Microsoft 365 as a Knowledge Management System for Legal Executives

Keith Vallely, vice president and senior guide with Epona, shares insights on how Epona has motivated and impacted the corporate authorized place and what sets them apart from rivals in the document management house.

CCBJ: Chat to us about Epona, your job in the legal house, and how you function with company legal groups.

Keith Vallely: As Vice President and Senior Guide at Epona United states, a division of Epona, my position is to broaden our profits during the North American marketplace, including implementations of our Agreement Management, Doc Administration, E-Mail Administration and Know-how Administration Techniques that are primarily based on the Microsoft System. It also indicates, of training course, raising the variety of employees and increasing our entire procedure.

What Epona does, is acquire the Microsoft 365 surroundings and make it a document/deal/email/knowledge administration procedure, for the Company lawful house, as nicely as for Enterprises and Regulation Corporations. We commence out by configuring the material management system SharePoint to run as a doc administration program and from there we sort of snap on, if you will, agreement existence cycle administration, e mail management and know-how management capabilities so that an enterprise or corporate lawful department can use the powers that are now designed into the Microsoft 365 system, together with workflow, Electricity BI, the whole 9 yards. So, for all intents and functions, we are a turnkey solution provider to the company ecosystem, which is ideal for enterprises and company lawful departments that are now utilizing the Microsoft platform and want to take entire advantage of their financial commitment.

Remember to communicate to us about how Epona has introduced price to the corporate lawful room in latest yrs?

A single of our finest achievements, in addition to the sheer range of clients we’ve added, is how we’ve aided individuals shoppers grow their use of Microsoft 365 and insert to their individual productiveness. One of the excellent matters about the Microsoft platform is it is a tremendously strong LEGO set. The platform isn’t totally designed out. There is a good deal of ability that a impressive imagination and a impressive IT division can use to fundamentally configure and produce a solutions set that can in shape practically any necessity for a organization.

What this fundamentally usually means is Epona walks into corporate environments, with their one of a kind specifications, and in partnership with the IT section, assists to integrate their current programs into Microsoft 365, Groups, Microsoft Business and more. I’m especially proud of the items that we’re capable to provide to our company authorized companions, these as deal management methods built-in with Teams, or information administration methods integrated with acknowledged and straightforward-to-use purposes like Microsoft Term and Microsoft Outlook.

It’s been seriously amazing to come back a couple of many years afterwards and come across out how these apps that we originally deployed are now staying made use of in the company to make points much better for the men and women who are using electric power in a location, or getting people out of jail who never belong there, or delivering professional medical expert services in new ways. It is just truly exciting to see how the get the job done that we’re undertaking have authentic lifestyle implications downstream for every day people today. That’s actually what this is all about. I do recognize, of program, there is the bits and the bytes and the pounds and the cents, but when it will come right down to it, we’re out there seriously trying to make people’s life better. And that the use of our technologies to make Microsoft systems work better for company lawful departments is definitely type of awesome.

Epona has developed significantly around the earlier number of several years. To what do you attribute this?

Likely the one most significant motive, was that individuals want to operate from their houses because of to COVID-19. This has modified the way and system of the way people today perform now. Microsoft 365 and using cloud companies has turn into ubiquitous. This drove a good deal of alter for corporate entities and, of training course, regulation companies which, in change, has driven a enormous quantity of advancement for us.

Candidly talking, we were being by now on a progress trajectory ahead of the market place shifted for the reason that of the outstanding team at Epona. Each member of our group is not just very good at what they do, but also cares about their shoppers. In some cases the major problem we have is being aware of when to say “enough.” I know I shouldn’t say this, but occasionally my team cares a minor little bit also much. At times they just require to cease doing the job, go dwelling and take a break. It is the weekend, you know!

But the other matter is we are really good about producing sure that we supply great merchandise. It’s a truism in the software company the shoppers are normally focused on what is not working. But the huge majority of the products and solutions that we supply are virtually constantly doing the job. From time to time there will be a bug or glitch, but by and large, our solutions operate and are kept up-to-day. The exact can not be mentioned for our rivals, most of whom need that clients’ Microsoft Office suite be stored several years guiding the update cycle. In our problem, we ordinarily require that you preserve your Microsoft Business office up-to-day. It is a completely various paradigm. And because of that, the latest capabilities, the latest tremendous-neat whiz-bang new things is in which you require to be with us. Now, I comprehend that is a little bit of a paradigm change for folks, but that is a single of the other good issues about our business.

What sets Epona aside from competition in the document management place.

Initially and foremost your documents, your e-mails, all of your content material, will not exist in an Epona setting. It will normally exist in your tenant room, less than your handle. This signifies you will generally have 100 per cent command of your material as it will continue being in your surroundings. That means no seller lock. This is an tremendous difference from all our rivals, and the major purpose that 20 percent of the Fortune 100 are already Epona shoppers. This also is a primary differentiator when it comes to compliance and stability. These a few items make us as different as night and day from other written content management service suppliers.

Staying in the Microsoft cloud with Epona indicates you will get compliance, stability, and documents all as component of the Microsoft compliance heart versus our competition, where by you will be using their stability designs which are partly reliant in some sort on Microsoft, but as an externality. The easy respond to is you are heading to be greater off putting all of your information in a Microsoft atmosphere. And that is why corporate entities want Epona. It’s a one-cease, solitary-option platform.

Also, when we converse about Teams integration with the Epona alternative compared to all other competitors, once again all of your written content will exist strictly in the Microsoft system. Furthermore, updates, upgrades and all integrations on the Epona system are in the Microsoft paradigm, which signifies you will be working with the Microsoft update paradigm compared to the choice paradigms of the other third events. This is an monumental differentiator.

And finally, the Epona alternative is also considerably extra price helpful than the other solutions. In the Epona paradigm, there is an initial upfront expense to get set up in the Microsoft tenant and licensing expenses going forward from there. In the other remedy sets, you will be shelling out for storage and other points that add to your expenditures that are not component of the Epona answer for the reason that, after again, you are storing your articles in the Microsoft tenant, which you currently shell out for. These separators are some of the important distinctions concerning Epona’s option and all the other folks.

If there is a person factor that your shoppers, or men and women discovering Epona as a option, should really know, what would that be?

That no one matches our level of customer service. The remark we listen to most from clients who’ve appear to us from our rivals is that that didn’t come to feel cared for. Epona cares for its clients—a large amount. And we care as much about the 3-user law business as we do the 2,000-user law business or the 450-user corporate legal office. I assume that could be the one most significant cause we have grown.