gillian – Repstor

Intapp Announces Plan to Acquire Repstor

Introducing New Collaboration and Content Capabilities
Backed by Seamless Microsoft 365 Integration

Acquisition to Bring Secure, Frictionless Collaboration, and
Microsoft Teams Management to Professional and Financial Services Firms

PALO ALTO, Calif. — May 4, 2021 — Intapp, a leading provider of industry-specific, cloud-based software solutions that enable connected professional and financial services firms, today announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Repstor, creator of Microsoft 365-based enterprise content management and team collaboration tools. The transaction is subject to regular and customary closing conditions and is expected to close within the next 30 days.

Headquartered in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Repstor specializes in purpose-built cloud solutions that enhance Microsoft Teams, Microsoft SharePoint, and Microsoft Outlook. Repstor solutions help professional and financial services firms get the most out of their Microsoft 365 investments. The software offers improved information governance and security while boosting productivity by providing industry-specific templates that span firms’ deal, matter, and engagement lifecycles. More than 285 organizations around the world use Repstor solutions to manage critical information and help professionals engage with extended partners.

“Repstor powers connected firms, breaking down silos with context-aware collaboration that puts all of a firm’s content and insights in a single, secure place,” said Mark Holman, Chief Strategy Officer at Intapp. “We’re seeing continuing expansion in firms’ use of Microsoft 365 — and specifically Microsoft Teams — for enhanced collaboration and document management. Adding Repstor capabilities to our OnePlace and DealCloud solutions will allow firms using our solutions to better collaborate and access content to boost productivity and improve outcomes across the dealmaking and engagement lifecycle, from strategy through origination and execution.”

In addition to streamlined firmwide collaboration and document lifecycle management, the solution will leverage Intapp ethical walls capabilities to enable rights management, supporting secure workflows with firms’ internal and external collaborators.

“Intapp is a leading provider of cloud-based software designed for the unique needs of partner-led firms, and we’re incredibly excited to be part of this team,” said Alan McMillen, CEO of Repstor. “Our two companies share a vision for a future where truly connected firms — including people, processes, and data — can drive better outcomes for their clients. Together, we want to be the partner for firms looking to empower their team members and gain a competitive advantage through technology.”

Christian Rast, Global Head of Technology and Knowledge at KPMG international, a mutual client of Intapp and Repstor, said: “KPMG International is pleased to see these two great companies and their technologies growing together. All of their solutions are purpose built for the professional services market; by enhancing Microsoft’s cloud platform with Intapp solutions, they’ll help users excel at digital transformation. Our member firms look forward to leveraging the combined technology power of Repstor and Intapp to accelerate the success of our work and our clients in the professional services industry.”

About Intapp

Intapp makes the connected firm possible. We help professional and financial services firms better connect their people, processes, and data through AI-powered software solutions. Trusted by approximately 1,600 of the world’s premier private capital, investment banking, legal, accounting, and consulting firms, Intapp offers an end-to-end solution purpose-built to help modernize these firms. Intapp facilitates greater team collaboration, digitizes complex workflows to optimize deal and engagement execution, and leverages proprietary AI to help nurture relationships and originate new business. Intapp helps firms increase profitability and investment returns, operate more efficiently, and better manage risk and compliance. For more information, visit intapp.com and connect with us on Twitter (@Intapp) and LinkedIn.

Major US law firm Nelson Mullins deploys Repstor ‘easy button’ to deliver matter centricity, privacy control & governance as Teams becomes the firm’s default workspace

The American Law 100 firm, which recently deployed Microsoft 365, sees Teams as the key to coordinating matter management, knowledge sharing and client collaboration in one place – with full privacy and information compliance control delivered by Repstor for Teams

Belfast, April 9^th, 2021 – Repstor, the Microsoft 365-based information management specialist, has announced that prominent US law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP has selected Repstor for Teams to support its transition to Microsoft Teams as its primary workspace for attorneys and paralegals. Repstor will provide the client matter-centric management for content, as well as privacy and information compliance controls, that will enable the firm to exploit Teams to its full potential.

Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP (better known as Nelson Mullins), headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina, is one of the largest law firms in the US with 26 offices across the country, from Boston and New York to Miami and Atlanta. It provides advice and counsel to private individuals and large businesses, across a broad range of practice areas. In 2020, American Lawyer ranked Nelson Mullins as the 68th largest law firm in the US based on gross revenue.

