Proposal to Henry Riley

Executive summary

KnowledgeMill understands that Henry Riley’s strategic goal is to recognise substantial increases in revenue across the organisation over the next five years, and that this growth is to be in part driven by advances in technologyacross 185 staff and Partners in 10 offices. It recognises that the current intranet-based sharing system is a highly effective, auditable and compliant way to manage project information, but that file shares and email silos do not facilitate companywide collaboration and information sharing. This can lead to project team members being unable to keep up with project developments, and prove to be a limiting factor on the speed at which additional inputs can be made by team members and clients (collaboration). This could result in disputes arising downstream of the project leaders where retrieval of historic information is difficult due to its being held in multiple silos.

Henry Riley recognises that its current toolset would benefit from a refresh, and intends to invest in technologyto update aspects of the IT infrastructure and lay the foundations for better collaboration and productivity which will enable Henry Riley to achieve its strategic goal.

KnowledgeMill’s Email and Document Filing tools would provide Henry Riley with one place to hold all project documents and emails, and accessed through the tool in which most users already spend most of their time - MS Outlook. It provides full collaboration, compliance and auditing capabilities and typically increases productivity by around one hour per person per day; which, for Henry Riley, equates to 750 hours per week additional time to perform fee earning duties.

Current situation

The Company currently uses three distinctmethods of storing and retrieving information as follows:

1)The intranet is used forContact Information, Client Notes, Invoices, Time Records, Annual Leave, Project Resourcing and Project Information.

2)Emails are stored locally on each person’s PC, and it is down to the individual to manage their email archive in line with the filing structure adopted by the Company.

3)Documents are stored on standalone FileServers located in each office.

These systems provide an effective way of managing projects but do not allow workers to collaborate easily.

Moreover, there is no inter-office document sharing and users spend a great deal of time searching for emails and documents which are buried in silos.Furthermore, in some instances it has been found that not all documents pertaining to a project were filed.

Access through mobile devices is important as the team works flexibly and these flexible working practices are likely to increase in the future, including working from home and hot-desking.

Full project folder content is rarely shared outside the organisation but there is a need to upload documents occasionally to an extranet for access by third parties.

Remote offices are currently on slow internet connections. This limits the scope of inter-office collaboration.

Filing structures for email and document system being updated directly from existing intranet is of important.

Proposed Solution

The company would like to adopt a single system for storing all information - One Place to store and find everything relating to a project that can be accessed from any office,a remote workplaceor handheld device.

KnowledgeMill provides a centralised repository for all emails and documents relating to a project - accessible to all users with the appropriate permissions. This would be organised around the project structure that already exists on the intranet and removes the need to:

Store and archive emails on individual’s desktops as .PST files
Store documents in file shares

Existing content can also be migrated into KnowledgeMill.KnowledgeMill will allow all relevant personnel to have full access to any document or email that relates to a given project, in real-time, through a single interface – MS Outlook; even if they are based in different offices or are working remotely.

The KnowledgeMill system has been heavily optimised to make efficient use of network bandwidth. All traffic is compressed to maximise use of the available capacity, and the client side add-ins have been designed to minimise unnecessary chat with the server. In addition, client side caching is used both to store metadata and document content to avoid repeatedly retrieving items from the server.

With this single system providing the necessary level of collaboration and information sharing,KnowledgeMill can assist Henry Riley toachieve its strategic productivity targets and realise time savings of approximately one hour per person per day, together with better collaboration, a lower carbon footprint and ultimately provide its clients with superior service levels.

Implementation:

Implementation is fast and easy. An on premise implementation involves the installation of KnowledgeMill’s virtualised servers and a few hours configuration by our consulting team.

Henry Riley have developed over time an intranet solution, and KnowledgeMill will build a simple connector to leverage this facility to automatically generate the folder structures against which all emails and documents will be filed.

Training:

Training requirements are minimal. All Partners and staff know how to use outlook and the KnowledgeMill plug in is simple and intuitive to use. Training therefore takes approximately 30 minutes for each user and can be done in groups or remotely. Ongoing training for new joiners is available.

Support

KnowledgeMilll are a fast growing London based company. Our support team is knowledgeable and responsive and within 30 minutes door to door of Henry Riley’s Croydon office. Our support team have direct dials, respond directly to emails and are always available to answer questions should they arise. We have built great relationships with our clients and are prepared to go the extra mile to get things done. Any of our clients will be prepared to provide references as to our great ongoing working relationships.

Investment Options

OPTION 1 - Perpetual Model:

Licence fee for 150 users = £69,000

Annual Support and Maintenance =£15,180 (22% of licence)

Set up and Training = £10,000

OPTION 2 - Subscription Model:

3 years:

£255 per user per year x 150 users = £38, 250

Set up and training = £10,000

5 years:

£225 per user per year x 150 users = £33,750.

Set up and training = £10,000

The above pricing includes:-

Full Standard Support during working hours (9-6pm)
Full Technical Support
Out of hours support via Account Manager
Unlimited User training

References

The following clients would be delighted to act as reference sites and to discuss the successes they have realised through the adoption of KnowledgeMill’s Email and Document Filing systems.

GL Hearn – Mark Sedgwick, IT Director or Alan Latimer, COO.
JerramFalkus – William Jerram, Director.
Lewis Silkin – Jan Durrant, IT Director.

Company Overview

Originally a spin out from Clifford Chance, KnowledgeMill automates the process of structuring, sharing, and retrieving emails and documents from anywhere at any time... without leaving Outlook.

