In technology terms, Taylor Wessing had been suffering from years of under-investment when Tim Hyman joined as IT director some 18 months ago, at what proved to be a defining moment. “Our practice management system was 15 years old; we were on Microsoft NT and an old version of Office,” he says. “There was no document management system, and Exchange was on its last legs.”
In the first year, Hyman began a systematic upgrade of all the basics. Active Directories went in, along with Exchange 2003 and most of the infrastructure was upgraded to provide more resilience in the network. Then came the task of upgrading legal software applications. Interwoven WorkSite 8 was among the first major new systems, alongside Windows XP and InterAction for client relationship management (CRM) – which has so far only been rolled out to the marketing department. On the hardware side, Hyman invested in a large number of new desktop and laptop machines. “This was enough to give us some breathing space,” he says.
