Technical Director at Phoenix Business Solutions, Ray Burch explores how to maximise the office 2010 environment
The transition to Office 2010 is a challenge that many law firms have achieved, are in the process of, or at least considering in the immediate future. As far as technology upgrades in law firms go, this is a very topical issue. The fact that life support for Office 2003 will soon end, adds another level of urgency to the process.
Partner products and complimentary tools have also caught up with Office 2010 and support for the Office 2003 associated systems will also inevitably be phased out over time. The Office 2003 environment will soon become antiquated.
One of the most noticeable changes that come with transitioning across to Office 2010 is the ribbon. The ribbon will not be that familiar to Office 2003 users. The primary idea behind the ribbon is that the commands that you want to access are presented at the appropriate time. For instance, if you insert a table into a document, then the table design ribbon will immediately appear. This will present a series of challenges to law firms, not least having to train users on how the ribbon works and what functionality it actually delivers. As with previous versions of Office, for most firms a certain amount of customisation will be required. Firms need to ensure that its core functions and features are presented in a way that is clear to users. Indeed, for most firms, merely reproducing the Word 2003 interface in Word 2010 will not always be possible or sensible in term of ROI. Most third party tools including; document management, comparison tools and CRM interfaces are integrated within the ribbon. Reverting back to an Office 2003 interface will undoubtedly lead to a lot more integration work for these third party tools. Practically, users may also face difficulties and require more training on how the reproduced Office interface works, and what functionality it actually delivers.
At Phoenix we have been working closely with our clients, to assess their current Office environment and the transition to Office 2010. Much of our focus has been on customising the Office 2010 environment and how it can be extended further. Office 2010 is a big leap forward from Office 2003 and firms will certainly benefit from its ease-of-use and enhanced functionality, but many will recognise that it needs some careful modifications to ensure that it delivers maximum efficiency and productivity gains. This may well include a close look at ribbons, styles, numbering, template selection, DMS integration, print management or centralised template configuration. These are essential to the commercial delivery of legal services and must be optimised.
Phoenix has worked with a number of firms on their Office environments, and transitions from Office 2003 to 2010. We have worked hard to develop a framework to ensure standardisation, supportability and consistency of delivery. The framework also allows us to integrate with all the various backend systems, including document management, print management and CRM. In our experience, the same or similar challenges apply to each firm and we think believe that migration to Office 2010 will enable a much smoother transition to the next level, whatever and whenever that may be.
The primary goal when working with Microsoft’s technology is to extend it and not to replace it. Replacing functionality rather than optimising the standard functionality can to cause problems along the lifecycle of the product. This may be at the end of the process where lots of heavily customised code needs to be brought across to the next version. There is also a risk that new faces or lateral hires will be mystified by what appears to be alien functionality. As far as Phoenix is concerned, the Office 2010 environment works and with some carefully planned and executed customisations it can really deliver considerable benefits to the day-to-day practice of law.