The firm’s IT team strives to stay 6-12 months ahead of the needs of its users, and had already identified the transformative potential of Microsoft Teams before the pandemic struck. But it had come up against a problem: Teams’ lack of inherent support for matter-centric ways of working and organising content. When the impact of COVID-19 triggered new demand for people to work from home, activating the transition to Teams became more urgent.

“We had been a Skype environment previously, and wanted to move to Teams for all aspects of communication anyway having rolled out Microsoft 365 across the firm. But the difficulty was that Teams doesn’t have matter-centricity built in,” explains David Worth, Nelson Mullins’ CIO. “To get buy-in from our attorneys and prevent chaos as they tried to organise and find the right Teams for collaboration by client or matter, we needed a more intuitive and controlled user experience.”

A trusted legal industry-focused management consulting firm which had been providing consultancy to Nelson Mullins, suggested Repstor for Teams. The software, which runs natively in Microsoft 365, provides optimized matter-centric capabilities and controls for Teams, in a familiar user experience.

“As well as offering all the controls and functionality we needed as a law firm, and that user-friendly experience to keep our professionals happy, Repstor brought that depth of experience of working with law firms, that understanding of our needs, and that ability to talk our language,” David notes.

“Importantly, Repstor also readily integrates with NetDocs and other DMSs, with Aderant, our practice management system and Intapp, our ethical walls solution. In other words, they were going to be able to cater for everything we needed.”

Repstor’s content management, governance and privacy controls will be important as Nelson Mullins pursues its wider goals – to make Teams the place where client matter management and file-sharing happens, giving professionals a single window on their work and reducing email reliance.

“Although the initial motivation for moving to Teams is for communications – chat, conference-calling, and screen-sharing – we soon realised the scope to do so much more with it, and Repstor will help us realise that,” David says. “We’re an Outlook shop and traditionally attorneys’ work is dominated by email, but Teams is shifting that paradigm.

“I also see Teams become a quasi-replacement for intranets, supported by Repstor technology. With direct integration with our DMS, and even our financial system, our people will be able to ‘live’ in Teams and do everything from there. What’s great is that we have the right set-up with Repstor and the right advisors around us to work out how to make that look and feel.”

Once fully implemented, Repstor for Teams will be used by 1,600 professionals across Nelson Mullins’ national operations. “People are beating down my door to get access to this, and that demand is ubiquitous from across the firm – something I haven’t witnessed before in my 30-year tenure,” David notes. “Rolling out Teams, by practice area, will be our biggest project for this year.

“This is a chance to transform knowledge sharing across our 26 offices. When this is done our professionals will have one place to share knowledge and experiences, and will be able to find and consume what they need when they need to. I see Teams, optimized by Repstor, as the first real collaboration platform for law firms. It will be attorneys’ first real opportunity to collaborate with clients too, without the need to build an extranet which would be a lot of work. It will make them more nimble, able to address clients’ needs more swiftly.

“Repstor is our ‘easy’ button,” David concludes. “As CIO, I don’t have to worry about figuring out how to manage the archiving or the compliance, as Repstor takes all of that pain away. Repstor are so aligned with us, it’s fantastic. They understand our goals and are providing excellent guidance. Taking this forward is proving a very enjoyable experience.

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The explosive rise of Microsoft 365 in mid-tier law firms: a panel discussion

In February 2021, senior directors of two mid-sized UK law firms – Brachers and Conexus Law – came together with legal market advisor Derek Southall and Sheila Gormley, VP of Legal Solutions at Repstor, for a virtual discussion on the significant and growing impact of Microsoft 365 for transforming the way legal teams operate.

As well as debating Microsoft’s substantial footprint in the sector, the panel gave their perspectives on rising trends among law firms including IT consolidation, dispersed operating models, and the appetite to increase knowledge re-use, operational intelligence and process automation.

Salisbury chartered accounting firm Fawcetts selects Repstor as the basis for transforming its working practices

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UK200 Group peer Armstrong Watson gave Repstor for Accounting a rave review, inspiring Fawcetts to look beyond its immediate priority to improve email and document management using Outlook and SharePoint, to a roadmap for broader improvements harnessing Microsoft 365

Belfast, March 24^th , 2021 – Repstor, the Microsoft 365-based information management specialist, has announced that Fawcetts, one of Salisbury’s most established chartered firms, has chosen Repstor for Accounting™ to transform its email and document management, and in due course its wider working practices.

Fawcetts is a mid-size accounting firm employing five partners, four client directors and a team of 40 highly-qualified and experienced staff, who provide a range of accountancy services to small businesses from a single office location in central Salisbury.

