Is your firm providing approved tools and software for you people to remain productive, mobile, and secure all at the same time? If so, do they like them? Better yet, do they use them?

Every year NetDocuments holds a CIO Forum with some of our customer firms. We do this to get feedback on how to ultimately improve the document management service we've been providing for 15 years. It's always interesting to look back and reflect on the issues our customer firms were facing just a few years ago.

One year (several years ago) I distinctly remember a very intelligent CIO state "There is no way we'll embrace iPads for anything that's related to the firm's work product". We all know how that turned out.

It was probably the next year that we then began hearing things like, "Help, devices are coming at us from all angles and people are putting content on them! We're having major leakage, and documents are being stored outside our system". Looking back, it truly is amazing to notice the velocity of tech-change at our customer firms.

For decades one of the many technology goals at a law firm is to have standardized tools and processes to create an environment that is productive, secure, and scalable. The problem has been that many of the traditional, enterprise-grade systems, are simply not aligned with what many would consider user-friendly or productive tools. The firm-sanctioned technology was actually getting in the way of getting work done. Document Management Systems (DMS) have been major offenders of this – poor interfaces, incompetent searching, complex mobile access, few collaboration tools, and the list goes on.

I recently read a comment by a CIO at a prominent firm say "document management is dead".

While a bit overdramatic, this individual's point was that we're moving out of the era of archaic, bulky, complex tools mandated by IT. The age we now find ourselves in is focused on personal productivity. The era that gives the individual exactly what they need, when they need it, and all in the name of productivity, ease of use, convenience, client service, even individual sanity and happiness. ...

It's the concept of moving technology tools to the forefront of the firm (technology as a strategy) putting the power in the hands of the individual. So cheers to the era of meeting individual's needs with enterprise-grade tools.

As the first cloud-based document management service, we pride ourselves in helping our customers stay ahead of the technology curve. We did this by turning the bulky, complex DMS approach on its head, and started the revolution of a truly powerful enterprise DMS focused on helping the individual stay productive, connected, and secure, anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

Personal productivity with a firm-wide solution. It doesn't have to be an oxymoron anymore.