UK legal firm Winckworth Sherwood is moving to replace its legacy document management system with a customised SharePoint solution created by using MacroView Document Management Framework (DMF), SharePoint add-on software developed by Sydney-based MacroView Business Technology.

The new SharePoint-based DMS stores, shares and manages the law firm’s growing volume and variety of electronic document types including email, drawings, plans and PDF files.

A feature of the solution that is proving very popular with users is the tight and intuitive integration into Outlook that is provided by MacroView DMF. This enables drag-and-drop saving of emails and attachments as well as files from the file system. Team collaboration is also enhanced by the way DMF displays SharePoint Team Sites within Outlook.

While working in Outlook and in other parts of Microsoft Office users can now quickly find and retrieve documents, thanks to a customised interface to SharePoint search facilities that is also provided by MacroView DMF.

Christel Aguila, Head of IT at Winckworth Sherwood, comments: “The capabilities of our bespoke DMS, which we had been using for the past 12 years, were being stretched, especially when creating and sharing different file types; this was affecting the productivity of both fee earners and support staff. We required a more flexible DMS with strong email handling capabilities and the ability to manage different electronic file types.”

“Using a SharePoint-based DMS has already started to reduce IT management and annual maintenance costs; had we selected an alternative legal-sector DMS product those costs would have been much higher”, Aguila continues.

The implementation of the new SharePoint-based DM solution was handled by ClearPeople, MacroView’s London-based Partner. ClearPeople worked in partnership with Winckworth Sherwood’s IT team to deploy the new solution in the Private Client Department in mid-2010 before now commencing a company-wide rollout in January 2011.

MacroView Managing Director, Noel Williams notes: “The Winckworth Sherwood deployment confirms that SharePoint is a viable platform for document management and that MacroView DMF extends the usability and functionality of SharePoint to the point where it a real alternative to a traditional document management system.”