Full-Service Belgian Law Firm, Lydian, Embraces the iManage Cloud with IRIS Nederland

IRIS Nederland, a specialist in providing solutions for content services and workflow automation for knowledge professionals, has been selected by Lydian to migrate from iManage on-premise to the iManage Cloud.

Headquartered in Brussels, with additional offices in Antwerp and Hasselt, Lydian is firmly established as a leading, independent law firm in Belgium and beyond. Providing a full-service offering, through a blend of transactional law expertise and litigation skills, Lydian strives to add true value to its clients. Since being founded in 2001, Lydian has grown to a 120 strong team, including 85 lawyers. As a technologically innovative business, the firm is regularly recognised by major Legal Directories such as Legal 500, Chambers, ILFR, Trends Legal Awards and WTR1000 for its achievements and performance.

For many years, Lydian has built an effective and efficient document management solution using the iManage suite of products, supported throughout by IRIS as its chosen implementation and support partner. The solution captures, securely stores and manages the vast quantity of documentation related to every matter the firm deals with, as well as all internal documents. Because of Lydian’s appetite to embrace the latest technologies, to ultimately benefit its clients and overcome specific challenges, the firm made the decision to move to the cloud.

Key to Lydian’s success is providing the levels of service its clients expect, at a price point that is competitive. To achieve this, Lydian constantly looks for ways to improve service levels using technology and automation. Ensuring business continuity is central to this objective, ensuring systems availability. However, the on-premise solution meant that windows of down time were being experienced to facilitate maintenance or upgrades.

Dimitri Duwaerts, IT Engineer at Lydian explained further, “We wanted to ensure that our staff always have access to the information they need to best serve our clients. iManage Cloud provides this, regardless of where our staff are, with no down time due to server maintenance. We no longer perform server maintenance ourselves, easing the burden on our support staff. Plus, we don’t have to maintain on-premise backups, further saving time and money.”

During the period of change, Lydian also moved from a Citrix desktop environment to one where staff use laptops, providing greater flexibility and lower IT support and maintenance overhead.

Having previously introduced new capabilities around mobility and sharing, Lydian once again looked at how they could further optimise business processes, to maintain a competitive position in the cost sensitive legal market.

“We need solutions that help us achieve that, whilst making the daily working lives of our lawyers and staff less complex. iManage Cloud helps us by pushing some of the complexity of managing documents into the background, so users are free to concentrate on what they need to do.”

IRIS was engaged once again to design and implement the updated solution, leveraging their extensive knowledge and experience of the legal market to meet Lydian’s needs.

Protecting sensitive content, for example intellectual property and knowledge, is an increasing complex task. The need to detect, intervene and prevent data loss, providing up to date analytics and data governance is now being taken care of by iManage Threat Manager.

“We are better able to meet our compliance needs, including data protection, thanks to iManage Threat Manager. It helps us protect ours and our clients’ sensitive information from internal and external threats by continually monitoring behaviour, activity and alerting us. It enables us to meet audit requirements and helps to spot omissions too, where perhaps a required action or document has not been completed,” added Duwaerts.

Collaboration continues to be an important factor of providing outstanding customer service, but all within necessary compliance frameworks, with actions recorded in a comprehensive audit trail. iManage Share allows single, multiple, or whole packages of documents to be shared in a secure way with external parties, in particular clients.

“Part of being competitive is working effectively with clients in an optimal way. iManage Share allows us to make documents available in a secure way to a client at a single click. We can collaborate with them remotely, even making real-time changes to documents that both parties can see immediately. This helps us build even stronger relationships with clients, providing client-lawyer proximity, even when we cannot meet face-to-face, crucial in the recent COVID-19 pandemic,” said Koen Poncelet, COO at Lydian.

Lydian also use iManage Cloud to store and manage internal documents, such as HR, finance, IT and project management files. For example, during projects with IRIS, documents are not exchanged via email, but shared through iManage Share, ensuring everyone involved had access to the very latest version of documentation.

“By using iManage Share, we are always sure that there is just one version of the truth. This saves time, makes collaboration easier and eliminates the risk of misunderstandings due to uncontrolled versions of documents being circulated,” explained Poncelet.

As in the past, Lydian had no hesitation in turning to IRIS to make the transition to iManage Cloud and further extend the solutions capabilities.

“We view IRIS as a partner, not a vendor or supplier in the traditional sense. Their input is always pragmatic, open and honest. This means we always know where we stand, which is important to us. It’s testament to this relationship that we continue to build on the mutual trust we have for each other, built over many years.” said Poncelet.

User acceptance has been high and user reactions have been positive. By involving users from the start, helps ensure that changes meet user needs and expectations.

Effective document management for the legal profession is a necessity. However, making the move to the cloud with iManage and IRIS was about more than just features and functions for Lydian. The firm has been able to achieve its objectives around business continuity for its staff, ultimately for the benefit of its customers. It has been able to move away from reliance on an in-house data centre, along with the overheads of managing the solution themselves.

“As well as greater availability, we have also been able to improve performance, with much improved search capabilities. We now plan to further optimise iManage Threat Manager and iManage Drive to provide even greater flexible working, including offline. We won’t stop there though, as we are now planning to implement iManage Security Policy Manager to secure and protect sensitive information.” concluded Duwaerts.

IRIS is a leading information management solutions provider, operating in the EMEA region for over 25 years. We are proud to be part of Canon Benelux and offer strategic advice, software solutions, system integrations, and technical support to a wide range of industries, including legal, accounting, financial services, and large enterprises.

Our focus is on intelligent information management, and we offer a comprehensive range of solutions that includes document digitization, content management, knowledge and business process management. We work closely with leading technology providers such as iManage, Litera-Microsystems, BRYTER, and Co-Flo to offer the most advanced and innovative software solutions on the market.

At IRIS, we pride ourselves on providing a personalized and tailored approach to each client’s unique needs and challenges. Our team of highly skilled consultants, developers, and support staff are passionate about helping companies optimize their information management processes. Our commitment to excellence has resulted in numerous successful projects and satisfied clients.