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| | |Microsoft Dynamics |
| | |Customer Solution Case Study |
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| | | |Leading Law Firm Improves Efficiency, Strengthens Client Ties with CRM Software |
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|Overview | | |“With CRM4Legal, we can continue to provide the same high levels of customer service, even in the |
|Country or Region: United States | | |face of a tough economy.” |
|Industry: Professional services—Legal | | |Victoria Gregory, CRM Systems Manager, Reed Smith |
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|Customer Profile | | | |
|Reed Smith is a global law firm with more | | | |
|than 1,600 lawyers in 23 offices throughout | | | |
|the United States, Europe, Asia, and the | | | |
|Middle East. The firm is ranked among the top| | | |
|five firms for client service. | | | |
| | | | |
|Business Situation | | | |
|As the company grew to include offices around| | | |
|the world, Reed Smith was challenged to serve| | | |
|multinational clients in a coordinated way. | | | |
| | | | |
|Solution | | | |
|The company deployed CRM4Legal, a customer | | | |
|relationship management program for legal | | | |
|firms based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM and | | | |
|created by Client Profiles, a Microsoft Gold | | | |
|Certified Partner. | | | |
| | | | |
|Benefits | | | |
|Improved efficiency | | | |
|Data steward savings of U.S.$50,000 | | | |
|Stronger client relationships | | | |
|Smarter business development | | | |
|Rapid adoption | | | |
| | | |Reed Smith, one of the world’s leading law firms, was challenged to maintain close relationships with|
| | | |clients as it and the number of its clients grew in a highly competitive legal market. A team in one |
| | | |office would not always know what teams in other offices were doing with the same client. To better |
| | | |coordinate teams around the world, Reed Smith deployed CRM4Legal, a customer relationship management |
| | | |(CRM) system from Client Profiles, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Using CRM4Legal, which is |
| | | |based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, Reed Smith has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of its |
| | | |global client teams. Better, more holistic insight into client activities has naturally led to |
| | | |stronger, deeper client relationships. Reed Smith also uses the CRM software to guide its business |
| | | |development efforts and streamline its new-business research by about 30 hours each month. |
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|[pic] | | |[pic] |
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Situation
The 2007-2009 economic downturn led to an increase in mergers and acquisitions worldwide, which led to an increase in multinational firms. Law firms are challenged to consistently and knowledgeably serve megaclients across multiple global locations. As one of the major law firms in the world, Reed Smith knows the challenges well. With more than 1,600 lawyers working in 23 offices throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Reed Smith has always prided itself on offering the highest levels of customer service to all its clients, large and small. In fact, in 2009, BTI Consulting Group ranked Reed Smith the number-one firm worldwide for client service.
After its own series of mergers and acquisitions between 2007 and 2009, Reed Smith found itself to be a mega–law firm trying to serve many equally large and geographically dispersed clients. “One Reed Smith group did not always know that another group was already working with a client,” explains Victoria Gregory, CRM Systems Manager for Reed Smith. “This became a huge concern for management as we grew. We did not want to lose our strategic focus with each client, damage customer relationships, or waste time performing redundant work and maintaining redundant and inconsistent customer records.”
Many companies use customer relationship management (CRM) software to coordinate customer records and contacts, but CRM systems have faced resistance in the legal world. “Most law firms see CRMs as the province of the marketing staff—merely a big contact database used to send out mailings,” Gregory says. “Attorneys don’t want to waste time entering data into what they perceive to be a mailing label system.”
However, as Reed Smith continued to grow, management knew that client-record fiefdoms would continue to multiply across the firm, and strategic, coordinated efforts between divisions and offices would become more difficult. “Clients are very demanding of their law firms,” explains Gregory. “They expect the staff in one office to know who knows them in another office. We needed a CRM system that would give us a full view of our clients.”
Solution
Reed Smith hired Gregory in January 2007 to head up the selection of a CRM system and ensure its adoption firmwide. “Historically, CRM projects were led by IT departments, so they’re presented as big-bang technology rollouts with little explanation about how or why the firm is using them,” Gregory explains. “Consequently, users don’t see how the systems will benefit them, so they simply do not use them, ultimately limiting their own and the firm’s collaboration capacity.”
At Reed Smith, Gregory knew that half the success would depend on selecting the right software. She looked only at CRM programs designed for the legal industry, and further insisted that the system work extremely well with the Microsoft Office Outlook communications and collaboration client. “Our lawyers sit in front of Office Outlook all day long,” she says. “They understand it and trust it. Introducing a new business application as an extension of Office Outlook dramatically increases the probability that lawyers will use it.”
Gregory also looked for a flexible program that Reed Smith could easily modify to fit its needs, use worldwide, and one that came from a committed vendor that would not disappear after the sale. “As the person who would be managing it, this criterion was particularly important to me,” Gregory says.
CRM for Law Firms
CRM4Legal from Client Profiles, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Atlanta, Georgia, emerged as the obvious winner. CRM4Legal gives law firms the ability to easily create and maintain a clear view of their clients from first contact through marketing, matter management, and ongoing client care.
“Client Profiles stood head and shoulders above the other vendors, both in terms of product capability and company commitment,” Gregory says. “We felt that they were really part of our team. Also, because CRM4Legal is built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, it works seamlessly and completely within Office Outlook; it is not just a button within Office Outlook. The interoperation is very thorough.”
