Getting the Most Out of Praura

Use Case: Lawyers Leverage Document Sharing Technology to Attract and Keep Clients in a Competitive Market

2009-05-18T13:54:00.006-04:00

Problem:

One of the more common legal processes where opportunities exist to mitigate costs for the legal profession is associated with satisfying subpoenas in civil cases. Even a small case with a short duration can result in the need to gather and reproduce thousands of pages of documents, including: various agreements, letters, contracts, meeting notes, emails and other supporting materials.

The document reproduction costs associated with these cases alone can run into the many thousands of dollars. In addition, substantial hourly rates are charged to clients by lawyers and their respective staffs as they seek to locate specific information relevant to a case that may be included in the supplied materials. At most firms’ hourly rates, this can be a significant cost to clients and can take considerable time, lengthening the overall process while increasing costs.

Solution:

With Praura, lawyers can better serve an ever cost-conscious clientele in an increasingly competitive market by simplifying the process required to satisfy information production and sharing requirements tied to civil cases. By simplifying the process, lawyers can keep ancillary document reproduction and research costs in check.

Praura allows lawyers to build a virtual network for each case to ensure that all relevant parties have access to the right information at the right time. Tasks can be tracked and quickly assigned to administrative staff and associates. Calendars can be shared to keep everyone’s schedule coordinated. Access to sensitive documents can be tightly controlled. Discovery can be simplified through the use of powerful search and retrieval tools and document reproduction costs can be brought to zero as documents can be quickly shared with opposing counsel in electronic form via a secure online portal.

When combined with internal case management and workflow solutions, Praura can significantly lower costs for clients while improving services and can simplify the delivery of large volumes of documents and information to opposing counsel when satisfying a subpoena request.

Benefit Breakdown:

Ability to seamlessly upload large volumes for documents

Advanced searching simplifies discovery process by enabling robust searches across all documents in the library with a single search regardless of document format

Limit access to sensitive documents while assigning access to relevant parties

Manage tasks and coordinate calendars with administrative staff

Build a virtual network for a case without letting outside parties into case management workflow

Reduce or eliminate document reproduction costs for clients

Use Case: Reducing Project Risk with Praura Collaboration

2008-12-31T12:42:00.004-05:00

Problem:

In today’s business environment outsourcing has become the norm. It seems that even small businesses recognize the value in hiring experts to accomplish specific business objectives that are not part of their core operations. The problem is, with all the players on the average project team it is impossible to keep everyone informed at an appropriate level. This is especially true since one project is never the only thing on anyone’s plate anymore. Worse, miscommunications and the absence of a centralized library for each project initiative can dilute corporate memory and increase the risk that a project will take longer to complete, increasing costs exponentially.

Solution:

By leveraging the collaborative features of Praura, a project team can maintain separate files in a centralized library for each project initiative and separate sites to share documents with each client. This creates an entirely transparent project environment and reduces risk not only for the client and project sponsor but for the vendors and sub0contracots too. Announcements for key milestones and project happenings are pushed out to all team members. All documents are centralized in a searchable library and document versions can be tightly controlled as they are updated by the various parties. Tasks can be assigned and tracked easily. Links to test sites can be actively managed. A master project calendar can be managed to keep everyone on the same page and informed of key events. The result is a project that is managed more tightly with a greater chance of staying on budget and achieving all project objectives.

Benefit Breakdown:

Manage documents in a centralized library
Document library supports robust searching and version control
Push project announcements out to all team members
Assign and track project tasks
Manage multiple project across several teams in a secure manner
Maintain project level calendars that are fully integrated with Microsoft Office

Use Case: Helping Recruiters Get Closer to Hiring Managers

2008-11-06T12:17:00.003-05:00

Problem:

Recruiters and placement professionals must juggle a myriad of job postings by clients as well as manage thousands of incoming resumes and supporting documents. On top of this, they have to operate in an incredibly competitive marketplace with the knowledge that any job they are looking to fill for hiring companies are also being searched by several other competitors. The typical recruiter or placement professional typically uses email as a means of communicating with clients. This makes it difficult to coordinate across multiple positions and makes it impossible for clients to quickly locate resumes with a specific skill without reading them all.

Solution:

With Praura, recruiters and placement professionals effectively create a closed community around a specific job opening or series of openings. The recruiter can quickly set up hiring managers so that they may upload their job descriptions, non-disclosure agreements, employment applications and any other documents they require from prospects quickly and securely. Similarly, recruiters can create a Praura account for executives so that they can upload their own resumes and supporting documents.

