Original interview can be found at http://www.legalsupportnetwork.co.uk/technology/resources/lsn-industry-voices-todd-partridge-opentext

LSN Industry Voices is a series in which our networkpartners give their insight into the legal market.

In this Industry Voice Todd Partridge, vice president of OpenText, talks about how virtualisation will affect law firms and the consumerisation of legal services.

What’s the biggest or most important thing that law firms will be doing in five years time that they’re not doing now?

I’m looking forward to watching how firms respond to both the virtualisation of their workforce and the consumerisation of legal services. Technology already allows for virtual teams and it’s only going to become more immersive giving lawyers an opportunity to partner up with other lawyers to litigate cases.  On the consumerization front, lawyers have been outsourcing certain tasks like incorporating businesses for years.  Now we’re seeing people be able to do this themselves using online tools/forms and cutting out the ‘middleman lawyer.’ I’ve even talked with one global retailer who has talked about putting a ‘law office’ in each of its retail store so you can get your Will drawn up while picking up some groceries for home. Will this type of practice continue to grow and what will it mean to firm’s business models?

What could law firms do to work more effectively with their suppliers in your area?

In an ideal world firms could facilitate more direct feedback from their end user’s. Most of the time the ‘what’s working and what’s not’ discussion is had second hand and details or context can be lost. That said, law firms are not at all different from commercial companies with the challenges of getting knowledge worker’s time. 

What law firm client win are you most proud of, and why?

That’s a hard question, kind of like asking which of your children is your favorite?Joking aside, in the past year I’ve had two that I’m extremely proud of. The first is Husch Blackwell. Husch was the first firm to invest in the OpenText Legal Unlimited which is our flagship solution providing the entire OpenText legal portfolio of products; document management, archiving for content and email, records management, BPM, Tempo Box, Managed File Transfer, etc. It was proof positive that strategy we’ve embarked on is one that large, global firms also see as the future of legal information management. The second is Skadden Arps Flom & Meagher.  I’m proud of this one because, to me, it placed a spotlight on what I think is one of OpenText’s greatest advantages…our people. Skadden had been a customer in the past, but as will often happen with lengthy relationships in the IT world they decided it was time for a change and attempted to move forward with a competitive vendor. When that did not work out for them they placed a call to OpenText. Our people had maintained the relationship and over a matter of weeks was able to reignite the confidence that they previously had with OpenText. In a few more weeks they were live on our newest release of eDOCS globally.

What could law firms learn from businesses in other sectors, such as yours?

I think the one thing the industry needs to do is to get more comfortable with embracing technology sooner.  After the economic downturn in 2008 law firms, just like every other business out there, needed to find ways to become more efficient and streamlined. New technologies such as secure file sharing, co-authoring, and social collaborative tools give workers what they need to be more productive in today’s economy.  I see the speed with which media or energy companies move to embrace our technology and it drives me to try and find the right touch point with law firms to help them take the next leap.

What are the top things firms could do to be more efficient/profitable?

One of the most interesting trends to me currently is watching law firms embrace formal project management techniques in their day to day practices. I think this area is one in which we’ll see more and more firms implement programs to maintain their own profitability. As more and more of their customers seek alternative billing practices legal project management will become a necessity.  Also, I think there is still a lot of efficiency that firms can realize by expanding, or introducing, a wider use of business automation technology across the firm.

Let me start by saying, right up front, that I am a huge cynic when it comes to the topic of “Gamification.”

For those of you not ‘in the know,’ gamification is the practice of turning tasks, actions, etc. that workers may find boring or mundane (and therefore something they don’t want or don’t enjoy doing) into a game of sorts and thus draw upon our internal competitive spirit and encourage those workers to complete those tasks…or at least have fun doing it.  If you want to learn more about it the Wikipedia entry on gamification is a good start.  That said, I’ve been of the opinion that if you have to turn the day to day details of your job into a game in order to be more productive then you probably should be looking for a new career anyway.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m the biggest champion behind making work fun and I try to encourage a sense of competition within my teams, but as an old friend of mine once said, “It’s called work for a reason.”

