New email system aids efficiency at law firm

Customer challenge

Eversheds LLP is one of the largest full service international law firms in the world with more than 4,000 people and over 2,100 legal advisers. With 28 offices in major cities across the UK, Europe and Asia, Eversheds provides services to the private and public sector business and finance community.

Business need

The ability to effectively manage key legal documents and client emails is essential for any law firm, and plays a critical role in delivering operational efficiency and compliance.

Eversheds' existing email system was based on a legacy application, which could no longer meet the needs of the business. As Malcolm Simms, IT Director at Eversheds, explains: "The environment was becoming harder to support but more importantly, it could not interoperate with new solutions that were critical to business growth. In particular, we were not able to roll-out a mobile email solution or enhance our document management capabilities."

As a result, Eversheds decided to embark on a complex IT upgrade project. This not only involved migrating 4,000 users and four terabytes of data to a new email platform but also rolling out a new operating system and Microsoft Office environment. "Project Evolution was a massive undertaking, which was critical to the future of the company," adds Malcolm. "It also had to be completed within a very tight timescale and with limited disruption."

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Solution

To ensure it minimised both implementation time and roll-out risks, Eversheds decided to deliver Project Evolution in partnership with an external provider. "We didn't have the necessary resources in-house," comments Malcolm. "Computacenter had a proven track record in complex system migrations and could help fill our skills gap." Computacenter joined the project team in November 2004 and had just over a year to help complete the roll-out.

How Computacenter helped

Before the implementation of the new infrastructure, which is based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Office XP and Exchange 2003, Eversheds had to complete an audit of its IT estate before they embarked on a project of this scale.

Computacenter helped Eversheds carry out a full application discovery and analysis across its 11 UK sites. David Matthews, a Computacenter Solutions Specialist, comments: "By evaluating its existing application assets, Eversheds was able to identify ways to reduce duplication and licensing costs. We were also able to suggest application packaging options to improve future efficiency."
Due to the short timeframe, Computacenter helped Eversheds develop a series of 'rapid' deployment processes to help reduce implementation time.

Based on its unique rapid migration suite for core Microsoft applications, these solutions help automate the implementation process and overcome common upgrade challenges, such as data migration and the transfer of user settings. This approach enabled Eversheds to migrate up to 200 users per night over a 16-week period.

Results

With Computacenter's help, Eversheds was able to complete the £3 million infrastructure upgrade in December 2005. The integration of the new document management solution quickly followed, as Malcolm explains: "The way we manage documents is crucial to the business. Thanks to the new system, we can now centrally store all client emails and documents, which helps with information sharing and knowledge retention as well as compliance."

The new email platform also supports remote access, 800 Eversheds' staff now use BlackBerrys. "Our email system is not only more efficient but also more intuitive to use. This and the improved stability have helped to increase the firm's productivity," comments Malcolm. Email is an increasingly important tool for organisations, with industry experts estimating that 75 per cent of a typical company's intellectual property is contained in email.

"The Computacenter team displayed a 'can-do' attitude throughout the project, but was never cavalier and always worked through problems with us," adds Malcolm. "It would normally take up to six months to bring a technology partner on board for this type of project but Computacenter was quickly able to deliver value."