Although the pandemic increased the urgency around Fawcetts’ digital transformation plans, the firm had been looking for a suitable email and document management solution for several years, but had struggled to find anything “fit for purpose for the 21^st century, or for accounting specifically.”

“Despite there being lots of document management solutions out there, we couldn’t find anything that would allow us to retain our existing filing structures and retain control of our own data,” says Fawcetts partner James Hayes.

That was until a peer firm recommended Repstor, which provides comprehensive content management capabilities -optimised for accounting firms – on top of Microsoft 365. James is chair of the Technology & Innovation forum at the UK200 Group of practicing chartered accountants, an active peer network that Fawcetts belongs to. When he sought advice from the network about a suitable and modern DMS, Toby Woodhead, Head of Technology at another accounting firm, Armstrong Watson, suggested Repstor based on his own recent experience.

Armstrong Watson deployed the Repstor for Accounting suite during the pandemic, and its reported benefits are already legendary in accounting circles. “Everyone has heard what they’ve done,” James says. “We had a lengthy and fascinating chat and I was left in no doubt that this was the way we needed to go. We already knew what we wanted but having this ringing endorsement from a firm that we know and trust, confirmed our choice of Repstor.”

Fawcetts had rolled out Microsoft 365 across the firm in 2020, so it made sense to build on this investment. James also wanted to minimise any potential disruption to the team, who, like most of us “groan when new software is introduced.” In both of these contexts, Repstor was the ideal solution.

“The fact that it works with Outlook is the icing on the cake,” James says. “The team won’t have to change the interface they use, or the way they file documents, but seamlessly everything will be stored in and accessed via SharePoint.

“This is a massive opportunity to improve efficiency with very little change to the way people work,” he continues. “Deploying Repstor will have an impact on profitability, improving the speed with which we can deliver, as we’ll be more organised with filing and accessing data. Clients will feel the benefits of that too.”

Fawcetts has been inspired by the broader deployment of the Repstor for Accounting suite at Armstrong Watson and aspires to many of the same applications and benefits.

“Armstrong Watson have a complete solution now – and one that gives them freedom in what they do, which is absolutely key,” James says. “They’re not tied to a particular document management supplier, haven’t had to bend what they do to suit the software, and they can access their data from anywhere: they haven’t surrendered control of their data.

“We can see ourselves doing a lot of the same things that Armstrong Watson have done or plan to do – using Repstor for fuller client engagement management and to manage Teams, for instance. Repstor gives us that roadmap, that power to revolutionise the way we work.”

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Adams & Adams bases a more agile future on Repstor for Legal and Cloud Essentials

South African law firm Adams & Adams bases a more agile future on Repstor for Legal and Cloud Essentials

Find out how Adams & Adams, a leading South African law firm that employs around 600 people across four office locations, worked with Cloud Essentials and Repstor to produce a solution for their legal document and matter management.

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Coca Cola European Partners has selected Repstor for Legal™ to transform the way its in-house legal team accepts, manages and reports on corporate matters.

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BELFAST, February 24^th, 20&21 – Repstor, the Microsoft 365-based information and matter management specialist preferred by professional services firms globally, has announced that Coca-Cola European Partners has selected Repstor for Legal™ to help transform the way its in-house legal team accepts, manages and reports on corporate matters.

Repstor for Legal, which harnesses popular Microsoft 365 applications including Outlook, SharePoint and Teams, will help streamline the handling of legal matter, from initial business requests to end reporting.

Standardizing on the Repstor solution will enable the 70-member in-house legal team to collaborate more consistently and effectively across multiple jurisdictions and enhance reporting. This will help the department deliver and demonstrate greater value to the business.

Repstor for Legal provides an intuitive document and matter management solution which capitalizes on users’ familiarity with Outlook, enabling them to more effectively manage, process and report on corporate legal matters.

“It’s fantastic to see another major global brand recognize the power and simplicity of managing legal matters using the tools people already use every day, which is Repstor for Legal’s great appeal,” comments Sheila Gormley, Repstor’s Executive VP for Legal Solutions. “We are seeing phenomenal growth in demand for Repstor for Legal, and we’re delighted to welcome Coca Cola European Partners on board as a customer.”

Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP) is the world’s largest independent Coca-Cola bottler, based on net sales.

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The Future of ECM: Why it will cease to be a distinct acvitity

The days of treating content management as a discipline in its own right, needing special investment and dedicated systems, have long gone

If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that people just need to be able to get on with their jobs and do everything properly without having to be in a particular place, using special IT systems. The more that information workers can simply log onto the web and start working productively using Microsoft 365 and tools like Teams, the more seamless and stress-free their working day becomes. Especially if these familiar, mainstream tools can serve as their interface to all that they need.

