The legal profession's most effective information system
Building an Intranet or Extranet Portal can be a time-consuming, trial-and-error process. Portals don't have to be complicated to be effective. Most firms need a quick start to produce immediate results and demonstrate the value of this universal information platform. PensEra's Portal Suite provides everything that a law firm needs to create a central information pipeline and foundation for growth. PensEra's Portal Suite instantly delivers actionable information from multiple sources, so your lawyers and staff can work better. Built on a backbone of PensEra's Foundation Module and Microsoft's Portal, the Suite allows you to instantly access vital information to leverage your people and resources. The Portal Suite allows you to do more with less and deliver higher client value.

The Portal Suite starts with a robust, industry-standard infrastructure built with the best of Microsoftä technologies to seamlessly integrate within your environment. Our comprehensive foundation layer provides for uniform presentation, navigation, search, categorization and personalization of information by office, role or individual. The portal is built to be connected to any number of internal and external content sources.

PensEra's Portal Suite provides all the essential elements to produce quick results in your organization - from profiling & locating individuals, to expanding the reach of your library and research group - from managing meeting rooms to delivering powerful, actionable financial intelligence about clients and performance. In most cases, you can be up and running with a fully functional Portal within 90 days.

PensEra's Portal Suite core modules include:

Financial Intelligence - Every Portal needs to deliver at least one compelling information base that drives the business and creates a competitive edge. In most law firms, the client, case and lawyer financial information is most critical need. This module provides attorneys with quick access to personalized information about their files and their performance. Key client/matter information includes work in progress, accounts receivable, billing history, trust, receipts history, address, etc. Attorney productivity information can include hours worked hours billed, fees billed, fees received, calendar of hours, targets, etc. By delivering what lawyers need when they need it, Actionable Financial empowers the individual and the firm.

People Profiler - This module provides an underlying personalization profile and security database for the Portal. It allows the law firm to deliver relevant decision support information to the user based on that user's office, role, group and authorization. Also a simple, yet comprehensive, directory search helps lawyers and staff quickly find people based on individual characteristics, such as name, title, initials or assistant. A Group-finder helps identify people based on their firm relationships, such as department, title, committee memberships, etc. Both basic and advanced search features are available to suit everyone's needs.

Conference Rooms Manager - Managing office facilities can be unduly time-consuming and complex. This module provides every member of the firm with a view of the daily schedule for all meeting rooms, including times occupied, meeting details and room details, such as layout, capacity, facilities. Recurring reservations and simultaneous scheduling of resources allow automatic notification of catering, A/V, IT or other resource providers. This allows the firm to better coordinate use of the facilities with less overhead and effort.

ReachOUT - Gathering information from diverse members of a law firm is a big challenge. This powerful interactive information and knowledge collector is guaranteed to improve participation and reduce effort. It reaches all firm members, while avoiding e-mail overload. ReachOUT can by used to organize and manage events, conduct surveys, gather expertise, process information forms, coordinate evaluations, share business intelligence, and much more. By creating a structured database of response results, ReachOUT makes it easy to analyze, manage and organize information in the firm. The module is equally effective for gathering information from clients or organizing external events.

Library Module - This PensEra module provides your firm's librarians with their own presence on the Intranet. It allows your lawyers to use all available resources to help their clients, and get easy awareness of (and access to) information assets and resources. It also gives librarians a way to access people and resources all from one easy place.

HomePlate - The Home Page of your Portal is the first screen everyone sees each day. It is a place for posting important information, and it sets the tone for the entire user experience. The HomePlate module helps your staff to update and freshen the Home Page whenever you wish. PensEra's HomePlate preserves the proven portal structure, while allowing you to change or add content, images, and colors to keep your intranet relevant to all users.

WebPlate - A dynamic information portal is always changing and growing. WebPlate allows your IT staff to build menus and connect new information modules and pages to the secure portal structure. With WebPlate, you will be able to add new areas to your intranet "from scratch", and post information on your own with the same security as the rest of the portal.

Command Center - To be effective, a Portal must be easy to maintain and support. The Command Center module gives your IT staff the tools to maintain and control the foundation. This is where the web administrator establishes and maintains individual users, classes, preferences, security, databases, etc. These advanced features are what distinguish the PensEra Portal Suite from rudimentary intranets.

PensEra offers several additional modules and services to build on your portal foundation and further enhance your productivity and knowledge sharing, such as:

• Precedents Strategy
  Every firm handles their precedents in a somewhat different way. Rarely can an out-of-the-box module respond to the specific culture and processes of your firm. PensEra delivers a set of tools and processes that are intended to be adapted to the way you work with your document assets. This can result in a more natural process that works in your firm and improves profitability by providing a way to reuse and leverage its intellectual assets.

• Inner Circles
  Allows the creation of web-based work areas for ad hoc teams, projects, collaborations, or ongoing knowledge exchange. It's a better way for legal teams to work.

• WorkingCopy
  PensEra's advanced document annotation tool is a better model for complex legal document collaborations. It protects the original, provides a neutral and common software platform, and gives maximum control to the originator.

• PrivatePortals
  PensEra's PrivatePortals allow lawyers and their organizations to extend reach outside the firm or department to create external "relationship spaces" for leveraging resources and enhancing the attorney-client relationship. PrivatePortals can be built on PensEra's Portal Suite foundation or implemented separately to deliver higher client value, and create a better ongoing client relationship.

• TimeKM™
  The simplest, most effective way for lawyers to capture time and knowledge. This browser-based time entry and knowledge notes lets you recover more billable hours while building your knowledge assets. See details.

• SoloConnect
  A lawyer on the go needs simple ways to work outside the office. SoloConnect increases mobile access by allowing the lawyer to capture information using familiar mobile tools such as Palm™, Blackberry™, cell phones, laptops, and other PDAs. SoloConnect makes better use of your time, so you can get more done in less time while you're away from your desk.