Recently, the legal department at a Fortune 100 company asked us to help them choose an ASP document management vendor.  Following is the process we undertook.

This example is interesting because the company had already decided to license a DMS product and to operate the system in-house.  However, they wanted an ASP ready to go in the event that their plan couldn’t get through the company’s architectural review.

The goal for the system was to work both as a knowledge-sharing tool and a collaboration tool.  In short, they wanted to be able to retain the benefits of providing extranets in working with outside counsel and third parties, and they wanted to use those tools to facilitate their knowledge-sharing efforts.  This way, teams working on similar projects could benefit from each other’s work product without each person having to actively contribute their documents once final.

We evaluated each vendor based on criteria specific to both document management and to collaboration.  For document management, the applications were measured on 11 factors, including library services, security, navigation, taxonomy, workflow, and search and retrieval.

The same applications were also judged on how well they met nine collaboration standards, including calendar and contact information management, witness list management, team communication and discussion forums.

After narrowing the field of potential applications and vendors, we evaluated six solutions based on the criteria we’d determined.  We then assigned a rating to each offering on each criterion “Supported, ”Majority Supported” and “Not Supported.”  This made for easy comparison in two simple charts.  Based on those findings, we assigned each provider an overall rating of “Qualified,” “Satisfactory” and “Not Qualified” on both document management and collaboration capabilities.

In addition, we rated each application on its maturity in the marketplace, the deployment/ASP model and the support available from the vendor.

Based on the department’s needs, we found that deploying a product in the corporation’s extranet environment truly was best suited for them. 

Given a different set of standards or different goals for the system, the findings of such a hunt could be entirely different.  But the process outlined above can do wonders to instill confidence in the ultimate decision.

David Wetmore leads the Legal Business Advisory group in Ernst & Young’s Global Investigations & Dispute Advisory practice.  He has 17 years’ experience delivering operations and technology solutions to Fortune 500 legal departments and law firms.  David can be reached at David.Wetmore@ey.com.

Bobbi Basile is a manager in the Legal Business Advisory group of Ernst & Young’s Global Investigations & Dispute Advisory practice.  Bobbi has more than 15 years’ experience in the legal industry delivering operations and technology solutions to Fortune 500 legal departments and law firms.  She can be reached at Bobbi.Basile@ey.com.