Process Consulting

Vendor Direct Solutions has established a proven track record of helping both small and mid-sized law firms manage their Records Departments more intelligently and effectively. Our strategy is driven by a focus on increasing employee productivity by streamlining workflow processes, ensuring continuity and consistency across a firm's records through proactive management and monitoring of staff, driving down overhead while minimizing risk, and by providing opportunities for employee growth not readily available in a traditional in-house environment.

Some of the process consulting we offer includes:

• Assistance with implementing or refining an existing RMS, DMS or ECM system.
• Analysis and creation of definitions of declared electronic records and taxonomy/naming conventions
• Recommendations on DMS rules and tools for Document Management, including declared records features
• Scanning activity / procedures as they relate to intake into the DMS or RMS repository
• Surveying document usage with pilot groups to determine their role in a firm's workflow practices
• Finalizing file plans to identify declared records, how they are acquired, profiled and stored or archived
• Advice on integration with Active Directory for a role-based permissions model down to individual document level design of the site's libraries, content types, policies, and its record series, which defines where in the site record that type should be stored
• Creating custom workflows to move documents to the Records Repository at the appropriate times

VDS's professional staff has worked extensively in records and facilities management environments and understands the inter-dependencies of records software with other applications such as time and billing systems, document management systems and electronic workflow programs. VDS specializes in bridging the gap between your processes and the systems meant to improve your processes. Our staff prides itself in being able to work closely with organizations to understand current business processes and to recommend best practices for records management in your specific environment such as those involved in a migration to a new records management system.

Frankly, a major difference between a VDS and an in-house records operation is that we not only manage the day to day operations but we also make available a community of records experts that can address and change core records processes when appropriate. VDS delivers the initiative and dedicated support necessary to produce visible and quantifiable results. We accomplish this by supplementing all of our on-site operations with a dedicated support team equipped with the experience and resources needed to directly manage operations, plan and assist with executing long term goals, such as retention policies and provide the firm with researched guidance on technology, off-site storage and space issues.