This week I had the privilege of attending the Eloqua Experience 2011 conference in San Francisco.  Eloqua is one of the leading providers of marketing automation solutions.  I have to say that their conference is unlike any I’ve been to in the last 10-15 years in terms of genuine enthusiasm, community, and excitement from not only the Eloqua team (they call themselves ‘Eloquans’) and their partners, but from all of their customers as well.  The conferences brought back memories of some of the real good ones of old.  Last night they put on an event the call The Markies which is their award program for their customers.  I think they had 20 categories in all across a whole range of areas; OpenText was a finalist for Best International Campaign.  Joe Payne (@paynejoe), the CEO of Eloqua, did a great job as MC and did a very good job of building up the exclusivity of The Markies and the degree of difficulty in winning one.  Apparently, from a statistical point of view it is easier to get accepted to Harvard than it is to win a Markie or even be a finalist.  As the event progressed I was struck by how much all the finalists were ‘into’ the awards and the competitive spirit in the ballroom.  Rousing cheers from the tables as the finalist were announced, an undercurrent of ‘I want to win one next year,’ and stage appearances from the winners that would rival the Oscars was the norm.  And, I found myself and the rest of the OpenText contingent just as wired as the rest of the room.  Did I mention we won?

At some point during the night I had the following thought, “Wow, they’ve turned this into a game and really built up a huge, strong following…I mean, after all, has anyone who doesn’t work with Eloqua have any idea what a Markie is anyway?”  The OpenText team consisted of 9 folks from 3 different continents.  Many of us had never met each other before this event or even before this dinner.  Yet, there we were entirely immersed in this contest, this game, yearning for a win.  And, when that win came we all had such a sense of pride and achievement even though most of us (certainly me) had had nothing at all to do with creating/running the campaign that actually won us the award.  This game called The Markies had not only united the Eloqua faithful, but it had brought a feeling of positive teamwork to our little group from OpenText.

But, is this gamification?  Maybe gamification can be defined more broadly than I’ve come to understand it.  If so, then I’m going to have to adjust my position, I guess, because activities, events, and triggers like The Markies drive exactly the type of behavior I always want for my team and customers.

Any of you who are more versed on gamification have any thoughts?

Headed out for Day 2 of LegalTech New York 2011 and thought I’d drop a quick rundown on my take from Day 1 for anyone that’s interested.

As expected, the most plentiful chocolate in the box is eDiscovery.  A tweet from Peter Buck (@backofthenapkin) described my sentiment perfectly, “#legaltech is like going to a foreign country if you R not a e-discovery maven.”  There certainly is no shortage of vendors to talk to about it and it permeates nearly every conversation I’ve been in thus far.

What was a bit surprising to me was the lack of Social Media sessions being held yesterday.  As I said, there were plenty of eDiscovery discussions, but I only saw one Social Media talk on the agenda.  When I poked my head in the room it wasn’t a huge audience and the most active part of the conversation was about Twitter follower counts…the discussion seemed a bit ‘non-attached’ to how I believe Social Media can benefit law firms. The lack of info about the topic kind of confirmed for me that the majority of firms, and lawyers, are not yet at a point of eager adoption.

Finally, my favorite part of LegalTech was in full force…reconnecting with customers, partners, and colleagues.  I’ve noticed that there seem to be many more CIO/CTO’s in attendance this year which I think is a good thing.  But, networking at these events and hearing straight from the customer about their challenges and successes is what conferences like this are all about for me…and it’s a communication point that no social media app can completely fill.

Now to see where and when #Tsnow-nami 2011 is going to strike and strand us in NYC. (Credit to @pnear for the Tsnow-nami tag…I was there and he was the first to coin the trending term 😉 )

Apologies to Mr. Gump… 🙂

Another year another LegalTech New York conference.  I’ve been coming to this show for the better part of the last decade and while it would be overstating things to say, “I always look forward to LegalTech,”…I guess I actually do.  For me, LegalTech is always kind of a barometer for what the story will be for legal technology until we reach August and the ILTA Conference.  There is such an over abundance of topics and technology that it can be easy to get lost in all of the noise.  Each year there always seems to be something new to catch the majority’s interest and I think that’s what entertains me the most hen getting mentally prepared for the experience.  I never know if I’ll get a fantastic chocolate covered toffee or crunchy nut…or bite into some oddly paired fruit jelly and chocolate combo that makes me cringe.

