iCONECT-XERA Software

Pros

Customer support through iConect deserves six stars. The person who will solve your problems and answer your questions is the one who answers the phone: no delays or callbacks. And I never have been dismissed without a satisfactory solution. They are receptive to suggestions for improvement, and these ideas are implemented quickly in subsequent updates.
The software is highly user-friendly. The response from our attorneys and support staff has been consistently positive. They enjoy being able to control the organization of their materials and their reviews. The same databases can be shared with other research departments without conflict.
Being able to deliver doc productions to counsel without incurring the costs of outside vendors has been a great asset. We also can give experts access to specific folders for review without compromising the confidentiality of other materials within the same database.

Cons

The software is so adaptable that each database can be customized and tweaked to the delight of both department managers and attorneys. I cannot think of an instance that I have replied, "We cannot do that."
I do wish that we still had the ability to concatenate databases, but we have found a work-around for even that.

Pros

Flexibility. Different levels of access for users limits fields, documents (or groups of documents), or tags. Coding as simple or complex as my users require. Paralegals can do the work they need to do, mass coding, setting up binders, without needing admin access.

Cons

High page count PDFs. Viewing these can be slower and navigating to the page with search hits is cumbersome, though the file could be downloaded. I don't think this is a fault with Xera so much as a hassle in general.

Pros

Easy transition for users migrating from other platforms. Quick database setup, improving our time to deliver to the end user. Clever integrations that save labor.

Cons

Traincar style UI confuses some end users, especially older end users. The next, next, next UI should be optional. The dashboard is nice, but many users dont use it at all. Would be a better UIX if folks could choose to move right into the review, rather than being gated by other features.

Pros

Easy to use analytics. Custom search builder is one, if not the best in any review platform I have seen.

Cons

No search term hit reporting. It also needs better reporting for managing document reviews, Finding out who tagged a document is way too complicated.

Pros

The support team at iConect make this product and their overall experience for sure. The product is intuitive, and it works as advertised containing everything my clients are looking for, but it's the people and the execution of support and partner relationships that make my business work.

Cons

The only note I'll make regarding a negative is the upgrade/feature path recently has been a bit scattered. It would appear the development folks are trying to address everything from users at once, as well as keep up with the other players in the industry.

Pros

The security and customization is nice.
Templates have been developed for ease in creating databases

Cons

Productions could be faster.
Analytics and predictive review (especially email threading) could work better

Revenue

Pros

End user ease of use. There is no learning curve for users. The software is still being improved. Rubs on simple affordable hardware.

Cons

Not full featured. It is missing a few key ediscovery requirements to make it our only ediscovery tool.

Pros

The learning curve to teach new users is way smaller than most other competing products. As an administrator and trainer I need to be able to get a user up and running very quickly, and iCONECT Xera offers that.

Cons

The platform lacks a proper native file ingestion feature. Adding this feature with additional metadata extraction functionality is a next logical step.

My firm trialed this software through ILS and once we got used to how it works we found its features valuable and impressive. ILS was very helpful. The project for which we were reviewing the software got canceled, so we no longer needed to select an e-discovery software vendor. But I recommend looking into ILS and iCONNECT xera for your e-discovery needs.

Pros

Impressive charts and graphs created instantly.

Cons

A little tricky to use at first, but once you know what you are doing it makes sense.

Advice to Others

Don't judge the software based on the demo alone-set up a trial to use it yourself. ILS made it very easy to start the trial.