When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, firms quickly adopted digital technology and a hybrid work environment, allowing their professionals — as well as clients and third parties — to connect and collaborate remotely. Although the pandemic accelerated these transformations, it was far from the only driving factor. Many firms were already poised to make these changes to bolster their ability to more effectively serve clients and leverage the benefits of a distributed workforce.
“Over the past 5 to 10 years, we’ve seen this tremendous growth [toward digital transformation],” said Jose Lazares, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Intapp. “Firms that are local want to become regional. Regional firms want to become national. National firms want to become global. [Pre-pandemic, there was already] this movement towards a hybrid work environment and a distributed workforce that spanned multiple regions and geographies.”
During the recent Intapp Workspaces Product Briefing, “Control Privacy and Manage Governance within Microsoft Teams,” Lazares explained how connected firm technology can help distributed workforces easily communicate across disparate geographies and consolidate data in one central location. Most importantly, investing in this technology helps firms better meet client expectations regarding greater transparency, stronger collaboration, and quicker response times.
“There’s a wide range of technologies in the marketplace to support [clients],” Lazares said. “At Intapp, we’re really focused on how we can help you realize the benefits of those technologies.”
Intapp Collaboration & Content: A New and Innovative Solution
Firms must invest in technology that lets them maximize the effectiveness of distributed teams and to connect their people, processes, and data. Intapp and Repstor — a creator of Microsoft 365-based enterprise content management and team collaboration tools that was recently acquired by Intapp — have joined forces to create Intapp Collaboration & Content, a new Intapp suite designed to streamline collaboration, increase connectivity, and help teams work smarter.
Intapp Collaboration & Content includes three components.
- Intapp Workspaces provides engagement-centric intelligence and automation within Microsoft Teams to enhance collaboration, leading to better business outcomes
- Intapp Documents orchestrates document management across all content sources for full lifecycle visibility and engagement-centric collaboration
- Intapp Client Collaboration boosts client transparency and empowers fee-earners to deliver exceptional client experiences
Sheila Gormley, Co-Founder of Repstor and now Senior Director of Collaboration and Content at Intapp, joined the product briefing to discuss the benefits of Intapp Workspaces, specifically its ability to integrate with Microsoft Teams.
“Microsoft Teams provides a powerful, unified cloud-based collaboration hub,” Gormley said. “There’s a huge adoption of Microsoft Teams across all industry segments, but there are some fundamental challenges within the Microsoft Teams environment.”
Gormley and Lazares polled briefing attendees to reveal their firms’ challenges with Microsoft Teams; responses included external access issues, file management, and DMS integration. Gormley described how firms can deploy Intapp Workspaces to overcome these challenges and fully leverage their existing Microsoft 365 investments.
“Intapp Workspaces is a Microsoft Teams governance, automation, and lifecycle management application that brings matter-centric intelligence to Microsoft Teams,” explained Gormley. “We’re taking the out-of-the-box capabilities of Microsoft Teams and bridging the gaps.”
Features and Benefits of Intapp Workspaces
To illuminate the benefits of Intapp Workspaces, Fergus Wilson, Co-Founder of Repstor and now Senior Director of Engineering at Intapp, demonstrated the product. He explained how users can customize tabs and dashboards to help quickly find relevant information around the matters they’re working on.
“[You can] navigate Microsoft Teams easily in these dashboards in whatever way you want to do it,” explained Wilson. “[It can be] based on client information, practice group information, or however you want.”
Intapp Workspaces also makes it easier for teams to collaborate. Wilson gave one example: “If I wanted to converse with someone on a particular document, I could ask them to view the document [via Microsoft Teams] and directly tag them.” Users with access to the document can then work together on the piece in real time, saving them from having to send edits back and forth.
Additionally, firms that implement Intapp Workspaces can control restrictions around access and permissions. Firms can limit who has the ability to create new teams, for example, or set up automatic approval requests that get sent to managers every time a change is made in the system. Firms can also make certain information unavailable to external parties or create external client portals to provide outside users direct and secure access to appropriate information.
Learn more about how Intapp Workspaces can improve collaboration and connectivity within your firm: Download the full recording of the Intapp Workspaces Product Briefing.
You can also learn more about Intapp by visiting booths 1432 and 1729 at ILTACON 2021 and speaking with our representatives — including Jose Lazares.
Can’t make it to ILTACON in person? Registered attendees can watch our Intapp Collaboration & Content Product Briefing on Tuesday, August 24, at 1:30 p.m. PT.