Iken Expertise

Iken Expertise improves the productivity of professional teams through smarter working practices, and is ideal for teams operating in professional areas of expertise, including legal and company secretarial; issues and complaints management; project and programme management; governance, risk and compliance; procurement and contract management and property and asset management. Many successful organisations within the corporate sector (Volkswagen Financial Services, Sanofi Aventis, Chevron Texaco), and the public sector (Labour Relations Commission, Police Authorities, London Borough of Richmond), have selected Iken Expertise to build on their achievements.

At a glance the key features of Iken Expertise are:

• One central location for all information relating to a particular tranche of work
• Integrated document and email management, with no need to search separate inboxes, sent items or C-drive folders
• Efficient document assembly with templates and precedents
• Shared contact management for business networking – including clients and other business relationships
• Wide range of workflows for appropriate levels of automation
• Diary and event management for key dates and deadlines
• Automated time recording
• Powerful reporting tools

These features ensure that the Iken Expertise delivers professional teams with:

Information to hand when and where it is needed

All documents are stored in the central database; this includes emails, letters, acknowledgements, meeting agendas, forms, or any other kind of document. You can view all the documents related to a particular project, or based on a certain standard; all the documents associated with a particular contact; or all the documents owned by one person or typed by another.

Iken’s extensive email integration (including Outlook, Lotus Notes and other packages) means that you can save emails and attachments to an appropriate case at the touch of a button, helping you to stay on top of your inbox.

Optional scanning facilities are also available, so that incoming letters can be stored alongside other documents and emails. Alternatively, Iken will inter-operate with corporate document imaging systems.

Easy shared access to the complete file history
 
Any authorised member of the team can review the position and status of a particular project and take appropriate action when the file “owner” is absent.

Reduced time spent on document creation and consistent implementation of corporate standards

With the use of customised templates, precedents and workflows, documents are created, stored and managed in real-time within the Iken System. You can also relate parties to a file and link contact details to pre-populate templates, avoiding the unnecessary overheads of typing details in every time.

Easier client care and business networking

Iken delivers an organisation-wide, shared contact database to aid collaboration and ensure that team members have access to the very latest information. Contact details can be automatically inserted appropriately into forms and precedents. It is also easy to determine all the files and cases associated with a particular contact at any one time to assess whether there are any conflicts or areas of risk.

Work is appropriately automated
 
Workflow may be heavily controlled or largely free-flowing, with Iken’s three levels of workflow providing appropriate levels of automation depending on the type of work being carried out. A number of standard workflows already exist to support legal proceedings, debt recovery and other activities.

Diary and event management
 
Iken Expertise can be fully integrated with your diary system, supporting diary management with automatic scheduling, reminders for bring forward dates and key date chain management to ensure that you keep on top of appointments and activities.

Automated time recording
 
Optional time recording is designed for professionals who need to track time in order to recharge clients, plan budgets and monitor workloads. Individuals are able to record and track the time they have spent on emails, documents, task list items, meetings or other matters and allocate time appropriately without adding to their administrative load. Iken time recording is delivered with a suite of management reports for the purposes of client billing, departmental cross charging, budget allocation, workload monitoring and personal time management.

Reporting - automated and user-defined
 
In addition to a set of standard reports, Iken allows user-configurable reporting to suit different organisational needs. Reports can be defined and scheduled to run at set intervals, delivered in a format ready for publication, or exported to Microsoft Excel for further manipulation.

Know–how – easy sharing of best practices and support for CPD
 
In addition to the team-based sharing of case, matter or project-based information, professional teams often require the ability to share a library of intellectual capital including best practices, industry guidelines, regulations or other standard documents. Iken does just that, providing a repository of information available locally, or from the internet. It’s the perfect tool for supporting continuous professional development.

Records management
 
This is increasingly important in the context of the Freedom of Information Act (within the public sector) and for Discovery & Disclosure purposes (within the private sector). Iken contains an audit trail of the management of all records of every kind, from cases, matters and projects through to individual documents and emails. Records management also extends to the records of individual people and businesses associated with different tranches of work, to assist with internal operation of Data Protection principles.
 
Contact us to find out how Iken can harness your expertise to deliver greater efficiency and ease the workload for your team.