“Having undertaken a relatively successful trial of ICSA’s BoardPad product we are currently considering their proposed contract, the term of which is three years. Whilst the system seems relatively stable from an end user perspective (i.e. the Board, who are very content with ease of access and use), the Secretarial team has encountered a number of technical issues when uploading papers which makes me somewhat wary about a lengthy contractual commitment. Has anyone been successful in negotiating a shorter term with ICSA? An indication of any system issues encountered and/or views on the quality of the technical support provided would also be appreciated.”
We also use Google but sadly it is only convenient for purely internal documents since most external contacts are in the Microsoft world and the facility to track accept and reject changes to drafts does not survive conversion between worlds. Even for other uses of documents time has to be spent converting to and from Microsoft or pdf formats for interaction with the normal business world. We have also not been able to find a document management system that works with Google documents and thus work in a dual world – retaining Microsoft products for legal matters.
Not a matter management system per se, but we have recently moved from Microsoft products over to Google. We use Gmail, Google Sheets and Google Docs instead of Outlook, Excel, and Word respectively. As you’d imagine, the search facility is very powerful, and mail and documents can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection – it makes working remotely very easy indeed. You can set up folders within your Google Drive, and “share” these with the relevant people who need access. It’s great for conference calls etc, as multiple people can all work in the same document in real time. Emails can be saved as PDF files very quickly and then added to the relevant folder in your Google drive, meaning it’s also a great option for anyone looking to go paperless.