Banking on document management

With a goal of transforming information into awareness to enable employees to take action, Rothschild Inc. has implemented a new knowledge management system. Rothschild Inc. provides a range of financial services to governments, corporations and individuals.

Aware that the competitive financial services market requires effective use of information, Rothschild wanted to replace a haphazard file structure with a uniform document management system. People working on teams needed access to similar information; they also needed to be aware of what's happening in their sector and what others are doing in the organization. All that knowledge comes in handy for developing innovative ideas for clients.

Rothschild chose a solution from iManage that consists of iManage WorkDocs, WorkPortal and WorkTeam in their investment banking group in the United States. The company also plans to deploy the products to its investment banking group in Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Columbia and its realty and asset management divisions this year.

According to iManage, the lack of uniform document management made it difficult for Rothschild staff to collaborate and share documents with others in the firm, to pass work from one analyst to another and to ensure that the firm's message was consistent with any given client. Prior to the new system, Rothschild employees were redoing research instead of using the knowledge that was already available to them. The new software is said to fit better with the way bankers work and to go beyond standard tagging, search and version control to offer tight integration with Outlook and the Web.

WorkSite Web capabilities enabled Rothschild to replace its existing intranet with a new system that puts information publishing in the hands of users. Bankers can build collaborative project- and team-specific sites; practice groups can advertise their resources and expertise to others within the company no matter where they're located; and administrative departments can deliver information to specific teams or broadcast general news to the company without help from the IT department.

According to iManage, the new system has led to the following improvements:

• Documents can be accessed quickly and accurately through the same e-mail and Web programs that Rothschild bankers already use.

• Virtual work teams can pool expertise and resources from any location to provide quality service to clients.

• Intranet publishing has empowered Rothschild bankers to share information and ideas within groups and organizationwide.