When the recruiter matches executives to positions he simply provides access to those executive profiles to the hiring firms. This allows the hiring manager to set up and schedule interviews, search across resumes for specific skills, and schedule tasks for the recruiter and/or internal staff participating in the search process. Each member of the network has their own dashboard so that tasks can be accessed, managed and assigned. By using Praura for document storage, both hiring managers and recruiters have access to a persistent searchable library of potential employees to simplify searches for future positions.

Recruiters have the flexibility to utilize Praura features in any way that suits their specific business model. The can turn features (such as task assignment, communications or calendars) on or off. They can provide access to executives or just to hiring managers. Whatever works for their business.

Benefit Breakdown:

Secure two way transfer of documents to protect client privacy

Limit access to job descriptions and resumes

Private communication between parties discussing job changes

Assignment of tasks to parties participating in search process

The ability to manage multiple accounts and searches while operating remotely

Closer relationship with hiring firms through improved service offering

Use Case: Streamlining a Small Accounting Practice

2008-10-21T12:59:00.002-04:00

Problem:

Accountants, bookkeepers and other financial professionals often interact with their business clients via email. This means that sensitive bank account, payroll and tax information sails through cyberspace totally unsecured. Using email as a document workflow system also lacks any organized tracking or searching mechanism. This can result in difficulties tracking down documents for specific clients that are required for time sensitive payroll and tax filings. The result is usually an inefficient process managing piles of documents that is more costly to the client and limits the amount of clients each CPA in a firm can serve per period. The net effect is poor customer services and a lost opportunity to generate more revenue for the firm by servicing a larger client base.

Solution:

With Praura an accountant can create a separate secure console for each of his clients. This allows him to post communications, alerts and reminders, store forms and deliver documents back to the client in a secure environment. Each client has a single location to go to in order to access tax and payroll documents. Clients can seamlessly upload documents that they need to deliver to their CPA. His console will serve as a corporate library for each tax period and will allow the CPA to add value by serving as an effective provider of corporate memory for the client.

CPA firms with a partner-associate structure can create tiered libraries for clients where each associate is linked back to a partner. The partner will have insight into the work being done by his or her associates while each associate will have the ability to create client specific consoles. Partners can send communication and guidance to associates and associates can prompt clients with specific instructions. The result is a totally transparent environment where accountants can collaborate with clients and partners to ensure a superior experience for their customers.

Benefit Breakdown:

· Secure two way transfer of documents between clients and accountants
· Creation of a secure virtual library for each client account
· More transparent environment for partners and associates
· The ability to manage multiple accounts while out of the office

Welcome to Praura!

2008-10-20T13:11:00.004-04:00

Praura is the only subscription based solution for managing your company’s everyday business risk.
Praura blends proven document management and archival functionality with basic disaster recovery and business continuity features to ensure that your information is secure, easily accessible and infinitely controllable.

The Praura concept was designed to be a viable infrastructure solution for today’s small and mid-sized businesses. At Praura, we were concerned that small and mid-sized businesses had to spend a disproportionate amount of money to achieve the same quality infrastructure as larger firms. We realized that this meant a huge percentage of businesses simply chose to operate without a safety net or misuse other technologies (such as email).

We set out to design a solution that pulled together much of the functionality found in many different products into a single platform. We decided that this platform should be subscription based for four reasons:

1. Businesses will need to keep costs down while supporting a more widely distributed and mobile workforce in the future in order to remain competitive.

2. Small and mid-sized businesses, especially those no in-house data center, needed a single solution that carried only nominal costs to protect their business information.

3. It is becoming increasingly important for small and mid-sized businesses to have access to simple tools that help them manage more outsourced and offshore work.

4. Professional services firms relied too heavily on email and needed a secure way to exchange data and documents with their staff and clients.

With this in mind Praura began to assemble a complete solution for today’s businesses. Did we try to include all of the functionality in the largest enterprise solutions? No, of course we didn’t. We believe that small and medium sized businesses wouldn’t purchase an enterprise solution even if they could afford it. This reflects the reality that many of these products have evolved to the point that they now include so much functionality as to render them nearly unusable for the typical business.

Keep reading to learn more about how your business can use Praura to reduce risk and lower your operating costs!