Ten years ago were the days of chocolate covered almonds…you couldn’t walk ten feet on the exhibitor floor without bumping into a time and billing or document management vendor.  I think three years ago was when I got a box of coconut filled candies; good for a quick snack, but they get tiresome after too many.  SharePoint was the talk of the town and how it was going to take over the world of legal technology.  While SharePoint has definitely arrived and is here to stay, it by no means has taken over…especially when firms really get into what document and records management according to Microsoft is all about.  Then two years ago there was Social Media at LegalTech; delicious, but messy, caramels.  I love caramels just as I really enjoy theorizing about the benefits social media can have in a law firm.  But, I don’t think the industry was quite ready for the discussion then…seems kind of like we’ve arrived now.  A quick glance at this year’s agenda shows that, like last year, the big candy in the box is eDiscovery.  This one seems to have legs as far as trade shows go, and I suspect we’ll continue to see it dominate for a few more years.  Good thing I like nougat inside my chocolate too.

So, while eDiscovery looks to be the story again this year and will let me enjoy that chewy center, I’ll keep my ear to the ground looking for that elusive mini Heath Bar and its toffee crunch.  Should I happen to find any, and if you like crunchy chocolate, check back here for updates throughout the show.

So, we’re halfway through ILTA 2010.  First impressions are that it is a complete turnaround from last year’s show; higher attendance, more conversations with customers, more interest in new technologies, etc.  The conference is at the Aria Hotel and Casino and this place is just stunning.  As always, ILTA provides a great opportunity to catch up with old friends, customers and colleagues…and make lots of new connections.  Say what you will about Social Media tools, nothing can ever replace the depth and level of information/knowledge exchange that comes from a good old face to face talk over coffee.

On the eDOCS front, we have had a lot of news this week….wouldn’t be a trade show for a vendor if we didn’t have ‘more news.’ 😉  Customers are excited and providing good feedback when looking at DM 5.3 and Office 2010.  If I had to bet money on it, I’d say that 2011 is going to be a good year for the MS Office business.  I know that the uptake of Office 2010 to date has been very slow, but everyone here is asking/talking about it.  Also getting a lot of face time with our customers is Open Text Social Workplace.  Now that we’re providing the integration with eDOCS to add documents to the collaborative experience it’s as if everyone’s eyes have been opened to the possibilities.  Firms are talking to us about two distinct approaches; using OTSW as an internal community and knowledge sharing solution (expertise locator), and using OTSW as a means of securely connecting with their clients and providing new access and customer value from the firm.

On Monday ILTA held the Open Text Peer Group Day which was very, very well attended.  If you’ve never been to ILTA, the Peer Groups are something owned and managed by the association itself.  We as vendors don’t set agendas, don’t provide content, in fact it is up to the Peer Group to invite us and decide what topics they would like us to speak to the group about.  Hearing comments like, ‘…it’s great to feel part of a real ecosystem again…’ is music to my ears.  There really is a tangible sense of ‘community’ around eDOCS and legal this year.  Two very active sessions during Peer Group Day were on customer testimonials on how SharePoint is being used in their firms and what that means for DM.  All three of the firms that spoke ended up in the same general position…there is much greater value in using SharePoint with you DMS as opposed to trying to make SharePoint your DMS.  Two of the three were very specific to say that their use of SharePoint and eDOCS was driving tangible value to their clients; that their clients were actually commenting on how much they liked the new extranet type applications these firms were exposing.  The other most active session for the Peer Group was on the topic of Mobility.  Many firms are already using our eDOCS WirelessDMS tools and many more are actively looking for solutions.  The surprise for me during this session was the number of firms who were actively pursuing solutions for Android.  Blackberry, iPhone, and iPad support yes, but I was not expecting the interest in Android.  Good thing we have that coming shortly too! 😉  Of course, the demo of the iPad client for eDOCS DM was a hit too.

