CRM Deployments Across Borders

Programme Profile:

Legal Global CRM Unification

Need/Problem:

Many global law firms face a common dilemma: they must act both locally
and centrally to attract and retain their client base and maintain their market
position. From a local perspective lawyers need to build and own strong relationships
as they understand their clients and the geographic and regulatory factors influencing them.
In addition, those lawyers must also have to hand information about what work in the past,
current and future has been provided from other countries within the legal group. This is often a barrier to provide superior client services and benefit from the wider global network of firms.

From a central perspective the global firm needed to monitor all client activities
(transactional, business development & marketing) across all firms to ensure client
retention, profitability and enhanced client and partner services. A unified,
comprehensive, and up-to-date global view of all client activities and related lawyers
was essential for providing consistent advice and service, regardless of when or where a
client engages with the firm. It also enabled the firm to seamlessly identify, route, or
direct work to the most suitable experts across the organization. This international
perspective supports effective intercompany billing and fair, transparent partner
recognition, ensuring that work and value are accurately attributed across all offices.

Often Legal Firms have grown by merger and acquisition increasing the number of
systems and data repositories. A CRM system can be used to centralize and rationalize
this information making a global picture easy to comprehend by both the lawyers and
the clients. This is often more cost and time effective then trying to integrate between
all underlying systems.

Our Approach:

In our opinion many firms waste time and investment in trying to integrate and
standardize the underlying local and central systems and data. Therefore the solution
which brings immediate benefits both locally and centrally to both BD, Lawyers and
clients is by extracting key client profile and business performance information and
curating it centrally to proactively provide real time business and client informatcics.

Breakdown of Programme:

By designing and implementing a central Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform alongside
both Practice Management systems such as Intapp, iManage, , PowerBI, BigHand, HiQ,
Elite 3E whilst still supporting local systems we were quickly able to create a virtual
unified business development, client services and reporting, legal and Information
Taxonomy Platform with underlying central Cybersecurity for the whole firm.

Impact of Delivery:

Key success factors were:

- A real-time client information portal was delivered quickly, enabling an integrated approach to client services and business development across all countries.
- Clients were suddenly able to view and report dynamically across the firm, countries, and practice areas, making it easier to request additional work and increasing revenue.
- There was a better return on previous investments in underlying IT.
- Global client reporting and business development planning were partially automated and also provided alerts to trends within clients, sectors, and geographies.
- Regulatory and legal requirements regarding client confidentiality, terms of engagement, and feedback were readily accessible