And that’s where smart content management is heading: becoming more seamlessly integrated as part of routine business processes – maximising the investments that companies have already made (ie in the Microsoft 365 platform) and allowing users to achieve more via the workspace already in front of them – without having to switch between applications.

Teams-based content coordination

Microsoft Teams has been a big game-changer. It was already on a sharp growth trajectory, and then the pandemic struck and Teams became many workers’ go-to tool to maintain connections with their dispersed co-workers and continue collaborating on projects or client accounts. As workplaces closed and companies disbanded, Teams user numbers more than tripled – from 32 million in March 2020 to 115 million by October.

It isn’t just that Teams engagement has soared; employees are also becoming more holistic and comprehensive in the way they are using the application. Where initially they might have opened Teams specifically to make a call, join a conference or share notes, now colleagues are defaulting to it as a space for coordinating all of their work – a kind of hub or central workspace and dashboard.

Employers were wary of this behaviour at first, concerned that it would play havoc with established ways of filing information, important documents and correspondence trails – potentially undermining internal information management and security policies. But now, with the right controls in place, companies are realising that it makes good sense to let users make more of their M365 licences – especially if it boosts their productivity and means they can work more seamlessly from where they are.

Platform consolidation: doing more with less

One inevitable consequence of more blended, consolidated content management capabilities is that specialist systems are losing their prominence, a trend we see accelerating.

This includes SharePoint, which is likely to become more of a content layer that supports Teams. That isn’t to suggest that the Microsoft shared repository system no longer holds value, but rather that its use will be more consistent – and its value boosted – once SharePoint plays a more integral, underpinning role behind the user experiences people naturally gravitate towards, as provided by Teams.

As for other dedicated ECM or document management systems, not only are they a costly separate investment and maintenance burden; most can’t be integrated readily with the Microsoft 365 suite.

This is unfortunate given that Teams is designed to be integrated with other systems. We predict that content system vendors will scramble to provide their functionality within Teams over the coming months, as more customers start to view this as their new, easy-to-use content system – and as more organisations look to consolidate their application portfolios.

Smarter ways of working

Reducing reliance on dedicated document or ECM systems is also paving the way for other efficiency improvements.

Defaulting to Microsoft 365 and Teams as the main window for managing and working with content is proving transformational in knowledge-based sectors such as professional and legal services. It’s allowing dispersed teams to continue working productively on client engagements, projects or legal matters, safe in the knowledge that information and documents will be stored and indexed correctly.

It’s in this context that another important aspect of harnessing Microsoft 365 comes to the fore.

Absorbing AI into everyday applications

Microsoft invests staggeringly high amounts of R&D money in advancing its technology and features, giving users ready access to the latest AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities. So when companies default to using Microsoft 365 as the front-end to their content management, they get to tap into these exciting new facilities.

In global professional services, embedded AI and machine learning will help specialist departments automatically locate, extract and re-use their best work, to reduce the need to prepare project plans or documents for new engagements from scratch, by enabling advanced knowledge and content management.

Again, the real advances in practice will come through the seamless, embedded application of AI within routine, everyday tasks – without firms needing to be aware that AI is the enabler. (Just as when Microsoft Cortana tells you how your schedule is looking, offering a few gentle prompts about actions that are due, you don’t think of it as AI, but simply a tool that adds value to your day.)

This is the kind of development being driven by Microsoft’s Project Cortex.

ECM and content services are at a crossroads currently, but choose the right path and the new possibilities for business process transformation are exciting.

A Repstor and SYKE Success Story

Microsoft, Repstor & SYKE give Pizza Hut’s corporate legal team new control over matter intake, management & reporting, using its existing Microsoft 365 applications.

Pizza Hut, headquartered in Texas and owned by Yum! Brands, is an American restaurant chain and international franchise business. With over 18,000 restaurants worldwide, it is one of the largest restaurant companies in the world. In the UK, where it has been operating for almost half a century, Pizza Hut has over 200 branches. It also provides takeaway delivery services.

Find out how Repstor and SYKE worked with Pizza Hut’s in-house legal function to be seen as a trusted partner to the business in the case study below.

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Armstrong Watson – A Repstor for Accounting Success Story

Armstrong Watson chooses Repstor’s complete suite of Microsoft 365-based ECM, Teams & client collaboration capabilities as continued lockdown prompts new ways of working.

