more information, so you know what to do. I’m going to pop it against our client’s matter, so there’s a permanent record that I have requested this of you. The deadline I’m giving you is today. Such a short deadline to get this one completed. As I’m set up in the system, I’m going to assign it to myself and I’ll receive an email notification telling me I have a new assignment. We have a new assignment, so let’s say somehow, we’ve notified you to do this work, how do you go about doing it? First, where’s the phone number for Blogs? Is that in your database, Outlook contacts, on a business card? Once you’ve got the phone number, where’s the report? Is that the report that you emailed to them? Is that the edited one they sent back to Michelle? How do you know you’re on the right version and then you can pick up the phone? With M-Files, if I asked you to give Blogs a call, you say great, what’s their phone number and there it is at the bottom. As the phone’s ringing Bill picks up the phone and you say, hey Bill I’ve got this report open on my desk, what would you like to know? What a result how many times a day do we need a document and a phone number and email and its attachment, an invoice, its approval status? Most of what we’re doing in a day is information and the Associated knowledge and M-Files brings the two together.

Notifications

How did we notify you of this? we found the best place to do that is in Outlook, because we send and receive emails all day every day. We get an email notification, so Bloggs read the report, that’s fine, deadlines today, I better get on with it. Instead of going off in all those different areas, you can click on it directly from your notification and it takes you straight to your assignment in M-Files. Not only do we have the phone number or other contact information available to us as required, not only is the document that you need open on the right-hand side, but the rest of their file is open as well in case they ask you something obscure. This will be in your in tray forever, until you mark it as completed. To do so you just pop a tick next to your name, you hit save and we get a green tick on our clipboard.

Managing Office Workloads

As your boss I might say, show me all assignments for yourself and I see there is seven that you’ve completed. There’s five outstanding and I can see where you’re up to. If I see that you’ve got too much work to do, or too little work, I can micromanage in trays. This is great for management and for the employees. I don’t have to come and see you every day and go through each of these and ask you where it’s up, to which takes up time and is very annoying. As a manager, I can discreetly have a look and know if there’s any obvious issues.

Workflows

There’s simple day-to-day assignments which is nice, but a lot of what we’re dealing with of course is more complicated than that. We’re dealing with multiple steps and stages, multiple people involved and often different deadlines.

One of the last things I’m going to show you is a workflow, that’s going to bring all these features together, we’re going to build a new document, but instead of building a document from scratch under our client files, our client has requested a quote for services. It launches your quoting template. Of course, we fill out our usual metadata fields like we had previously for the previous documents and we pop in today’s a date. We have automatic naming setup as well and it creates your template which is in Word. Again, your letter heads on top and again I’ve asked M-Files to fill out the bulk of the filing fields for me. The quote for services in this example is $3000 and as quick and as easy as that you have finished with your quote. Like any other document, it’s automatically named by what it is, which piece of work it’s for and a description. A preview of it is shown on the right-hand side and our usual metadata is listed at the bottom. We’ve also set up this workflow area. This workflow is a client quote approval process. There’ll be dozens of different workflows built and created for you. This one has been assigned to me and I’ve received an email notification telling me to do my job. The deadline I’ve been given is 24 hours and my job is, the quote is to be approved before sending. I’m looking at it. Am I happy with this, yes or no and at this stage I can go in two different directions. I can either say, client quote to be amended, in which case it automatically goes back to your desk, or I can move it on. As I’m happy with it I will move it on. When I click OK, if you look at who it’s assigned to, whose desk it’s on, it automatically goes off my desk and it goes into Karen’s to-do list. She gets notified via email. Her job is, as the quote has been approved, it is ready to be sent to the client. Karen does her part by saying quote sent to client. She might say emailed today and when Karen clicks okay, it goes off her desk. It’s on nobody’s desk as it’s been completed. It’s a very simple workflow, but it gives you the idea that information can go through from person to person. Each one of you does a certain job or action, then it goes to the next person. 24 hours before my deadline, I can be sent a reminder. 24 hours after I miss my deadline, you get notified. Workflows can be very extensive or very simple and there are graphical overviews to show you each of them that we will build and create for and with you. We’ll teach you how to maintain and manage them. These nice graphical overviews mean you can take it to a staff meeting and just ask, guys is this working for us and make modifications as required.

