Graphic for NetDocuments Annual Event, Inspire, discussing Patterns of Success as the theme for 2022.

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Inspire 2022 Wrap-up

November 29, 2022

Chris Stewart

Chief Customer Officer

If you want to know what people really think of your user conference — dig into the survey comments.

We’re quite pleased to see that this year’s Inspire has customers calling out “the positive vibe,” the event being “invaluable for the education and interactions,” and stating, “This is one event we do not miss.” We understand the work that goes into traveling and attending a conference and we are grateful for such an incredible turnout as colleagues, customers, and partners gathered from around the globe to network, learn from one another, and support each other in enabling their people and organizations to deliver their very best work.

For those who were unable to make it, we wanted to share a few key highlights that came out of these memorable events held in the US, EMEA, and APAC.

A Return to In-Person Energizes Conversations

As you might have guessed, people really like interacting face-to-face with people to exchange ideas. Thoughtful questions and interactions throughout the audience saw multiple breakout sessions extending into breaks, and there was great engagement in interactive workshops. Conversations between partners, the NetDocuments product team, and customers brought successes and new ideas to light. Meals and networking events were abuzz with stories of what’s working, where teams are innovating, and what the future holds.

Beyond what was shared by NetDocuments team members, curated panels with industry leaders, legal tech investors, and award-winning legal tech journalist Bob Ambrogi of LawSites and LawNext helped everyone hone in on industry trends and companies to watch.

Topics included:

How Patterns of Work have changed for law firms and corporate legal departments in the past several years. Organizations are adjusting to “volatility” as the new normal, and legal teams are redefining the future vision of success.
Patterns of Knowledge and how legal technologies like NetDocuments are unlocking insights for legal and corporate teams. Partnerships with companies like LexisNexis, Upland BA Insight, and the SALI Alliance are enabling legal teams to surface knowledge from within NetDocuments content repositories to allow organizations to make more informed business decisions and drive better outcomes.
And what Patterns of Success look like in the next several years and how technology vendors can enable that. Legal tech used to lag behind other industries, but that has shifted in recent times. The trend toward consolidation in the legal tech space and related benefits and risks will be something to consider.

Automation for Legal is Finally Realized

The recently released PatternBuilder tool for document and workflow automation had attendees picturing the possibilities within their firms and businesses. Following up on a successful launch at ILTACON and positive market response to having document automation built into the NetDocuments DMS, a variety of sessions allowed attendees to dive deeper into harnessing the power of automation and gain a better understanding of key reasons to automate, the types of work that can be automated, how and where to start, and how to set your organization up for success with effective change management.

Microsoft Teams Continues to Draw Big Crowds

The 2022 ILTA Technology Survey reported 68% of firms are using Microsoft Teams. That’s up from a mere 20% in 2019. But most have discovered exacerbated information governance issues with increased use and use cases, so people are eager for even more advancements in how users can take full advantage of NetDocuments while collaborating in Teams.

Our relentless goal of meeting users where they work has brought about new features in ChatLink for Teams, such as easier DMS document sharing within Teams conversations, scheduling the movement of files from Teams to NetDocuments, seeing a corresponding Teams channel within a Workspace, saving posts and chats to NetDocuments, and more. Attendees got to see what the future of working in Teams looks like — with your DMS integrated directly into Microsoft Teams.

Deep Alliances and Analytics Enable Informed Decision-Making

Leaders from LexisNexis, Upland/BA Insight, and the SALI Alliance joined us to discuss their current and future work with NetDocuments to unlock and enable insights across the broader legal ecosystem. Our LEARN product team is leaning heavily into automatic entity extraction with the intent to surface insights from both dynamic metadata fields and within your documents for data analysis and to enable workflows in a variety of ways.

Also unveiled were advancements in our Analytics tool, including the ability to:

Track group engagement;
Learn more about users’ activity within the cabinet, workspaces, and documents; and
Flag unusual user behavior to identify potential security risks.

