Helen Saulnier 
Keith Vallely, vice president and senior marketing consultant with Epona, shares insights on how Epona has affected and impacted the corporate lawful house and what sets them aside from competition in the document administration space.
CCBJ: Speak to us about Epona, your role in the lawful place, and how you get the job done with company legal groups.
Keith Vallely: As Vice President and Senior Advisor at Epona United states, a division of Epona, my purpose is to develop our gross sales during the North American marketplace, together with implementations of our Contract Management, Document Administration, E-Mail Administration and Understanding Management Methods that are centered on the Microsoft System. It also usually means, of training course, raising the selection of employees and growing our overall procedure.
What Epona does, is acquire the Microsoft 365 surroundings and make it a document/agreement/email/information management program, for the Corporate legal space, as very well as for Enterprises and Regulation Firms. We start off out by configuring the written content administration platform SharePoint to operate as a doc administration program and from there we type of snap on, if you will, contract existence cycle administration, email management and understanding administration capabilities so that an organization or corporate authorized section can benefit from the powers that are currently built into the Microsoft 365 platform, which includes workflow, Electrical power BI, the entire 9 yards. So, for all intents and needs, we are a turnkey option provider to the corporate natural environment, which is great for enterprises and corporate lawful departments that are already utilizing the Microsoft system and want to just take full advantage of their expenditure.
Make sure you talk to us about how Epona has introduced value to the corporate legal area in current many years?
One particular of our best achievements, in addition to the sheer range of consumers we’ve added, is how we’ve served individuals customers extend their use of Microsoft 365 and incorporate to their very own productivity. One particular of the fantastic issues about the Microsoft platform is it is a tremendously effective LEGO established. The system is not entirely constructed out. There is a great deal of ability that a effective creativity and a highly effective IT section can make use of to effectively configure and establish a solutions established that can in good shape nearly any requirement for a business.
What this in essence signifies is Epona walks into corporate environments, with their unique specifications, and in partnership with the IT section, will help to combine their existing programs into Microsoft 365, Teams, Microsoft Place of work and much more. I’m notably proud of the things that we’re equipped to supply to our corporate lawful associates, such as contract management devices built-in with Groups, or information administration systems integrated with known and effortless-to-use programs like Microsoft Term and Microsoft Outlook.
It’s been truly neat to arrive back again a pair of many years later on and obtain out how these applications that we initially deployed are now getting applied in the company to make points greater for the people today who are utilizing electrical power in a area, or finding persons out of jail who never belong there, or providing medical services in new techniques. It is just truly intriguing to see how the perform that we’re accomplishing have genuine life implications downstream for each day people today. That is seriously what this is all about. I do realize, of system, there’s the bits and the bytes and the bucks and the cents, but when it arrives suitable down to it, we’re out there really trying to make people’s life superior. And that the use of our technologies to make Microsoft systems get the job done far better for company lawful departments is really kind of great.
Epona has developed considerably in excess of the earlier number of decades. To what do you attribute this?
Likely the single largest rationale, was that folks need to do the job from their residences owing to COVID-19. This has improved the method and approach of the way persons work now. Microsoft 365 and working with cloud expert services has develop into ubiquitous. This drove a ton of transform for company entities and, of study course, law corporations which, in convert, has pushed a huge total of expansion for us.
Candidly talking, we were being now on a growth trajectory prior to the current market shifted simply because of the superb staff at Epona. Each individual member of our staff is not just fantastic at what they do, but also cares about their purchasers. From time to time the most significant obstacle we have is being aware of when to say “enough.” I know I shouldn’t say this, but often my workforce cares a minor little bit as well a lot. Sometimes they just require to prevent working, go home and acquire a break. It is the weekend, you know!
But the other factor is we are really good about creating confident that we provide good merchandise. It is a truism in the software package enterprise the consumers are constantly centered on what is not functioning. But the huge greater part of the goods and providers that we provide are practically normally functioning. Once in a while there will be a bug or glitch, but by and substantial, our products do the job and are retained up-to-date. The exact just can’t be claimed for our competitors, most of whom call for that clients’ Microsoft Place of work suite be kept several years powering the update cycle. In our scenario, we normally involve that you retain your Microsoft Office up-to-date. It’s a wholly diverse paradigm. And since of that, the most current options, the hottest super-amazing whiz-bang new things is wherever you have to have to be with us. Now, I notice that’s a bit of a paradigm shift for folks, but that is a person of the other wonderful points about our corporation.
What sets Epona apart from competitors in the document management room.
Initial and foremost your documents, your e-mail, all of your content material, will not exist in an Epona surroundings. It will generally exist in your tenant house, underneath your regulate. This means you will always have 100 percent handle of your material as it will continue being in your natural environment. That means no seller lock. This is an monumental distinction from all our rivals, and the principal motive that 20 percent of the Fortune 100 are currently Epona shoppers. This also is a principal differentiator when it comes to compliance and security. These 3 issues make us as various as evening and working day from other content administration company providers.
Becoming in the Microsoft cloud with Epona means you will get compliance, stability, and information all as aspect of the Microsoft compliance center as opposed to our opponents, the place you will be using their protection designs which are partially reliant in some variety on Microsoft, but as an externality. The basic respond to is you are heading to be greater off placing all of your content in a Microsoft ecosystem. And that is why corporate entities desire Epona. It’s a one particular-quit, solitary-alternative system.
Also, when we speak about Groups integration with the Epona solution vs . all other rivals, yet again all of your material will exist strictly in the Microsoft system. Also, updates, upgrades and all integrations on the Epona system are in the Microsoft paradigm, which usually means you will be employing the Microsoft update paradigm vs . the substitute paradigms of the other third parties. This is an huge differentiator.
And lastly, the Epona remedy is also noticeably extra price efficient than the other alternatives. In the Epona paradigm, there is an preliminary upfront expense to get set up in the Microsoft tenant and licensing prices heading forward from there. In the other answer sets, you will be shelling out for storage and other points that increase to your expenditures that are not aspect of the Epona resolution for the reason that, the moment again, you are storing your content material in the Microsoft tenant, which you previously spend for. These separators are some of the main differences involving Epona’s answer and all the other individuals.
If there is 1 issue that your consumers, or individuals exploring Epona as a alternative, really should know, what would that be?
That no one matches our amount of customer service. The remark we listen to most from clientele who’ve come to us from our competition is that that didn’t truly feel cared for. Epona cares for its clients—a large amount. And we care as much about the a few-user law company as we do the 2,000-consumer legislation agency or the 450-user company legal department. I imagine that may possibly be the solitary most essential cause we have grown.
