Adamson Jones – a Document Management Case Study

ProcessFlows Document Management Solutions for Legal are fully compliant and provide staff with easy access to all documents from the desktop

Protecting intellectual property

Adamson Jones is a patent and trademark attorney firm, based in Nottingham. The firm provides a full range of drafting and filing services for clients wanting to obtain a patent or trademark to protect their intellectual property.

Obtaining patents and trademarks, or registering designs, is a time consuming and daunting task, requiring considerable expertise in the application process, its procedures and terminology and can generate mountains of paperwork.

Adamson Jones has obtained patents and trademarks for clients ranging from large multinationals to universities, SMEs and private individuals.

International patent and trademark services

Close working relationships with associates overseas, in countries such as North America, Japan, China and other emerging markets around the world, enable Adamson Jones to represent their clients as effectively far afield as they do in Europe.

Separate applications must be made in each territory, resulting in a multiplicity of case files, all of which must be closely monitored and coordinated.

A lot of documents are produced

Documents are the building blocks of the legal profession. But they are productivity blocks when it comes to the everyday practicalities of remote working and the need to access information easily and quickly.

The patent and trademark application and filing process is protracted and traditionally results in a lot of paper documentation being generated. Adamson Jones deal with multiple clients and cases concurrently.

They generally have thousands of active files at any one time and a growing number of cases that are completed but which still need to be referred to occasionally.

Consequently, it is essential to maintain meticulous records in order to meet compliance regulations, and ensure that documentation is easily available for reference, both during the process and after the patent/trademark has been granted.

Business efficiency was being compromised by paper

Client files were bursting out of offices. The Company had too much paper and nowhere to put it. It was taking staff a long time to deal with queries, as information had to be manually pulled from a filing cabinet, shelf or cupboard.

The reality was that queries could never be dealt with in real-time and staff had to call clients back. This was inefficient, time consuming and frustrating. The age-old problems of misfiling, or files not being put back after use, added extra delays.

Our time is the client’s money. We needed to make the process of filing and retrieving documents much quicker, so we made the decision to swap our manual filing system for an electronic alternative.

said Steve Jones, founder and MD of Adamson Jones.

ProcessFlows Document Management Solutions for Legal

ProcessFlows supplied Adamson Jones with a document management solution which utilises OpenText Alchemy software.

Alchemy Document Management software creates a secure, digital filing cabinet for all document types – scanned paper, email and fax.

The entire contents of Adamson Jones’ manual paper filing system, which included letters, invoices, photocopies of emails and hardcopy faxes, were scanned to convert each individual document into an electronic image.

A file structure was then set up in the Alchemy repository to accurately replicate the manual filing system, so that imported scanned images could be filed in a familiar way, making it easy for users to find them.

All documentation is now filed under the client’s name and case number. Electronic copies of every document relating to that case are organised in folders and in chronological order – letters, emails, invoices etc.

Easy access to all documentation from the desktop

All incoming and outgoing information in all formats – scanned paper documents, email or fax – is filed directly into Alchemy from within Adamson Jones’ line of business applications.

Every member of staff has a dedicated Alchemy terminal on their desks, “a desktop filing cabinet”.

They no longer need to rummage through physical filing cabinets, along shelves and in cupboards to find what they need; everything is accessible with a mouse, in an instant, allowing them to deal with client queries quickly and efficiently.

Efficiency has underpinned business growth

Steve Jones concludes;

Implementing Alchemy was a good business decision, with a step change impact on our operations. Straightaway we solved the document filing/storage problem which was impacting negatively on our customer service. Improved efficiency in dealing with client queries enhanced our reputation, which has delivered exponential business growth.