Security Becomes Manageable

Even within the same organization, one security model might not fit the access needs represented by your diverse client groups, individual contributors, groups of documents, and regulatory bodies. From optimistic to pessimistic models, attendees learned how to adapt to the various complex and overlapping security requirements imposed by clients and various regulations. In addition, experts outlined individual core security services and how they work to further enable customers to take advantage of the power of the NetDocuments platform.

Interested in learning more? Sign up for our December 14 webinar.

Successes Celebrated with Customer and Partner Awards

This year’s Customer Innovation Awards recognized significant accomplishments in automation, collaboration, governance/security, integrations, and acceleration, as well as an overall Inspire Award winner for being a true ambassador for NetDocuments utilization, betterment, and growth. Winners this year were Thompson Hine, Goulston & Storrs, Council of Europe, Hogan Lovells, Sidley Austin, and Orrick, respectively.

NetDocuments’ third annual Partner Awards recognized leading companies spanning the independent software vendor (ISV) network, implementation providers, international partner companies in Asia Pacific, EMEA, and Latin America, as well as partners across all NetDocuments business segments. This year’s honorees included 3545 Consulting, Advanced, Affinity Consulting, DocuSign, Element, eSentio Technologies, GeniusSoft, Henchman, TD Synnex Public Sector, and Verlata.

The Product Roadmap Paints a Bright Future

Leaders on the Product team brought together everything attendees heard over the span of the conference, highlighting ways in which NetDocuments is continuing to improve and enhance:

<div class="blog-nested-list"><ul><li>The <strong>high-performing platform</strong> that lays the foundation for shared capabilities</li><li>Our <strong>legal value layer</strong> with:<ul><li><strong>Productivity features</strong> that enable faster, smarter legal workflows</li><li><strong>Security</strong> to help enforce <strong>governance standards</strong> for firm and client content</li><li><strong>Intelligence</strong> to unlock <strong>key insights</strong> that can help inform and drive business decisions</li></ul></li><li>The <strong>user experience</strong> by designing and delivering value where users are working</li></ul></div>

A Passing of the Guard Gets a Standing Ovation

After his memorable closing keynote in the US about the wonderment of the world’s most widespread and adaptive butterfly species, the painted lady, and tying that to the NetDocuments story, co-founder and now former Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Alvin Tedjamulia, announced his retirement as CTO and introduced our new Chief Technology Officer, John Motz.

Alvin noted, “We were intentional in our search criteria to find a leader who combines a proven track record in SaaS and enabling visionary product development, while also fitting well with our NetDocuments culture of passionate hard work, a willingness to explore new things, and recognizing that every interaction matters.” And John exemplifies all of these qualities. Just like Alvin, John will be responsible for setting the NetDocuments cloud strategy while partnering with our Chief Product Officer, Dan Hauck, to continually evolve our product vision.

In a nod toward NetDocuments’ “we win together” and “every interaction matters” culture, Alvin also encouraged the NetDocuments team that despite being a market leader, we should always continue to have the humility of a startup, while striving to innovate, listen to customers, and remain humble.

Alvin’s contributions to the legal profession will have a lasting impact for years to come and his legendary storytelling and technical insights will be missed in the industry. Fortunately, we’re sure to see more to come as Alvin transitions to being the NetDocuments Chief Evangelist. For more details and context on Alvin’s retirement and next chapter, check out reputed legal tech journalist Bob Ambrogi’s tribute and exclusive podcast interview with Alvin and NetDocuments CEO Josh Baxter.

That’s a Wrap!

This year’s Inspire was filled with great conversations and thoughtful education, and we’re already planning for what’s in store for 2023. Thank you to everyone who attended and made the event a success. We appreciate your participation and look forward to seeing you all next year!

Save your spot for Inspire 2023 to be held in the US (San Antonio, TX) October 23-25, 2023. Inspire EMEA and APAC will also be held in the Fall (Northern Hemisphere) and Spring (Southern Hemisphere) – dates to come soon.

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