MAKING SENSE OF YOUR DATA: FOR THE LEGAL SECTOR

Transcription

1 MAKING SENSE OF YOUR DATA: FOR THE LEGAL SECTOR In every legal firm there are potentially hundreds of questions which once answered could radically change the performance and efficiency of the business and its operations. This whitepaper looks at how legal firms in particular can make the best use of their data to turn it from mere information into valuable business intelligence. START WITH UNDERSTANDING WHAT IT IS YOU WANT TO KNOW It sounds obvious, but at the beginning of a big data implementation, many organisations are not clear on what they actually want to know, or what insights are currently lacking within their business. All too often, legal firms enter into business intelligence projects because of the hype surrounding big data, rather than as a result of a true data requirement that has emerged within the organisation. Every legal firm needs to decide what the right questions are for their individual business before embarking on a business intelligence project. Every legal firm needs to decide what the right questions are for their individual business before embarking on a business intelligence project. For larger firms, the questions may be around how to operate more efficiently at scale, and for smaller firms the focus could be on how to make the best use of limited resources through insights collected from data. 1 P a g e

2 By working with teams at all levels within your organisation, from the C-suite to customer-facing staff, you can build up a list of questions that will refocus your efforts and ensure you come out of the process with a solution that delivers value for your firm. These questions will define the scope of the project, the source of the information to be collected, the success criteria and the business intelligence solution you eventually choose. This helps to ensure that business intelligence practices permeate all areas of your firm for most effective impact. DEFINE THE VALUE THAT INFORMATION CAN DELIVER FOR YOUR ORGANISATION Defining the value that your newly collated and centralised data will deliver for your firm is key when evaluating different solutions. What will this information enable you to do that you can t do now? By doing this analysis, you ensure that when you do gain access to the information, it is utilised to its full potential and you can ensure that it consistently delivers ROIs back to your business. You also start to build an interest and awareness within your organisation about why you are starting to work with your data in a more informed and considered way so that stakeholders can be involved early in the planning phases for maximum uptake when systems go live. This helps to ensure that business intelligence practices permeate all areas of your firm for most effective impact, allowing data to be continually collected, monitored, utilised and acted upon. UNDERSTAND WHERE, WHEN AND HOW YOU CREATE INFORMATION Once you start on your business intelligence journey, it is important to have a good understanding of where, when and how you create information and data within your organisation. Many firms do not fully appreciate all of the different streams of data that is collected on a daily basis, and often omit this information from big data projects. They instead focus on the static data sources, such as large Practice Management System (PMS) applications, and never integrate this information with multiple smaller data sources that, when combined, could deliver real value and insight to the original information. 2 P a g e

3 Start to collate a list of all the different sources by which you collect data across your entire organisation, namely: CLIENTS: This could be in the form of s, phone calls, prospect interactions, portal usage, trends, social media. IT: Consider information coming from all applications; PMS systems, usage reports, information produced, IT systems. EMPLOYEES: How they interact with your business, how they access work systems, client information produced, case information, documentation. MARKET: Monitoring social media, assessing trends, picking up on peaks and troughs in business activity and sector performance. An example of how merging these disparate data sources for maximum impact could realise business value for your firm can be seen in particular across the PMS system within your organisation. If your PMS system was overlaid with information from customer and general sector social media streams, you could unlock answers to questions about particular spikes or dips in demand maybe you find that during severe weather conditions, your win rates for acquiring new clients goes down. If you looked at PMS data from a year ago, you may not be able to uncover that severe weather conditions could have played a part in your firm s quiet period, but once overlaid with social media information from that time you see particular trends in topics that would point towards the source of the issue. Refine your reports for specific job functions and business activities. DECIDE HOW YOU WILL INTERACT AND USE YOUR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE Once your big data solution is in place, how will your firm use this information? It may be obvious for you as the promoter of the project, but what value could it have for your Finance Department, or your new business sales teams? Sending out the same large report to every department will not encourage active participation and interaction with the data, but refining it for specific job functions and business activities will. For example, creating a Work in Progress report for the Finance Department which details which cases are still deemed as Work in Progress and remain unbilled, could result in finance teams taking action earlier to recover lost fee earnings. Likewise, a report showing how many times certain customers are viewing your 3 P a g e

4 site and using your portal could help with customer service teams choosing who they need to contact proactively to ensure continued customer satisfaction. Clearly defining who has access to what data, and what that data should be used for, is critical to ensuring successful interaction with the information across your organisation. Explaining the valuable decisions that this collated data will enable for your users is also key for helping staff and clients alike to get on board with the new proposition. HOW ARE LEGAL FIRMS STARTING TO EMPLOY BIG DATA FOR THEIR ORGANISATIONS? The data you collect and store is critical for your survival and success. Legal businesses are transitioning rapidly, faster than ever before, and are realising that the vast amounts of data that they collect and store could be critical for their survival and success. Legal firms are now starting to employ big data and business intelligence solutions to make better business decisions across their organisation, across a number of areas: - Understanding profitability levels in realtime across clients and cases. - Recovering lost earnings from unbilled activities. - Assessing who are the highest fee earners and creating best practices as a result of this info. - Delivering more information to clients, quicker. - Collating research rapidly and getting to the right information faster. - Making the most efficient use of available resources at all times. THE FUTURE FOR LEGAL FIRMS AND BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PROJECTS Capitalise on the data you have today for increased growth, efficiency and security. As legal firms become increasingly sophisticated when it comes to employing data for more effective decision making, we will see a rise in more creative uses for data appearing maybe for low-touch customer support where customers are contacted when data trends suggest a customer may be likely to leave a firm (i.e. comments in social media about the firm, increased access of complaints section of website, unusually unresponsive/quiet etc.). These many new uses for data are still unknown, and often we cannot even define the value of them until we start to use them. Unfortunately, it s a case of you don t know what you don t yet know where certain data trends that may prove invaluable in the future, now seem irrelevant. It is a very exciting time for legal firms to capitalise on the data they already have and see what better business decisions they can take today for increased growth, efficiency and security. 4 P a g e

5 ABOUT C24 LTD C24 Ltd is one of the UK s leading privately owned specialist managed service and hosting providers, based in the Midlands, UK. Working with businesses all over the globe, the company manages, secures and delivers critical business applications to over 100 countries, with a particular focus on the legal sector. As a strategic Thomson Reuters partner, we deliver enterprise hosting platforms for Thomson Reuters Elite clients who are looking for more flexible solutions for their core practice management platforms. 5 P a g e