Worksite - Interwoven

Best Fit

Mid-to large-size firms, 25 users and over, multi-office are best suited to the broad features and functionality of this product.

Strengths

Brief Product Description and Pricing

Interwoven WorkSite provides a shared environment for storing business content and a system for tracking updates, milestones, and communications. Documents—both paper and electronic—records, e-mail messages, and other media are consolidated in a central library, making them easier to find, share, and reuse. Version control, automated notifications, and advanced search options streamline execution and simplify the handoff of work among team members. Business users and professionals manage access and security to workspaces, reducing the demands on the IT organization. Many of the world’s largest and most respected professional services firms, legal firms, accounting firms, and management consultancies depend on Interwoven to maximize their performance and organize, find, and govern business content. Interwoven helps these organizations improve their practices, mitigate regulatory risk, streamline processes, and enhance client service. Professional services firms use our solutions to manage the entire client engagement lifecycle, share information securely throughout their business and with clients, boost worker efficiency, enhance mobile productivity, and retain all client related information—including e-mails—in one place.

Other Interwoven solutions for professional services include:
Interwoven Records Management solution enables organizations to implement effective, unified physical and electronic records retention policies, while keeping storage costs under control and reducing risk.

Interwoven Universal Search: Professional Services Edition is designed specifically to help firms address the growing challenges of locating key content dispersed between multiple systems. With a one-stop search engine that spans all systems and delivers instant results to locate important content, finding firm expertise is always just a few clicks away.

Technical Specifications

WorkSite is typically hosted by the firm itself and requires only the firm’s internal LAN to operate, however WorkSite can and does work over a WAN and the Internet. WorkSite can also be hosted in a third-party datacenter, but the software is still licensed to the firm.  i.e. it is not a pay-as-you-go ASP type solution.

Integration with Accounting and Ease of Setup

WorkSite also integrates with other common applications:

Interwoven WorkSite includes client portal functionality allowing accounting firms to offer clients secure access to information—such as tax returns and financial statements via the Internet. WorkSite frees accounting professionals’ time and increasing overall productivity. Moreover, clients have 24x7 access to information. WorkSite client portals also comply with new privacy laws requiring client information be protected. Unlike email, portals automatically encrypt content transmitted across the Internet.

Representative Client List (if available)

Grant Thornton

Eisner LLP (PDF)

Ehrhardt Keefe Steiner and Hottman PC (PDF)

HKMP (PDF)

Company History and Contact Information

Interwoven is growing rapidly with approximately 1000 employees worldwide. The company has approximately 2,300 customers representing some 600,000 individual users. Incorporated in 1995, the company went public in October 1999.

Commentary (The following is provided by the Editor with notes and comments from others.)

Accounting firms face a number of obstacles to improving the bottom line and providing excellent customer service. Among them are the increasing number of regulations, a shrinking professional workforce, and an explosion in client-provided content and e-mail. In addition, distributed and mobile workforces make costs, compliance, and quality more difficult to manage. Once the engagement is complete, there is also the challenge of managing the long- term storage of client information while maintaining easy access to it. Interwoven helps firms do more with less through electronic client files. Interwoven Solutions for Accounting Firms give accounting professionals a centralized workspace, accessible from desktops, laptops, Web interfaces, and mobile devices, provides comprehensive document management capabilities and visibility into current engagements. An electronic client file provides a common work area and a unified view of all content pertaining to an engagement, including documents, e-mails, and scanned paper. In addition, clients can be granted secure encrypted access to their tax returns, financial statements, and reports over the Internet 24x7 through a client portal.

To help comply with regulations, Interwoven provides a secure archive for content both during and after engagements makes it easier to comply with retention policies. Integration with work paper management and other accounting applications makes it easy for users to access and manage client content. Interwoven provides access content for tax and other practice areas - A work-in-progress repository for content during engagements, plus integration with Microsoft Office and tax applications makes it easy for users to access and manage client content Interwoven supports policy-driven processes to help manage closed client engagements and older documents. Firms can migrate and keep older content available while maintaining security and activity audit trails. Firms set and execute retention policies for final content disposition or accession. Interwoven drives consistent, firm-wide practices - It manages content in a consistent manner based on firm policies and best practices with firm-wide applications, including client portals, knowledge repositories, intranets, and workflow.

With Interwoven, professionals manage client files just as if they were paper, with related information together in electronic client files in a familiar, configurable folder structure. WorkSite provides quick access to current engagements through a personalized list of client files or through document and file search. From within familiar applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, Lotus Notes, and even accounting applications such as CaseWare Working Papers, it’s easy to access content directly. Content can be saved from virtually any application. Interwoven WorkSite provides quick access to current engagements through a personalized list of client files or through document and file search. From within familiar applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, Lotus Notes, and even accounting applications such as CaseWare Working Papers, it’s easy to access content directly. Content can be saved from virtually any application. From Outlook for example, professionals can view everything in current client files, in the same way they view emails in their Inbox. Saving content from most applications into a client file is the same process as saving to a drive. WorkSite automatically builds a document profile including client name, engagement, partner, and year, indexes the text of the document for searching, sets document permissions, and sets the classification and retention policy. Filing emails is even easier. Simply drag and drop emails received from clients into a correspondence folder in the client file.