When a firm is considering adopting a document management system such as Worldox, the first question many attorneys ask is “what is it going to cost us?” Typically much further down the list is the better question: “what will it do for us?” These questions encapsulate the “cost center” vs. “profit engine” debate.
Those who take the cost center approach, frequently that body of attorneys who are too busy to stop wasting time, are being short sighted.
What is the Return on Investment (ROI) on document management? Typically up to 500% or more the first year and much more thereafter. Sound unbelievable? Let’s take a look.
A document management system such as Worldox offers a single, searchable electronic database of all the firm’s documents, including scans and emails. This is a tremendous time saver in terms of organizing and finding documents. Say a user saves 6 minutes a day in increased efficiency. That’s a half hour a week or 25 hours a year. For pro forma billing rate of $200 per hour, that’s $5,000 per year (double that for attorneys billing $400 per hour or more). Of course, not all this time can be translated directly to billable hours. However, enough of it can that it makes a significant difference across the firm as a whole. For software that costs about $800-1,000 per user to install, the ROI is considerable. For the second and following years, the per user cost of Worldox is likely to hover around $250/user, with the time savings staying the same or even increasing as users get more efficient.
And that’s not the only advantage. I was recently contacted by a firm interested in Worldox. A quick search revealed that I had been in contact with them about eight years ago, and had even given them a proposal for Worldox (which went nowhere at the time). The partner at the firm was extremely impressed by my instant ability to find eight-year-old documents. “I could never do that” he said. Or say a client calls with a question about a document. You now have the ability to locate the document and the exact passage in question in under a minute or so while you are still on the phone. No more of the dreaded “let me check on that and call you back.” Better client service. More satisfied clients.
There are also advantages in terms of internal firm administration. Say an associate leaves. Without document management how do you locate emails they may have sent or received concerning a given matter? With the emails saved to Worldox, they are instantly available to new people assigned to a matter. Firm administration becomes considerably easier, ethical walls or legal holds are trivial to set up.
In short, with a DMS you will save measurable amounts of time, increase responsiveness to clients, make firm administration more efficient. Worldox should best be viewed as a profit center.