So, that’s my halftime report, I now return you to your regularly scheduled twitter #ECM programming.  At this point, the primary question that keeps floating around in my head is this…

As a software vendor are we placing enough emphasis on features and user experience that create value for our customer’s customers vs. just thing about what features/solutions we think our direct customers need?


Food for thought for the flight home at the end of the week…

OK, for most of the last month those of us that play in the ECM playground have all been a buzz about SharePoint 2010 and the doom it spells for ‘legacy’ ECM vendors.  At the same time, I’ve seen ‘new’ (less than 7 years old) ECM vendors jump on the bandwagon of opportunity to take a shot at the stalwarts of the industry.  Whether we’re talking about a longtime vendor’s inability or ‘slowness’ to change its architecture, the commoditization of basic content services, or the pro’s and con’s of an open source model, to me it is all beginning to sound like the same boring noise….

“SharePoint has won…”

“Open Text tries to be a platform but can’t get all its acquired technologies in order…”

“EMC/Documentum has lost focus of selling an ECM platform in exchange for vertical case management solutions…”

“Open source let’s you test your implementation strategy before having to pay for it…”

It’s taken me a few weeks, but I’ve finally honed in on what is really bugging me about this virtual conversation.  It’s being had mostly by vendors and consultants (including SI’s, etc.) and very rarely is there input from actual customers of ECM.  At the end of the day for any of us who are blogging or tweeting about this subject, theorizing about what’s going to happen in our industry, isn’t it our customers who really have the final say?  We can banter around our opinions with each other, but I think it would be very valuable for us all, vendors/partners/consultants/customers, to share what real world decisions are being made instead of what we in the industry think is going to happen.  Isn’t that supposed to be the true value of all this social media and networking tools, to bring the whole community together?

So, to hold myself to this standard here are my thoughts on the effect SharePoint may have on the ECM industry.  I’ve based these on real conversations of the last 45 days with actual customers/users (AmLaw 200 law firms, US Federal Government, Global Media/Entertainment, State & Local Government, and a Global Consulting and Accounting firm) of ECM technologies (SharePoint, Open Text, Documentum, and Autonomy iManage):

• New Buyers of Basic Document and Records Management: For organizations of any size that, today, do not have a document management solution, SharePoint will be the de facto leader.  It is a natural extension of Office, it just makes sense.  The same is probably true for organizations first beginning to venture into the world of records management….especially the smaller ones and those not overly concerned with physical records.  Again, it just makes sense.  Does this mean that the legacy vendors or up and comers won’t take some of this business? No.  But, if anyone’s business case for growth is still based on an assumption that there is great opportunity here they are in trouble.  Enterprise, as in ‘the whole organization; every single piece of content’,’ Records Management is a different animal I’ll come to in a bit.  Open source alternatives here will thrive in local government and new companies that consider themselves technologically savvy and cutting edge.

• Existing Owners of Document and Records Management Applications:  As long as they don’t feel they are being gouged by their vendor, they’re probably not going to take on the expense of migration to a new platform.  I had one of the multi-billion dollar customer actually laugh at my suggestion that they might consider migrating at some point.  “Why would we do that,” was his response, “let’s talk about our three year vision.”  There simply is nothing so compelling about SharePoint to warrant this group throwing away all of the money they’ve invested in it for years.  Of course there are exceptions; those that do feel they are being gouged on maintenance, those that simply never saw value or were incessantly plagued with bugs, etc.  In these circumstances, I think SharePoint will be the ‘go to’ position as well.  That said, customers who have owned and used ECM technologies are a bit more educated and will probably give others a look as well.

  But, the obvious key here is value…the customer has to continue to see the value of their investment.  If they don’t, then the incumbent is toast and SP will likely eat them for breakfast.

