Category: Business Process Management

“It’s supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to press this button.”

– John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

A legal hold, or legal hold notice, is simply that –  a notification to a company or individual that material or data regarding an active or be anticipated legal proceeding shouldn’t be destroyed. However, it doesn’t guarantee that the material will be preserved. Actual preservation is the responsibility of the notified organization’s leadership and employees involved.

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 37(e) states that when, “electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, and it cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery,” the court may take certain actions.

Usually drafted in the form of an email or paper letter, legal holds are not to taken lightly. Even though the legal hold is “just a notification” doesn’t make it any less crucial in the process of keeping a company safe from costly and time-consuming litigation. Fortunately we now have software to help with the notification process.

The best legal hold solutions help corporate legal departments notify custodians of their duty to preserve information in a timely manner and guarantee compliance with this duty. Highly intuitive, easily mastered “process” platforms allow team members to gain real-time access to the status of collection requests, know when actions were issued, which tasks are in progress and which legal actions require immediate attention. The tool should also create comprehensive dashboard views, so teams can see when a custodian leaves an organization, so they can enable email archiving or suspend the destruction of data.

A powerful legal hold solution offers a quick and highly cost-effective way to supercharge your automated business processes, as well as your bottom line. Reduce the ever-present risk of costly court cases, and let the software shoulder the burden of notification. The rest is up to you.

To learn more about Onit’s legal hold solution, download this white paper.

In part I of this blog series we discussed the Apptitude platform, focusing on an overview of what it does and how it works. We referred to the platform as a differentiator because it stands out from the rest of the pack. Onit differentiates itself from other providers because we have a deep understanding of what customers need and are looking for to stay ahead of the game.

Apptitude offers more than 200 pre-built actions, is easily configurable, scalable, agile and sports low-code configuration to facilitate fast development. Among its many capabilities, Apptitude features state-of-the-art collaboration, integrations, security, process and workflow. Robust reporting ability shouldn’t be ignored, and Apptitude offers Onit Suites, grid-based dashboards, Tableau integrations and Microsoft Word and Excel reporting. Onit integrations are highly robust with an extensive API and REST request action.

Apart from its capabilities, here are five reasons to use a platform like Apptitude:

1. Cost savings:
Solve business problems without the need for costly support, training or IT infrastructure. Software as a service (SaaS) is the way to go, freeing up your team members to do their “real work.”

2. Solutions are easy to create:
Some workflow solutions can be created in less than 30 minutes, depending on the complexity and scope of the workflow.

3. Transparency:
Business teams have real-time visibility in processes, such as legal service requests, NDA requests, or contract negotiations.

4. Implementation is fast:
Most implementations take place in weeks, not months and ROI can be seen much sooner than with traditional process automation projects.

5. Highly human-centric:
Each solution has four simple but crucial built-in capabilities:

• A simple intake form
• Shared workspace
• Configured and ad hoc workflow
• Dashboard views

Business process automation platforms have been around for years, but the best have only recently emerged. It can be an overwhelming task trying to decide which one is just right for your business. When it comes to state-of-the-art solution development, you must have the workflow, process and collaboration platform that is the best fit for the way your teams work.

To learn more about our business process automation platform, listen to Episode 3 with our Apptitude expert Jonathan Powers.

“Now one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type.”

– Frederick Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management, 1911

Fortunately, we’ve made a bit of progress since Frederick Taylor offered his assessment of process management. When you’re looking for a process automation platform that is not only collaborative but helps you quickly simplify and solve real-world business problems, there’s not a lot of time to waste. There are many process automation platforms out there that tout how they can easily solve all your business problems with a wave of the wand. The differentiator, however, comes from Onit’s Apptitude platform and its ability to apply individualized workflows and tasks by matter and matter type. These apps can be connected to other related apps to form a “suite” of cross-functional integrations to support complex operations.

With Apptitude, users can build a matter intake system to streamline the process of multi-party data entry and review/approval, or a collaboration workflow to resolve timekeeper issues directly with outside law firms. Onit’s flexibility allows businesses to quickly develop both very simple and very complex processes and workflows to drive everyday business functions and operations—in legal and other departments. In a legal context, this could include the creation and approval of matters, the drafting and review of non-disclosure agreements, and many other every day activities.

Onit uses a workflow-centric approach that seeks to deconstruct matter management into independent, collaborative functional lifecycles that lawyers and operations managers use on a regular basis; a la carte model empowers users to add capabilities and components as needed. Modern architecture showcases class-leading technology and a decidedly SaaS-based approach to legal business application management. Onit’s Apptitude platform is designed for rapid deployment, flexibility and agility.

