Do accountants need Electronic Content Management Systems (ECMS)? It’s a question that, sooner or later, every firm is going to have to address. Firms are faced with increasing challenges around the growing volumes of data that they have to store, much of it email, and the necessity to demonstrate convincingly to clients that their data is held securely. In addition, like the rest of the knowledge workforce, professionals increasingly want the freedom to work remotely and to be mobile. An ECMS promises not only to tick all of these boxes, but also introduces enhanced functionality and security over older, file-based or on-premise systems. Do these benefits mean that ECMS are automatically a good idea and, if so, how in practice should firms choose a system? The recent experience of Saffery Champness may help to provide some answers.  
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Why get a modern ECMS?  

Julie Berry is the IT Partner at Saffery Champness, the UK’s 12th largest accountancy firm with over 700 employees. Berry says that the decision to look for an ECMS was primarily driven by a desire to improve fee-earner efficiency. The firm was looking for an intuitive system with a powerful document and email search capability and predictive filing, and one which would enable both internal collaboration and secure external document sharing with clients. Saffery Champness also sought a system to support working with files in a consistent way to agreed, formalised and clearly communicated policies. This would help the firm tick important risk and compliance boxes. 

Finally, Berry was adamant she wanted a cloud-based system that would deliver cloud’s inherent benefits, including unparalleled security and greatly reduced IT costs since there’s no infrastructure to support. Vitally, it also allows users to access files any time and from any location. 

Finding the right partners 
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With these aspirations in mind, Saffery Champness conducted a rigorous tender process to find its ideal ECMS supplier. Five competing vendors pitched – two of whom were accountancy specialists. However it was the two non-specialist platforms which were shortlisted and the winning bid came from NetDocuments, a native cloud solution, with 20 years of history in the professional services and legal markets. Berry was particularly happy with NetDocuments’ approach to email management. “It’s the biggest area that we wanted to address internally and a big part of the requirement,” she says, “but the specialist accounting DM systems don’t deal with that.” 

Tikit led the successful sales engagement at Saffery Champness with NetDocuments, and is undertaking the end-to-end ECMS implementation including, data migration and end user training project, as well as providing post go-live and ongoing support. Tikit is a UK-based, professional services technology developer and vendor, which provides industry-leading consultancy, training and support to over 1,500 clients worldwide. 

Julie Berry added that the decision to choose Tikit was relatively easy. “Tikit can draw on 25 years of document management experience. They are a “safe pair of hands” having successfully completed over 200 ECMS implementations in the wider professional services sector. Firms like Saffery Champness are able to benefit from that experience of consultancy, best practice guidance and ongoing training and support.” 

Saffery Champness has started its ECMS implementation project with Tikit and is due to go live with NetDocuments before the end of this year.  

Watch this space. 

If you would like more information about ECMS solutions from Tikit, please contact Colin McArdle at colin.mcardle@tikit.com.