Tag Archives: workflow

A product Leonardo da Vinci would be proud of!

This second post looking at workflow and process orientated software brings me to a product from IntApp and their aptly titled “Flow”. IntApp Flow is borne out of their “Open” product which supports the Intake and Conflicts process in law firms. Flow is a lot more open and can be used to automate a number of processes or workflows.

Underpinning it is the IntApp Integration Builder product (as with a number of the IntApp solutions), this handles the integration into a number of Legal systems, it is likely there are integrations for the majority of legal systems you’re using. Update: From the looks of the IntApp website this product has now been rebranded to IntApp Integrate, a list of some of the key applications and systems is on their website here.

On top of this integration is a simple interface for building forms and modelling workflows, you can quickly knock up a form to capture information or a trigger to initiate a process and then create a complex workflow that triggers other systems, notifies people, gets authorisation at key points etc. The beauty is the simplicity of the interface and I guess the aim here is that once all the integrations are set up a business analyst is able to build up the workflow realtime with the lawyer and have something ready to run almost immediately. As Leonardo da Vinci said “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication“.

There are other features like dashboards, metrics, reporting available to help manage the workflows or monitor KPI’s. Overall it’s a really simple product and that is a real positive. I’ve been in IT long enough to realise things can look easy in demos but when it comes to implementation you really start to see the reality, but for those that have already gone through a project to implement integration builder the hard part to me looks to be done as I’d imagine getting all the integrations correct is the most difficult part.

For those law firms looking at business process re-engineering it’s worth having a look at flow. If you haven’t already got integrations built between your legal systems then it may just help.

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Best thing since….well for me since Hatton Blue. Legal IT for the iOS generation!

“Workflow” was my introduction into Legal IT, after a number of years in the utility industry where my work included; the introduction of VAT on your fuel bills for those in the UK and also ensuring the customer service dept. were aware of faults affecting people calling from within Yorkshire. My first few years in legal involved looking at personal injury workflows, case management systems but there was some aspects of workflow built in. The product under the bonnet (hood for US readers) was the Vectus product from Hatton Blue. Since then I’ve not really been involved in workflow technology. However over the last couple of months I’ve come across two products that are really nice entries into the Legal IT landscape and show how far the products have come since the early days. These aren’t big heavyweight BPM (business process management) solutions but neat solutions designed with legal in mind.

The first I’m going to cover in this post and the second I’ll highlight in another post in a few days time.

This particular product I could have been dealing with firsthand if I’d made a different career choice back in 2010, however my first view of this product was through an invite to a launch briefing in London. The venue was intriguing as “Bentley’s Oyster Bar and Grill” is not your average place to catch a software product demo, but then maybe this is the answer to my vendor hall woes 🙂

The products name is “sharedo” by a company called Slicedbread. One of a new wave of Legal IT companies that have a bit of a silicon valley start up feel to them, both in their approach to tech and the quality look and feel to their products. A welcome trend! To call this a modern day Hatton Blue is doing sharedo a massive disservice, it is born our of an adaptive case management system but through a number of iterations and an 8 year long R&D cycle what we have is much more.

Underneath is now an “intelligence based” system, an IT technology called “complex event processing” (CEP), a method of tracking and analysing (processing) streams of information (data) about things that happen (events), and deriving a conclusion from them. All this is wrapped up in a slick modern interface. No more Windows 95 “look and feel” to Legal IT systems with their grey “Windows”, this is more an iOS or Windows 10 feel to Legal IT.

You get the feeling that as a lawyer this system would be a joy to use, all the key information at your fingertips with the data analysis and intelligence to help you make decisions. And the product is designed to provide a unique feel to the clients as well, as the marketing blurb says “When you buy a new mini you are presented with a product configurator with literally thousands of options enabling you to choose your unique customer experience and also unique price. Why shouldn’t you be able to configure your legal service in the same way?”

To analyse the data the slicebread team use Microsoft’s PowerBI which fits nicely with the look and feel they are trying to achieve with the product as well as being a really powerful reporting tool.

Clearly the product is suited to personal injury work and you can see the fit with those firms looking at the insurance markets, however as they say “Whilst I have lots of features that are applicable for law and law alone I am not a platform for legal per se” and you could see how it could be applied to other legal processes, in fact during lunch I did discuss possibilities for using it for internal business processes within law firms and you could see with a little bit of work it could potentially apply to these as well.

As mentioned this is one of a number of new products from new Legal IT vendors that are starting to freshen up the legal market, long may it continue!

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