I spent part of the weekend wandering around the websites of various litigation software providers (we do have fun on Sundays here). I was actually in search of quotations to support (or undermine, as the case may be) a proposition to go into an article.

I ended up on the kCura Relativity website. kCura is a relatively new sponsor of the eDisclosure Information Project and I was given a demo at ILTA – immersion in comparative functionality is not my primary interest in the eDiscovery / eDisclosure market, but I do like, every so often, to see what the user sees. The demo went a good way towards explaining why Relativity has been doing so well.

My tour of the website reminded me of two kCura points which I had wanted to follow up anyway – Relativity’s Ecosystem Apps and the materials and resources which it publishes for customers. The subjects are not directly related save that they both come under the broad heading of helpfulness to users and are both ways of building a community around a product.

Overt customer support appearing on the face of a website is a more powerful marketing tool than any quantity of material aimed specifically at attracting new users. The web site includes a lot of well-indexed documentation with tutorials and short videos to illustrate various functions and tasks. The customer portal does more than allow the submission and monitoring of support tickets; ideas can be submitted and viewed, discussed and voted up or down the priorities list. Even the customer portal has its own video tutorial.

I had the opportunity to test kCura’s responsiveness because a question came up while I was on their site. In general, I shy away from asking questions in mid-article because I then feel bound to await a reply. Shawn Gaines in kCura’s marketing department came back to me straight away with what I needed, which was pretty impressive on a Sunday. If technical support responds that quickly then users will have little to complain about.

One of kCura’s strengths is the ability of licence holders and third parties to extend the functionality of the software with their own applications, integrations and extensions. This has long been possible, but kCura has now formalised it under the name Ecosystem with a web page which provides information about existing apps. You can get some idea of what is possible by running your eye down the list. Some of these are kCura’s own apps – its Method legal hold software or apps to enable smaller admin functions; if you are able to include processing heavyweight Nuix in your library of apps then you are aiming high.

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