(Image via iCONECT)
As a software company in the eDiscovery and information governance space for two decades, one might think there is little need to push the envelope. You can coast, right? Not true. Innovation waits for no one, and if all you do is sit around, then all you’ll be doing is sitting around.
iCONECT, the global software company and producer of the award-winning XERA eDiscovery platform, has announced that they are partnering with Newfield Capital Partners, a private investment firm, to provide strategic capital that will fund continued growth and innovation for the company. The terms of the arrangement are not public, but sources say it is a multimillion-dollar deal.
Ian Campbell, CEO of iCONECT, who’s been running the company for 20 years, gave me a few minutes of his time.
Asked what iCONECT is looking to accomplish with this infusion of capital, Ian told me that they are focused on innovative developments in the platform and on growing their market presence through sales and promotion. “We’ve known for a while that we have a better mousetrap,” Campbell says. “We’ve been focused on development for years. Now, we going to focus on expanded marketing and communications.”
iCONECT has been on the fringe of development in the GDPR space, and they have completed development of an auto-redaction tool that enables users to automatically identify and anonymize PII and PHI. They are also doing some cool things in video management for law enforcement, using the XERA platform to grant multi-party access to video evidence.
And they are planning a new software release that embeds some unique AI innovations into the platform.
What does this mean, I asked Campbell. “It finally means that AI will be transparent to the end user,” he says. iCONECT is working to integrate a continuous active learning technology that will make AI/machine learning seamless to the end user. According to Campbell, “People are looking for AI tools to be more interactive; to be similar to how they interact with other platforms, like Amazon or Spotify. We’re going to make our AI offering more intuitive and expand the self-serve capabilities within the iCONECT platform.”
Meanwhile, existing customers and partners of iCONECT are surely wondering what this arrangement means for them. Well, surely it means additional technology resources in the long run. Campbell tells me that nothing will change for existing users. There’s no change in ownership, no change in equity, and no change in personnel.
Customers will likely see an increase in brand presence in the market, but basically Campbell says they are still the same company looking to disrupt the eDiscovery market with their unique brand of innovation.
“We’ve been sitting on the sidelines for a number of years. eDiscovery software companies have come and gone over the course of 20 years. Our goal now is to confirm for everyone who backed the iCONECT horse that they made the smart decision.”
For their part, Louisville-based Newfield Capital Partners appears to have been monitoring growth in the eDiscovery space for years. Rob Bush, a partner at the firm, commented in a joint press release that “with the emerging opportunity in this space and a strong and experienced management team, we are confident that the impact on partners and end users will be very positive, resulting in significant growth for iCONECT.”
Disruption, consolidation, and innovation in the legal technology space is nothing new. There’s been a lot of movement in the past couple years. It’s good to see a little less disruption and the infusion of strategic capital into a product that’s got a vision and mission for the future. So many products have just disappeared. Clearly, it seems we have yet to see the best iCONECT has to offer.
Mike Quartararo
Mike Quartararo is the managing director of eDPM Advisory Services, a consulting firm providing e-discovery, project management and legal technology advisory and training services to the legal industry. He is also the author of the 2016 book Project Management in Electronic Discovery. Mike has many years of experience delivering e-discovery, project management, and legal technology solutions to law firms and Fortune 500 corporations across the globe and is widely considered an expert on project management, e-discovery and legal matter management. You can reach him via email at mquartararo@edpmadvisory.com. Follow him on Twitter @edpmadvisory.