Likelihood to Recommend Legal team using this product helps the team to better access documents securely within their email app (Outlook) and the user experience to control the document is excellent and being able to make it private and isolate confidential documents during a court session is very important and iManage has met our requirements. Also, being able to access instantly from users' workstation/laptop devices is very important and iManage plugin for outlook has satisfied our Business requirements.
Read full review Square 9 Softworks is great in data management and flow. For us, they've done an excellent job with the Health Screening Tools, Cloud Storage/Management and Online Applications. It seems to be a very diverse product. I think because of that, you can talk with Square 9 Softworks about what you are envisioning to see if they are capable of it. I would not do that with many other products - they just don't have that flex.
Read full review Pros The full text searching feature, once implemented properly, is incredibly powerful. Integrates seamlessly with Outlook to reduce the number of pieces of software you need turning at any given time. Filing is relatively quick most of the time. Read full review Fast Manual indexing with what we consider the best in point-n-click OCR indexing. Webserver that incorporates Full-Text Content Searching, Workflow Queues, Full Document Management and Live document Signing on any mobile device or location. Fast workflow designers for rapid implementation Broad range of capture and information processing tools, easy to configure Loaded with essential security options Low price, and about 10X more powerful than MS SharePoint right out of the box. Multi-database support for a very low price with disaster recovery licensing, this is very rare in the industry. Read full review Cons Complicated setup. On initial installation it is cumbersome to configure on each workstation just to connect to service. Does not enforce structure. Once setting up structure, users can save outside of iManage Work and make their own files and folders under pre-configured system. Outlook is a finicky software, access to iManage Work depends on Outlook, nothing against iManage Work, but it sometimes has issues caused by the application it relies on. Read full review Some of the administrative/security configuration with Windows Active Directory can be tricky when managed by separate corporate IT personnel (alignment in strategy) User adoption with any new process can be challenging, but overall user friendly menus As Database sizes grow (200,000+ records) paging through records can be cumbersome, probably need to migrate to an archive process to offload some of the data. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We absolutely can't imagine not continuing software maintenance as there are always new additions that improve the system not to mention the excellent tech support when issues are encountered. Response times for troubleshooting are very quick and usually, my issue is resolved in less than an hour after connecting with support.
Read full review Usability Super simple software to operate and configure. Very granular permissions and controls. Browser based setup with everything and very intuitive visual workflow building makes it easy to set things up. Troubleshooting document workflow issues is also made easy via the batch manager when you can track each document as it moves through the workflow.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Square-9 can get this product out to you in almost the same hour your order it. We got ours very fast.
Read full review Performance With the PDF projected viewer, the document retrieval-to-display can drag for a second more than some systems, and the capture workflow if you overload a server array can also drag, but those are the only two issues we've ever seen with this product, and they are not serious issues at all.
Read full review Support Rating We had an issue a few years ago where a plug-in of some sort which allowed the viewing of PDFs got updated and then whenever some people previewed PDFs in iManage then Outlook would crash. My outlook crashed over 20 times in a single day once. It was a pretty bad time. I know one of our information technology professionals in another office worked non-stop with iManage to get it resolved, and it seemed like they did take the issue pretty seriously.
Read full review The support we received from Square 9 Softworks was exceptional. From deployment to implementation, we always felt supported. The team we worked with had patience and exceptional response time. They were amazing to work with, I always felt supported. No matter how simple or complex my question was they always delivered.
Read full review In-Person Training It would have been higher, but the training is a bit muted for the lesser qualified office equipment vendors who signed up as partners to sell and support it. The more experienced ECM vendors and customer end-users will find the training very good, but a bit slow.
Read full review Implementation Rating I think the implementation could have gone a little smoother than it did. Now that I know how to use the software, I could do it myself. I feel that as an organization, we could have been a little better prepared. If the consultant was more aware of what we were looking for, they could have assisted in setting up some workflows for us as per the contract. But because we were not prepared, the initial implementation process was a little painful. That said, adding a document management system to ANY business kinda means everyone has to re-think the way they do their work which can be difficult for some staff.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I have viewed several other document management system software, but iManage was already installed at my company before I started working here. For us, I think this is the right solution. Companies with a smaller number of employees or smaller document collections could find some other options that might suite their needs and budget better. We definitely want an on premises solution that provides all the security, tracking, searching, and integration issues iManage offers. Many of the other solutions have adopted cloud technologies only at this point and we are not ready to consider cloud storage due for our sensitive documents at this point.
Read full review A similar product I have used was Time Matters. For a Law Firm, I think Time Matters is more useful as it keeps track of everything for a client, including billing. However, since I now work for a legal department of a corporation, SmartSearch is definitley more useful. It is not possible to seperate the documents we have internally in neat client files. We have various miscellaneous documents for many different services and customers or vendors. SmartSearch allows us to organize in broad categories that make sense to internal employees using it and to make sure security is set on specific documents. Time Matters would not have been sufficient for our managers to have access to, since it uploads all documents to the file - some of which are confidential.
Read full review Scalability The scale-ability is quite good actually, but you need competent sales/support folks providing it to you, so the scale is set right for the demands of your system use. Some resellers are not good at doing this, some are fantastic. If you are scaled correctly at first implementation, you'll be very happy with this system.
Read full review Return on Investment A bit pricey but worth it once you know how to use it. It makes any document sharing easy and seamless which is priceless. Read full review OCR capabilities allow users to quickly and accurately index files without data errors from manually keying in data Administrators can update users access through active directory without ever opening Square 9 and without generating accounts in yet another system Users can find files needed without ever leaving their desk Read full review ScreenShots Square 9 Softworks Screenshots