KnowledgeMill analyses your incoming and outgoing mails and documents to allocate them to a pre-defined folder structure. And most of this filing is done automatically. These folders can be set up in your everyday Outlook interface for clients, projects or departments and any emails and documents that pertain to that client or project will drop into the right place as they are sent or received.

KnowledgeMill is now an independent, fast growing and successful London based Software Company with clients across numerous geographies and industry sectors.

Next Steps

KnowledgeMill would be delighted to discuss any aspect of this proposal at a time convenient to Henry Riley. Please find contact details below:-

Dan Vongswang

Account Manager

T: +44 (0) 207 940 0162

Charles Winterbottom

Technical Pre-Sales Consultant

T: +44 (0) 207 940 0159

Appendix

IT Requirements and Pre-Requisites

Current Situation:

Henry Riley have chosen to minimise IT spend over the last 2-3 years due to the prevailing economic conditions. Therefore, the firm’s usual 3 year cycle for renewing or upgrading software and hardware has been stretched to 5 years. As a result, the company is now faced with a number of systems approaching end of life/support and are having to make some significant decisions as to where to invest in IT to support the firm’s strategic plan for growth.

Plans currently in place:

- Refresh server infrastructure

- Upgrade from Exchange 2003, on premise or in the Cloud

- Upgrade office Internet/WAN links

KnowledgeMill Requirements and Pre-requisites:

Client/desktop software:

OS: Windows XP or above. We also support Terminal Services/Citrix and VDI deployments and have existing clients running in both scenarios.

Email Filer: Office 2007 (32 bit) or above.

Document Filer: Office 2010 (32 bit) or above.

Please note - Users with Office 2007 can upload documents and files into the KnowledgeMill system and open them in their native apps. However, KnowledgeMill’s add-in for Word/PowerPoint/Excel is not compatible with Office 2007, it requires Office 2010. Therefore, Office 2007 users cannot edit and save documents directly back into the KnowledgeMill system from Word/Excel/PowerPoint. We do not recommend running mixed versions of Office on the same PC, for example Outlook 2007 and Word 2010, as this often leads to native Office features, such as Mail Merge, not working across applications.

The footprint of the KnowledgeMill Outlook and Office Add-ins is minimal. However, in our experience the best perceived performance boost an organisation can give to its users, particularly if they have an older Windows XP estate, is to deploy Windows 7/8 (64bit) and Office 2010/2013 (32 bit) on an up to date PC or laptop with a Core i5/i7 CPU, min. 4GB RAM and a solid state disk (SSD).

Server Software

Exchange Server: Exchange Server 2007 or later, with Exchange Web Services enabled.

KnowledgeMill Appliances:

For an on-premises deployment the core KnowledgeMill server components are supplied as pre-configured Virtual Server Templates. We support VMWare ESXi v4.1 or later, MS HyperV (Server 2008R2 or later) and Citrix Xen.

We require storage to be presented to the appliances as Virtual Disks, or can connect directly to the storage layer via an iSCSi initiator. We specify CPU, memory and IOPS requirements for the appliances based on the number of users and expected volumes of information in the system.

Appliance Sizing for Henry Riley based on 150 Users

KnowledgeMill Servers / Web/App / Database
CPU / 4 Cores (Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 series or equivalent) / 4 Cores (Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 series or equivalent)
RAM / 16GB / 32GB
Storage / Size / IOPS (min) / Size / IOPS (min)
Virtual Disk 1 (Root/OS) / 30GB / 300 / 30GB / 300
Virtual Disk 2 (kmsoftware) / 20GB / 300 / 20GB / 300
Virtual Disk 3 (kmcsdata) / n/a / n/a / 300GB* / 500
Virtual Disk 4 (kmcs) / n/a / n/a / 64GB / 500
Virtual Disk 5 (redo) / n/a / n/a / 5GB / 300
Virtual Disk 6 (filedata) / n/a / n/a / 3TB* / 300
Virtual Disk 7 (kmcsindex) / n/a / n/a / 180GB* / 500
Virtual Disk 8 (kmbackup) / n/a / n/a / 500GB* / 300

The storage sizes above are calculated on the basis of 4GB of email per day growth, equating to approximately 1TB of email data per year, multiplied by 3 years. Please note, this sizing does not take into account migrated content or document content. In addition, not all this storage has to be provisioned on day one, as long as a plan is in place to expand drives when the need arises.

In addition, KnowledgeMill supports a tiered storage model. It is possible to move older, less frequently accessed content in the system onto slower/cheaper disk.

The above server requirements are based on a single KnowledgeMill Application and Database Appliance. If required, we can design the system for High Availability and Disaster Recovery, depending on client requirements. We also recommend that clients have a development/test instance of KnowledgeMill that can be used for testing new releases, troubleshooting issues or developing against the KnowledgeMill APIs without the risk of impacting users on the production system.

Bandwidth Requirements

The table below approximates the actions that a heavy user of the KnowledgeMill system might undertake in a typical 8 hour business day. The output is an average bandwidth figure in Megabits per second per user.

Multiplying this figure out by the number of users in each Henry Riley office we find the following, which is also split out into a heavy, medium and low user bands.

It should be kept in mind that on an asynchronous network connection (e.g. ADSL) then the user experience will be compromised when uploading or saving a file up to the centralised store, due to the limited bandwidth available. Marcus has estimated the average size of an email attachment as 5MB. The maximum potential upload speed of a standard ADSL line is approximately 60KB/second so even allowing for KnowledgeMill achieving 50% compression a save of a document is going to take 30-40 seconds. Therefore, we would recommend a move to a synchronous (or at least significantly faster) uplinks from remote offices to avoid user frustration when working with documents.

Confidential: Prepared by Dan Vongswang 24th March 2014