The Repstor for Accounting™ suite is already live after a rapid, pandemic-prompted rollout, giving users access to powerful capabilities for managing Teams, mobile email and documents, and external collaboration via the tools they already use every day.

Find out why Armstrong Watson, a top-30 UK business advisory and accounting firm serving the north of England and Scotland, has selected and gone live with Repstor for Accounting™ below.

Want to know more about how Repstor can help you? Fill out the form below NOW and one of our team will be in touch with you shortly.

Armstrong Watson chooses Repstor’s complete suite of Microsoft 365-based ECM, Teams & client collaboration capabilities as continued lockdown prompts new ways of working

Belfast, February 2^nd, 2021 – Repstor, the Microsoft 365-based information management specialist, has today announced that Armstrong Watson, a top-30 UK business advisory and accounting firm serving the north of England and Scotland, has selected and gone live with Repstor for Accounting™, after Covid-19 lockdowns intensified demand for Teams-based collaboration and secure remote access to client records.

Armstrong Watson, which employs 440 people across 16 offices from the M62 to Glasgow and on both sides of the Pennines, provides services spanning accountancy, cloud accounting, audit, tax, payroll, corporate finance, financial planning, forensic accounting, corporate restructuring and insolvency.

During the pandemic, its clients have needed more tailored support which Armstrong Watson partners and teams have had to provide remotely. When the first pandemic lockdown struck in March 2020, demand for video calls and collaboration via Teams went through the roof.

This caused Armstrong Watson to bring forward plans to migrate to Office 365, a decision which introduced some challenges with, the firm’s existing document management system.

“Accessing some of the new functionality, including co-authoring support, would have meant a significant integration burden,” explains Toby Woodhead, the firm’s Head of Technology.

The Microsoft 365-based Repstor for Accounting™ suite, which includes powerful capabilities for managing Teams, mobile email and document management, as well as third-party collaboration, provides a wealth of rich functionality directly from within familiar Microsoft applications.

“From day one, Repstor has enabled our people to access client records, documents, audit trails and calculations from anywhere, so we’ve been able to keep providing a continuous service to our clients,” Toby says. “What’s more, due to the pandemic, I didn’t have to convince users of the switch. Never before have I witnessed such a desire in a firm to adopt new technology.”

A strategic technology advisor recommended Repstor as a means to enable comprehensive remote working, with full compliance controls over email, document filing and Teams use. “I googled Repstor, made contact the same day and within a week we were talking commercials,” Toby says.

“We did a quick review of other potential solutions, but Repstor offered us everything we needed – including a strategic step change in our ability to do business, which DMS vendors couldn’t match. Crucially too, Repstor was harnessing our investment in Microsoft 365 and SharePoint,” he adds.

Following a rapid and comprehensive proof of concept, Repstor introduced partner Transform Data to help with data migration from the old document management system to SharePoint, the firm’s new default content store.

Ultimately, Repstor for Accounting will serve as a complete client engagement management system. Already, the ability to work seamlessly from home means Armstrong Watson’s professionals can engage with the MDs of busy companies on their personal accounting at 8am, before they themselves start work. “This opens up new business opportunities,” Toby notes.

“I can honestly say we’re seeing seismic ramifications from our decision to transform the way we work,” he enthuses. “When I wrote my board report for the last year I described this as the biggest step for Technology in the firm for 10 years, since we moved our servers into a data centre.

“For users, everything is just seamless: it just works and is there for them in Outlook. They can take advantage of important capabilities like co-authoring, too. Another Repstor benefit is the ability to work on- and offline, so if someone is in a rural area where broadband is weak they can download a document, continue working on it, and then re-synchronise it later when they’re back online.

“From an IT perspective, we’re leaps and bounds ahead with our ambitions for Teams, which will soon become a central hub that we’ll all work from,” Toby continues. “After that we’ll add client access to a SharePoint portal, for secure external collaboration. The sky is the limit for users then: we’ll be able to use all of the exciting new technology Microsoft is giving us, and have more of a ‘project teams’ focus, giving our people a chance to get deeper into our client engagements.”

Armstrong Watson also plans to make use of advanced Microsoft 365 features such as PowerAutomate for automating document approval workflows in SharePoint, and the systemised production of documents from blocks of data, which will enable substantial cost savings and productivity gains.

“Last but not least, standardising on Microsoft 365 and Repstor will make it easy to add all sorts of other products – such as an electronic document signing tool – because so many of these naturally integrate with Microsoft 365, as Repstor does. This will massively reduce the cost of integration.”

Download a free copy of the Armstrong Watson case study Download here.

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