Adding value with HighQ Diligence

Back in September 2013 I wrote a blog announcing the launch of our latest product, HighQ Diligence. This generated a lot of interest from our existing clients but also from firms we haven’t partnered with just yet. In the past few months we’ve been extremely busy showing the product to over 40 organisations and so far the reaction has been excellent. We’ve shown the product to the following industries, in the UK, Europe and North America:

1. Law firms

2. Banks

3. Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) providers

4. Accountancy practices

What’s been really interesting is that we’ve discovered a number of additional benefits and use cases that the product can generate, and so I thought I’d write about some of these in this piece. I end with an insight into what we’re considering might be in store for due diligence and our product in the future.

Quick recap

We designed and built HighQ Diligence in conjunction with several large law firms to address the common pain points firms experience when undertaking due diligence exercises for clients. The product has been built to make due diligence review exercises more efficient, transparent, less prone to errors and more standardised within a firm. We also built a document engine which at the click of a button creates a firm’s house style due diligence report, saving vast amounts of time and money, allowing law firms to report back to clients much faster. So overall, the product is all about saving money (on billable hours lost in inefficiencies) and providing a much better service to clients with faster and more accurate due diligence reports read more.

A day in the life of HighQ: Head of Operations EMEA

In the first of a new series of blog posts revealing how we at HighQ use our own system, Sebastiaan Bos, our Head of Operations EMEA, tells us how he uses HighQ Collaborate to stay in touch with our global team and the clients he works with most closely.
I am based in HighQ’s Netherlands office in Amsterdam (Schiphol-Rijk). From the Dutch office we work together with the all global regions: London, India, Australia and the USA, and on a daily basis I stay in contact with them through HighQ Collaborate.
As we’re such a global company it’s really important that we stay in constant communication, otherwise it’s easy to get left behind. Collaborate helps us to become “spiders in a web” as we say in Dutch – it connects each of us together within one network and when we’re all using one platform it makes our lives easier.
I spend a lot of my spare time checking the activity stream on Collaborate. I use it as a replacement for checking my inbox and catching up on the latest news and updates from our global offices. My email is reduced to client emails, and I do the rest of my internal communication through Collaborate. I interact with my colleagues largely through the activity stream, as I will read their microblogs, comment on their files or pages, and like their updates read more.

3 ways HR teams can use HighQ Collaborate

Human resources and learning and development teams understand the value of an organisation’s network. It is their mission to instil the company culture to new recruits. They ensure that the company makes the most of its most valuable asset, its people.
HR teams are looking to the benefits of secure and social enterprise technology, such as HighQ Collaborate, to help them manage this process. It’s vital that organisations attract, keep and develop the best talent. Here are three ways HR teams can use HighQ Collaborate to help them make the most of their network.

Writing and sharing policies and employee handbooks

Employee handbooks and company policies are an essential part of on boarding new employees and reinforcing the rights of existing employees read more.

Are paperless meetings possible? We think so.

Team meetings can take up a lot of time. Certainly at HighQ, we’re in and out of meeting rooms for much of the day, catching up on where we’re at with our global teams or brainstorming ideas for product updates or marketing strategies.

Usually, team meetings mean everyone traipsing into a meeting room with their own pad of paper and pen, each taking note of what actions they need to take or doodling their way through a particularly dull team meeting. The problem with this is that some people don’t bother to take notes, other people aren’t good at note taking, and the ones who are competent note-takers don’t tend to circulate the information among the team afterwards.

If there’s a document for discussion in the meeting, print-outs need to be made, and sometimes particularly diligent meeting-holders print out copies of their slide deck too read more.

Tuesday Tip: Mobile optimisation

Our Tuesday Tip blog posts give you some quick tips and tricks that help you make the most of HighQ Collaborate. Get more tips in our Tuesday Tip archive.

Mobile optimisation

HighQ Collaborate is designed to work on mobile devices as well as computers. It features a mobile responsive design that adjusts itself based on the device being used.

As the display size shrinks and changes (say switching from landscape to portrait view), the amount of information shown is altered, prioritising certain parts of a page over others by ‘hiding’ some information which can be accessed again easily.
Elements of the site are bigger to support the use of a finger instead of a mouse. And the Top Navigation Bar remains universally available, so it’s incredibly easy to move around the site.

Do you access Collaborate from a mobile? Share your tips in the comments!

Enterprise collaboration news: January 2014 round-up

The first month of 2014 has seen enterprise collaboration news full of suggestions for how organisations can work to improve their operations and make the most of their existing resources.

Leveraging organisations’ networks

Knowledge sharing and talent management have been big news this month, as enterprises look to make improvements and investments in the year ahead. In his article for Forbes, What should HR leaders focus on in 2014?, Edward Lawler explains that the main focus for most organisations this year should be on talent management and talent development, which Edward says is “becoming more critical as many organisations are doing much more complex, knowledge-based work and operating globally”. It’s essential that enterprises have the tools to do this, and knowledge management systems such as HighQ Collaborate will prove increasingly helpful.
As well as managing and leveraging the human network of organisations, it is also vital that employees are connected to one another and the organisation read more at http://highq.com/enterprise-collaboration-news-january-2014-round/

Still using eRoom? Here’s why you need an alternative.

Many organisations still use eRoom. These companies may well have been early adopters of document management and file sharing platforms who have failed to update their systems over the years. Or perhaps they don’t realise there are better options out there. Perhaps they’re afraid of disrupting the way the organisation runs by implementing a new system now after all this time.
However, there are many reasons why companies really ought to seek out a alternative to eRoom.

What’s the problem with eRoom?

One problem with eRoom is that it wasn’t built for complex user set-ups and only offers basic user groups with simple permission sets. Additionally, eRooms deployed on enterprise servers suffer from problems with syncing, caused by flaws in the fundamental architecture of the software.
Aside from the problems with the way the system runs, eRoom also requires hefty initial investment on hardware, software and antivirus as well as eRoom licenses. Ongoing costs include server maintenance and regular software upgrades.
While these may be problems specific to eRoom, there are numerous business problems that eRoom doesn’t begin to solve that its alternatives do.

What should you look for in an alternative to eRoom?

1. A cloud-based platform.

The nature of work is changing. Increasing numbers of companies are opening global offices or working with partners or clients in different offices or cities. Cloud-based systems enable individuals to share files and collaborate from anywhere in the world. Information and files are not stored on shared drives, laptops or inboxes, siloed and difficult to access. Instead, files can be securely accessed from any device anywhere in the world by any user with the correct permissions.

2. A web-based application.

Rather than having to install software on individual machines which requires regular manual updates to keep things running smoothly, web-based platforms require no installation or set-up read more.