In part II of this blog series we’ll discuss Apptitude’s features and its benefits of ownership.

Click here to read Part II…

We now almost take for granted certain features we need in a business process and workflow automation platform: no-code configuration, agile project management, rapid value delivery, responsive user interface, and an adaptive end user experience. But it should also be highly human-centric with certain simple capabilities such as user suites and dashboards to view all of your transactions.

The platform should centralize all data, notes, documents, conversations and email threads in one location. Business teams should have real-time visibility into the process—whether it is a contract negotiation, NDA request or sales quote approval. It should be easy to configure custom forms, fields, checklists, workflows and have process tracking capabilities with the flexibility to make changes and improvements in-stream as often as needed.

Suites and dashboards come in many flavors, but we’ve selected a few that should be at the top of your list.

Operational and User Suites

Suites should be designed to meet the specific needs of an individual or role. Suites provide the ability to group smaller processes together to form an end-to-end solution and user experience. Each suite widget should be informational, as well as a quick entry point to any given slice of data. The ability to create persona-based home pages that visualize data, action items, and trends/metrics for end-users is very important, as is being able to choose between a dozen different visualization widgets, such as pie charts, bar charts, counters, timelines and more.

Leadership Analytics Dashboard

Your platform should natively integrate with Tableau as the primary business intelligence and analytics engine. Ideally, Tableau can be pulled directly into the platform to provide a seamless user experience to interact with the underlying data contained within the platform.

User and Smart Selection Tableau Dashboard

This type of dashboard can drive a user to underlying Tableau reports, specifically addressing the user’s needs.

Other vital dashboards should include:

• Evaluation
• Comparison over time
• Business unit analysis

When it comes to human-centric, adaptive and responsive user interfaces, it’s not the time to skimp or cut corners. You need the workflow, process and collaboration platform that is the best fit for the way your teams work, and choosing a provider who offers unsurpassed suites and dashboards puts you one step ahead of the rest of the pack from the very beginning.

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”  – Pablo Picasso

Fortunately for us, computing and cloud technology has evolved to benefit us much more than what Picasso had envisioned. In part I of this blog series we discussed the basic differences between the three most common models of cloud computing:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)

Now we’d like to go into a little more depth about the advantages of each model.

IaaS is for companies that want to have the most control over their service, and have the technical talent to manage everything from the O/S to the applications, and everything in between. There is no need to invest in hardware, and infrastructure scales on demand to support dynamic workloads. Other benefits include cost savings, scalability, focus on business growth, support for disaster recovery and business continuity, and faster time to market. Again, the company must have the technical expertise on hand in order to get the most out of IaaS.

PaaS provides companies with the means to conduct the building and delivering of applications, without the headaches and costs of buying and managing hardware, software, provisioning and hosting. Companies are able to develop and get applications to market faster, and deploy new applications to the cloud quickly. Other benefits include scalability, self-service/reduced administrative costs, lower up-front costs, reduced skill requirements, sharing of resources across multiple development teams and reduced lead times. While PaaS doesn’t require the tech savvy as does IaaS, it may take a little practice to get familiar with the software and start creating your own business applications. An important aspect of PaaS is that it is typically used by companies to build applications that are then sold to other customers as SaaS.

SaaS is for companies who want to quickly start using pre-built applications. This is the key difference between this model and the first two. Applications are accessible from any connected computer and since data is in the cloud, it’s still safe even if your organization’s system crashes. Dynamic scalability based on usage needs is another reason many feel SaaS is the way to go. SaaS is wildly popular as evidenced by the huge number of applications delivered by this means, including Microsoft Office 365 and Salesforce. In a nutshell, you sign up for a service and you’re up and running with the applications you need. Of course you’ll need a little practice on the system, but you get the point. Interestingly, most companies now use at least one form of SaaS, even if they rely heavily on IaaS or PaaS as their primary cloud model.

In the end, you and your team will have to weigh the advantages of each model to see which is the best fit for your business requirements. We guess that for the majority of people who landed on this website and chose to read this blog, there’s a good possibility either PaaS or SaaS would fit the bill. That means you’re seeking quick gains in productivity, efficiency and a hassle-free experience. Then again, your company may have the technical expertise and business requirements that call for IaaS. Some companies quickly seem to know which model is the best fit for them and before you know it, they’re benefitting from their new solution. Don’t feel bad if this isn’t your company – the vast majority of us need to spend more time and research before deciding which way to go.