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INTRO

"We've been using NetDocuments for over six years and have increased our productivity and collaboration across offices and clients." - Brian Marsh, Information Systems Manager

20 years ago Jim Payne and Dan Fears began their practice as an employment defense firm in California. Today, Payne & Fears has expanded into business litigation, insurance and construction law, with five offices across three states and employing nearly 100 people. Brian Marsh, the Information Systems Manager, led the switch from iManage to NetDocuments over six years ago, here's their story.

THE CHALLENGE

Payne & Fears was at a crossroads six years ago as the firm was using iManage and on an out of date version. "From a financial standpoint, we were looking at a significant investment to bring our services and servers up to date with what iManage was requiring at the time simply to be able to upgrade to the latest edition," Brian began. "Looking at the overall cost of server operations, overhead control, management, maintenance, new software, installation, conversion, and training gets ridiculously high. It didn't take long for us to see NetDocuments was where we wanted to go, and the direction document management would be going in the future."

THE IT PERSPECTIVE

As the individual responsible for the firm's IT, Brian commented that NetDocuments has impacted the IT department for the better. "There is incredible peace of mind not having to worry about backing up everything in the practice that makes the firm, The Firm. The document management system represents all of the knowledge, wealth, and experience our firm has acquired over the last 20 years we've been in business, so knowing it's secure, redundant and accessible was vital," he continued. "I could see immediate value for our firm's IT, and how it would make our lives easier and help me sleep better at night, in addition to freeing up my server and eliminating the need to manage hardware and disk space."

MULTI OFFICE ACCESS & MOBILITY

With five offices across three states and systems being accessed by 100 internal users and many of their larger clients, mobility was a critical component and a key reason for the switch. "We were using a Citrix environment with iManage and they never worked well together", Brian recalled. NetDocuments allowed the firm to eliminate the need for Citrix as well as the VPN tunnel they were using for multi-office access. "In addition to our offices simply being able to access the system, the influx of iPads and bring your own device (BYOD) environments potentially creates a layer of complexity. This problem is solved with NetDocuments' native app on the iPad and the mobile interface for other devices. Giving our people access, regardless of location or device, has increased our productivity three fold."

THE RESULTS

"The transition to NetDocuments was very easy and seamless through the administrative training process all the way to end user sessions," Brian said. "We've been using NetDocuments for over six years, have increased our productivity and collaboration across offices and clients, we have improved security, back up, as well as business continuity, and all while drastically reducing the amount spent on IT, hardware and software," he concluded.

NetDocuments has been providing the leading online document and email management service to firms of all sizes since 1999. Join the 150,000+ users across 128 countries leveraging NetDocuments for their security, compliance, collaboration and mobility. Schedule a one-on-one demo to see how NetDocuments will improve your technology, reduce costs and increase productivity. 1-866-638-3627