Reaching Platinum: Element’s Journey...

Element recently was honored as a NetDocuments Platinum Partner based on sales performance, earnings, maintaining a multitude of NetDocuments certifications, and achieving high customer satisfaction scores. The Platinum Partner distinction puts the company in the top 1% of a very expansive and robust NetDocuments partner ecosystem.

Let’s take a closer look at the journey to Platinum…

The Beginnings

We began our NetDocuments journey over 5 years ago with our first client, a Twin Cities law firm, and a few document management projects. We had a small team at the time, ‘the Jeff’s (my business partner Jeff Holds as well as our top NetDocuments engineer Jeff Kaplan, and I) ran the show. Although our NetDocuments track record was only beginning to take shape, we had vast experience with document management, we came from law firm backgrounds, and we knew the legal landscape well. We were focused on providing clients with the best service and overall experience regardless of how complex the project or challenging firm’s needs.

In 2019 we increased NetDocuments cloud Document Management System (DMS) sales and further enhanced client satisfaction, earning NetDocuments Silver Partnership status. At this point we realized we needed to become laser-focused on building a world-class Enterprise Content Management (ECM) team just as we had with our IT and cybersecurity teams (ECM is a newer buzz word for DMS). We combined Element with ADV, a leading document management service company, and through the combination, added a team of 8 document management professionals to our team with a vast array of law firm and legal IT experience.

Last year, we continued our upward trajectory with DMS projects in particular NetDocuments. We moved up to NetDocuments Gold Partner status based on a bigger book of business and an ever-expanding ECM team. The pandemic has changed our lives forever, and we realized early on that law firms ‘going remote’ would not be an easy ‘lift’ and that the experienced Element team, combined with the native cloud NetDocuments platform could substantially help get law firms back to ‘business as usual’. Most firms had remote capabilities in place, but very few had designed a system where people could truly work every day no matter where they were located. This is when the power of cloud and the utility of NetDocuments really hit me.

Since that time, we have been on an unprecedented run, adding sales and marketing, more people, more certifications, and a laser-focus on our NetDocuments business.

The Power of Cloud – The NetDocuments Platform

What makes a great cloud platform in 2021? Ease of use, security, integration, and collaboration. If your firm has NetDocuments, then you know how easy it is to use. It can be set up in many different ways, adapting to the style of any law firm or corporate legal team.

Security is a major passion at Element. Craig Sixta, my business partner, has helped position Element as a leader in cybersecurity. His efforts have helped transform Element into a ‘security first’ business and have truly set the tone of our collective security DNA with NetDocuments which is paving the way for our future. The days of law firms and corporate legal departments nixing the cloud because of security concerns has been replaced with a cloud first mantra that relies on the true security-as-a-services capabilities NetDocuments, combined with Element’s security expertise, provides.

Integration is extremely important. For too long we have tried to have a one size fits all approach to legal applications. While this can work for some, but by no means is it the only option. Nowadays, strong cloud platforms have strong integration capabilities so they can easily be connected with whatever application the law firm or organization chooses without sacrificing functionality.

Collaboration is now a foundational need and is no longer optional. A great platform will provide you with simple ways to share data with your employees and your clients and do so in an extremely secure manner. A great platform will also open things up to connect to Office 365, Microsoft Teams and other leaders in cloud technology which enhance the core product.

Speaking of the value of integration and collaboration, last month, Microsoft launched its Microsoft 365 and Teams Deployment for Legal initiative that includes a four-phase plan to help law firms overcome privacy barriers and a dedicated team to support and accelerate law firms’ 365 journey, including integration with cloud platforms like NetDocuments. Most law firms have Teams already and now they can maximize their investment with DMS native integrations into Teams.

Team Element

Our ECM team is truly world-class, with an average tenure of over 10 years in document management and over 5 with Element. Their client service, project management, client satisfaction reviews and a strong commitment to our clients is second to none. This team has implemented large enterprise customers of multi-thousand users to small law firms including hundreds of law firms and other organizations since 1994.

Add to this tens of millions of documents migrated from dozens of applications and databases by an outstanding custom development professional and our ECM team is the complete package.