Mobile/Web/Tablet Access

The last thing I wanted to show you is being able to access the entire solution from any mobile device. We’ve become a more and more mobile workforce. what if you could access your entire office from any mobile phone, an iPad, a web browser, a Samsung device, wherever you are, and you can have access to your entire filing system? I can’t show you my mobile phone, but I can play for you a one-minute video which I’ll do now. M-Files mobile access puts the information important to your business right at your fingertips. No matter where you are view documents on the go, like that purchase invoice that just came in. Check it out, make sure everything is correct and approve it. Then Greg and accounting get emailed automatically. You can pull the invoice up on his laptop and send the payment. It’s seamless, mobile and available for download now and it’s just one of the ways you can experience the magic of M-Files.

Customisation/Implementation/Training

As you can see from that, it brings it all together. All your information. All your knowledge, available to you from wherever you are. The trick now we found with the whole solution, is implementation. If we said here’s some software, goodbye good luck, it just wouldn’t work. The challenge we find of course, is you’ve got multiple staff with multiple systems. We need one filing system, one methodology. The first thing we’re going to do for you is develop a procedures and how-to manual specifically for your organization, where we document what it is you do. How do you process the mail? What do you do with invoices, reports, emails? Whatever it is you do, we will custom build this document. If you click on how do we process the mail, there’s your workflow. This of course is a made-up example. We will customize yours for you, but if it was incoming mail and they are general documents. Admin to sort scan and file. I have forgotten how to file and up come the filing instructions. Written instructions in English, not IT talk. These screenshots are a copy of your system, not our generic example. We even take it further. When filing, we must fill out compulsory fields, the ones with these asterisks, where you must file by who it’s from, what it’s about, when it came in, or the system won’t let you file it. You get to set as many or as few rules to ensure it’s captured a certain number of ways. We will then provide extensive implementation and training. We’ll train two people there as M file system administrators, who will build and develop the system. You’ll set up procedures, processes, passwords. You’ll own it as a process in-house. The ongoing maintenance of the system is maybe five minutes a month. Once it’s up and running we simply make use of it. We will then train the balance of the staff in small classes of up to three people for four hours and if we’re training you, processing your documents, through your scanners, based on your procedures and process manual, into your computers, there you’ll be at an expert level. We’ll have everybody trained in back-to-back training sessions and you go live the next morning and you’re guaranteed to get your results.

Download a Trial/Quote

That’s probably enough out of me. As an overview, I hope you enjoyed the presentation. There is a fully functioning trial that you can now download and install on your PC to test M-Files further and there’s also an opportunity to get an instant quote, so you’ve got pricing for the solution as well. Both are available from our home page. If you have any questions of course, definitely give me a call, or drop me an email and we look forward to working with you on this project.

Our Document Management System is trusted by our clients

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Testimonial by  from
Sean Sandford Mortons - Urban Solutions

During our recent QA Certification and Accreditation process it became very clear that the power of M-Files could provide us with the ability to ensure that all documentation both leaving from and arriving into the office could be controlled in such a way to enable the document retrieval for Quality auditing extremely streamlined and efficient.

Furthermore the control of our QA Documents through M-Files has enabled us to manage and control system documentation in a way that provides users with the necessary access while tracking changes and being able to easily input the relevant details into the appropriate forms, checklists and reports. M-Files has enabled us to better control the system documents needed for audit control, monitoring and storage, improving the way we are able to operate the QA System.

Finally, through the workflow process within M-Files we have been able to assign tasks and function to staff members required by our QA procedures which ensure that the necessary documentation is being undertaken for the ongoing implementation of our QA procedures.

Karen and her team have provided excellent support and worked with us through the whole QA implementation process.

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