• The Hybrids, Enterprise Records Management, and CMIS:  Many of the largest users of ECM today don’t know it, but CMIS will be the answer to many of their long time prayers.  Rarely do I speak with a customer today that does not already have more than one ECM technology in play.  Yet, they all have continuously looked for a way to unify them.  I think this is another area where SharePoint will greatly benefit…as well as the ‘legacy’ vendors.  I can’t count the number of times that I’ve spoken with a customer that has technology X in use as its official RM application but has very little up-take by end users beyond those involved with the RM practice by trade or those mandated to use it.  What both SharePoint and CMIS provide the legacies with is a way to truly execute an Enterprise RM Strategy.  SharePoint is probably the easiest application out there to get end users to use….they already use Office every day.  It’s not a stretch to believe that SharePoint can become the front end to nearly any and all ECM initiatives.  On the backend, the CMIS protocol(s) potentially allow an organization to surface the content in all of the disparate apps they may have in a consistent SharePoint UI while also providing the mechanism by which a single RM app could manage said content regardless of where it originated from.  Of course, in my opinion, a lot of that vision depends on how/if the CMIS standard evolves.  Laurence Hart (@piewords) has a tremendous discussion and wish list for CMIS 2.0 here http://wordofpie.com/2009/12/08/looking-at-cmis-1-0-thinking-of-2-0/ 

  To date, not a single Global 1000 customer that I’ve personally spoken to (at least 100 over the last 12 months) is seriously considering using SharePoint 2010 as an enterprise wide RM standard.  Does that mean some won’t someday?  No.  I’m just sharing actual facts from actual customer conversations.  Plenty are considering using SP 2010 for departmental RM initiatives and plenty of smaller companies are going this route, but for the big guys…as soon as you begin talking about more than office documents as records the SP discussion fades away.  This is where the longtime RM vendors can live in the RM space for the next 5 to 10 years.

I guess the one thing I’m trying to get across to my industry colleagues is that customers are still going to buy the solution they feel best fits their own individual needs.  No matter how many tweets we have for or against a particular vendor, no matter the amount of money spent on marketing, the ECM customers I speak to want a solution that works for them.  As much as I enjoy reading all of the conversation and viewpoints between all of us ‘in the industry,’ I really wish that our discussion in the ether could better involve the customers we all service.  As great as our social media tools are, I fear that the terrific dialogue we have is lost on the customers.  Are they not using these tools yet?  Are they just lurking?  What can we do, collectively, to bring them into our conversations?  I’d like to blog and write more about my thoughts and opinions on ECM, but I want it to be heard by my existing and future customers.  Without them, all this blog or #ecm Twitter streams are good for is getting me “known” by my peers.  That might help me get another job someday, but it certainly won’t help me grow my business.  For that, I’ll keep the personal conversations alive and well…after all, my golden rule has always been “People buy from People.”

My friend @cherylmckinnon has poked at me for a couple of years about blogging. As you can see from the 4 or 5 post here, I haven’t been too diligent in keeping up posts. Like many people I know I’ve been on the fence about blogging as an effective medium. Don’t get me wrong, I understand and value its place and effectiveness, but I’ve just never thought it is the right medium for me. Personally, I’,m a face to face meeting kind of guy. I like to look my audience in the eye and engage with them….plus there’s that instant feedback/gratification thing. That said, Cheryl finally convinced me a year or so ago to dip my toe in the Twitter pool and I actually kind of liked it. So, I thought maybe I’ll give blogging another try and see if I can stay more on top of it.

On my way, yesterday, to have a nice face to face with 200 or so customers, I read the following tweet from Cheryl:

“RM is the foundation for KM” – a message often lost in this era of noxious Compliance FUD. http://cli.gs/Q6WZn6“

To which I responded:

@CherylMcKinnon Completely agree that RM is foundation of KM, but implying that compliance is FUD is a bit extreme IMO

And, so I ask, is compliance still king of the business drivers for ECM? From my point of view, I hope it is or at least a crowned prince. There’s no question that times have changed, that the market demands have matured and expanded almost simultaneously. But, the implication that compliance is FUD is…well…extreme. To me, compliance is more than ensuring that I keep certain types of content a certain period of time as defined by a certain external law or governing body for fear of penalty. Compliance also extends to an enterprise’s self imposed guidelines or best practices. I talk to so many customers today who are concerned about the loss of knowledge as the older portion of their workforce enters retirement. Unfortunately, many of them are scrambling around now and trying to find ‘easy’ tools that will help capture and retain said knowledge before it’s gone. Well, hindsight is always 20/20 but I would argue that had the organization had a solid knowledge management program earlier, and been compliant with it, they may not be facing an issue as big as it is today.

