Copitrak breaks China
Cost recovery market leader Copitrak Systems has expanded its international operations with the opening of a new office in Shanghai. The move comes in response to 18 months of increasing demand across China with growth conservatively estimated at 40% for the 2010-11 financial year. Shanghai will focus solely on the mainland, while the long-standing Hong Kong office will cover the rest of Asia and the Pacific Rim.
For managing director Nicholas Child, the development was a logical one. “Having been in Hong Kong for the past nine years, we’ve been able to take advantage of the opening up of the Chinese market but we’ve reached a tipping point now that says we have to service it with a dedicated team and country presence.
There is simply huge potential to be tapped and with our fully Unicode compliant system, we’re seeing interest not just from international law firms coming into the region but more importantly, from the Chinese law firms themselves. But to succeed there we know we have to respect the country and the culture; that means a local office, with local people, local support, a native ‘on the ground’ resource that fully understands the commercial environment and client mindset.”
Copitrak community kicks off with inaugural user group community
The tracking and charging of scanning and mobile telephony costs and a growing environmental awareness were just some of the hot topics at Copitrak’s inaugural user group meeting held earlier this month. Over fifty users registered to attend an afternoon of company and product updates, Q&A sessions and roundtables, with particular focus on the results of a user survey conducted ahead of the event.
With nearly all respondents identifying scanning as a key cost recovery issue for next year, there was plenty of discussion around both charging strategies and IT considerations. The survey revealed that while hardly any firm was charging for scanning at present, two-thirds were keen to introduce it. With concerns also being expressed at the expense of specialist scanning applications, Copitrak took the opportunity to unveil its own workflow solution. It has been designed specifically to offer core functionality such as scan to email and OCR, as well as scan direct to the DMS, but at a fraction of the cost and complexity of dedicated systems.
In addition, the results revealed a concerted movement towards the tracking of mobile telephone costs and the use of tracking to deter private calls; plus more widespread adoption of secure printing/document release, with its savings on paper and toner bringing both ‘green’ and financial benefits.
Copitrak will now look to build on the success of their first user event by creating a dedicated Copitrak community, complete with online forums, a knowledge base, blog, podcasts and video-based training materials.
Copitrak go head-to-head and get Nabarro nod
Copitrak Systems has rounded off a strong quarterly performance with the signing of another top 100 law firm. Having recently concluded deals with Simmons and Simmons and Winckworth Sherwood, the cost recovery specialist has now been appointed by Nabarro to deliver a comprehensive solution across the firm’s London and Sheffield offices.
Nabarro selected Copitrak after completing extensive and exhaustive in-house trials of the market leading products, pitching competing technologies and suppliers against one another in a number of head-to-head pilot projects. Copitrak scored consistently highly when it came to ease of use, functionality and flexibility, with the intuitive SmartBar interface highlighted as the stand-out feature of the system.
A phased roll-out will see an initial implementation of Copy, Print, Secure Print, Scan and Editor modules, complete with proximity card readers; this will be followed by the deployment of Print Room, Phone and Mobile for Blackberry, bringing recording, recovery and tracking capability to every element of disbursement and expense management.
Commenting on the selection process, Andrew Powell, Director of IT at Nabarro, said: “We spent a significant amount of time looking at all potential solutions for our cost and print management requirements. Whilst it was immediately apparent that several solutions in the market offered significant improvements over our incumbent system, we chose to go down the route of a very detailed “under the bonnet” trial as I am convinced we will see very real benefit from a successful implementation. It is much more than cost recovery for us – with the right user interface in place, there is opportunity to improve business processes and save significant amounts of paper.”
Copitrak toasts sales success with a double
Cost recovery specialist Copitrak is continuing to defy the downturn with the announcement of two major projects for London law firms.
In its biggest deployment yet utilising the Canon MEAP platform, Copitrak will deliver embedded print, copy, scan, telephony and mobile solutions to Olswang. The Copitrak software will be integrated with eCopy, bringing the convenience of single sign-on and enabling the passing of user and client/matter details automatically into the firm’s Open Text DM5 system. Print capture will also link into Open Text, with auto detection of mono vs colour to help police printing costs.
Elsewhere, Copitrak is undertaking one of its largest upgrades in recent years for long-time customer Simmons & Simmons. The modernization of Simmons’ global cost recovery infrastructure has seen systems consolidated and centralized in London to better serve its operations across the UK, Europe and the Middle East; projected improvements in efficiency and cost-effectiveness will form part of the firm’s on-going drive to streamline fixed operational costs. In addition, existing Diamond terminals are to be replaced with eCopy ScanStations running embedded Copitrak software, providing the full range of print, ‘secure print’, copy, scan, telephony and mobile functionality.
Commenting on these positive developments Copitrak’s Damian Jeal said: “In the current climate it’s always a great boost to be able to deliver major implementations for existing customers but it’s particularly gratifying to win competitive tenders too, especially with such a cutting-edge deployment for Olswang. Our acquisition and retention rates hopefully demonstrate that Copitrak is indeed the cost recovery partner of choice for law firms worldwide.”
Copitrak win over Winckworth
Copitrak Systems has announced that Winckworth Sherwood has become the latest law firm to sign up for its next generation cost recovery solutions. Copitrak will deliver Eclipse terminals, together with Print, Secure Print and Scan modules across the firm.
As part of the move to new premises, Winckworth Sherwood looked at various cost recovery and print solutions with a view to replacing localised printers with faster, more cost-effective and and energy efficient multifunctional devices.
The contract award follows a series of in-house product evaluations by the firm over the past year, culminating in a successful trial of Copitrak and its copy terminals. The firm was impressed with the degree of functionality available and selected the terminals over the embedded software option. The use of Secure Print also appealed in that it will enable users to print to and retrieve from any one of a mixed fleet of Ricoh devices, while Scan was regarded as a cost-effective route for scanning to email and Sharepoint. The ease of integration with the current PMS and DMS and other bespoke printing systems was another influential factor in opting for Copitrak.
Commenting on the deal, Copitrak’s Damian Jeal said: ‘We’re delighted to be partnering with Winckworth Sherwood and would commend the ‘field trial’ approach they took as the most sensible, pragmatic way of determining which technology offers the best fit for a firm and its users. If the right choice of platform helps you achieve recovery rates in excess of 80-85%, then time and effort invested up-front will have a handsome – and early – payback.”