Organizations embarking on their first ECM journeys today must include compliance as part of their total ECM strategy. Is it the only driver, no, certainly not. Years ago a financial institution may have told its employees, ‘you are required to store your documents in this software system whether you like it or not because if you don’t we’ll get fined by the SEC and then we’ll fire you.’ As President Obama outlines his plans for derivatives reform in NYC today, that may still be the case for my FinServ peeps, but that type of compliance statement only holds water for a narrow portion of the ECM market today. The compliance question that almost every customer I meet with is asking is, ‘how do I give my team the content tools they want and need and maintain the standards of security, privacy, and control set forth by my firm?’ I had this exact conversation this week with an AMLaw 200 firm in NYC who’s looking to bring the E2.0 tools their young lawyers are looking for into practice. To me, they are getting it right. They have their eyes open to what their users are asking for in terms of content mgmt. They have a traditional DM platform in place (not mine I’m sad to say). And, they are bringing in vendors to talk about things like social workplaces for collaboration, email management, and mobility. Most importantly, they want to know how/if these technologies can help them comply with their standards, those of the State Bar, and their clients.

A complete ECM strategy must at least include compliance as an equal to knowledge sharing and knowledge preservation. As Cheryl said, ‘RM is the foundation for KM,’ and there is a reason for that….compliance is important whether you’re complying with the FRCP or the NFL’s Code of Conduct. Maybe if the NFL had a solid content management and sharing platform in place, young Mr. Roethlisberger wouldn’t be worried about his job in Pittsburgh (sorry, NFL draft tonight couldn’t resist the reference…GO PATS!)

There’s a great little conversation, recently started by my former OT’er Cheryl Mckinnon and a friend of her’s, running around some ECM blogs out there. The premise is to tell the story of how you got started in the ECM world. You can read some of the ‘first ecm’ stories here http://wordofpie.com/2009/09/08/my-first-content-management-application/#comment-7087

Here’s mine…

I actually came to the ECM world via a very WCM focused perspective. My first ECM/WCM project was actually a set of home grown tools written in Perl. Around 1997-98 I was hired by a great start-startup named Interactive8 in NYC. Like many we were capitalizing on the dotcom bubble and had developed the online presence for several companies ahead of the curve in creating their online brand; A&E Television (biography.com, historychannel.com, etc.), M&M Mars, DeBeers Diamonds, Maybelline… Anyway, we had a creative team, a strategy team, and my technical team that was responsible for the light web development of the time (online quizzes, polls, and a cool e-comm store on a customized implementation of Intershop) and running our own hosting center. When I arrived, a typical day was creative folks mocking up screens, HTML/production folks making it into something browsers could view, and us writing Perl/MySQL apps and getting the stuff hosted and replicated. That obviously didn’t scale so we actually wrote some slick little apps that would do things like allow copywriters to save text files in a certain directory that a cron job would pick up and update relevant html files.

Well, capitalizing on the bubble…the tail end of the bubble, we merged with 7 other companies and did an IPO and formed Luminant Worldwide. One of the other 7 companies was Align Solutions from Houston where I met Mike Alsup, Quack, and colleagues. They quickly educated me on the in’s and out’s of DCTM and core docman. Soon after that I was on a project for a large telecomm where we integrated DCTM 4i, Verity K2, and Epicentric portal.

So, my ‘first’ I still have to give to our custom tools for wcm. My first ‘commercial’ ECM project goes to DCTM.

Great idea Cheryl and Laurence!