Start Small, Expand Gradually
Reed Smith licensed CRM4Legal in mid-2008 and started by migrating its largest clients into the system. “We started out small and are deploying the software gradually,” Gregory says. “We are rolling it out to one client team at a time, starting with the biggest clients. We began by migrating all data for one client, including contacts, client numbers, business intelligence, analysis, strategic plans, and so forth. When we bring a team in for CRM training, all their client data is already in the system. Then we move on to another team. This approach gives us focus, and gave our users relevance, as they were working with live client data.” Reed Smith plans to have all 3,000 employees in the firm using CRM4Legal by 2011, three years after the initial pilot, which Gregory says is the average timeline that firms should target if they want their CRM to be a success. “Anything shorter than this timeline will result in deploying licenses that have no users behind them,” she says.
“We’re a very forward-thinking firm, so staff members here are open to trying new things. I haven’t had to do as much persuading as I had imagined,” Gregory says of getting lawyers to adopt the new system. “Mostly though, they know that they need a system like this. There is an entire business day between our Pittsburgh and Hong Kong offices, and no one wants to wait that long to get a question answered. Now they can find client information immediately in the CRM system.”
“If it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen.”
In fact, the most important part of the Reed Smith training is the cultural change to record virtually every client contact and action in the program. “Our mantra has become, ‘If it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen,’” Gregory says. “Usage is not optional; this is now a core business system for the firm, and we need everyone to record everything in CRM4Legal.”
As attorneys see the benefits of the system, they are eager to participate. Reed Smith has built automated processes for client-care and business-development efforts into CRM4Legal. This means that the timesaving yielded by eliminating redundant efforts, searching for information, and waiting for answers more than offsets the time spent entering data into the system.
For example, at the beginning of the year, each team creates a strategic plan for their client, recording specific goals for that client. These plans now reside in CRM4Legal, and every task, meeting, analysis, and conversation is recorded against specific plan goals. “All the daily tasks that lawyers perform are now documented as lining up with strategic relationship roadmaps that we’ve established for clients,” Gregory says. “We’re not just dumping long lists of meetings into the CRM. That’s been a game-changer, because it’s highlighted what we’re doing well and what we need to change. Before, all this information was stored statically in a word-processing document or spreadsheet, where it did most team members no good. Now, when there is a client meeting in Pittsburgh, that team adds their meeting notes to the CRM. A team in London can log on the next day and see this.”
Reed Smith has linked CRM4Legal with its finance system, which enables attorneys to view client financial data from the CRM system. It has also tied CRM4Legal to the firm’s letter and forms template software, so that attorneys can create letters to clients and ensure that the contact fields are up-to-date.
With a more holistic view of their clients, Reed Smith client teams can also coordinate their efforts to offer clients additional services. Instead of “blindly” contacting prospects or existing clients, attorneys open CRM4Legal and see every Reed Smith contact with that client, wherever in the world it occurred.
Reed Smith teams also use automated workflows to speed the new-business development process. For example, if one team is working on a proposal for a client or prospective client, CRM4Legal automatically sends an e-mail message to the account manager or industry-group leader to let them know that another team is working on a new-business pitch. After the pitch, the team records whether business was won or lost, and why.
Benefits
With its successful deployment of CRM4Legal, Reed Smith has gained improved efficiency and better insight into progress toward client goals. This leads to stronger, deeper customer relationships. Reed Smith also has a better understanding of new-opportunity potential with each client.
Improved Efficiency
Reed Smith has demonstrated the significant positive impact that a CRM system can have on a legal practice. “Attorneys see the value of contributing to CRM4Legal because it helps them be more efficient and effective,” Gregory says. “They spend less time updating one another on conference calls and trading e-mail messages. They have better insight into new-business development and client-management processes, which lawyers have committed to which tasks, and where they are in completing those tasks. In a large organization like ours, this kind of companywide insight is extremely valuable.”
With the new CRM system, attorneys, client-team leaders, and management can oversee and track activities at a level of detail that was not possible previously. “The [Microsoft Dynamics] CRM system has made it possible for us to identify exactly which activities led to which piece of work,” explains Gregory. “And that’s when you can calculate a return on investment for those activities.”
She adds, “The software is so easy to use and adaptable that I can change the names of fields or add new ones without needing to involve the IT staff.” The ability for nontechnical people to make modifications has the added benefit of slashing the time it takes to deploy new changes, additions, or workflows by days. With the new system, Gregory’s team can quickly adjust to changing market conditions and internal customer expectations to deliver consistently responsive service.
Annual Data Steward Savings of $50,000
One hard efficiency savings is the ability to do without data stewards—people that law firms hire to check all client-data changes, such as job titles or personnel changes. Reed Smith created a prompt in CRM4Legal that asks employees to specify the source of changes to content in certain fields, which takes a matter of seconds to complete. “CRM4Legal gives us a built-in change-management audit trail,” Gregory says. “In our Chicago office, we outsourced the data steward role, and it cost us $3,000 a month. In other offices, this role was filled by secretaries. Firmwide, we are saving approximately $50,000 a year that would have been spent on data steward services if we had opted for a system other than CRM4Legal.”
Stronger Client Relationships
Better coordination among team members has led to a tighter structure and strategy within each client team, which in turn has led to improved client service. Law firms traditionally measured their relationships with customers financially—how many dollars are coming in the door. But in today’s tougher legal market, law firms realize that there is more to a relationship than money, especially with the alternative-payment options, which clients are more frequently requesting.
“Our customers are looking for a business partner, not a service provider that is oriented to hourly billing,” Gregory explains. “With CRM4Legal, we can continue to provide the same high levels of customer service, even in the face of a tough economy. By asking attorneys to record all client-contact details in the CRM, we are focused on building deep, long-term relationships with clients.”
Smarter Business Development
Reed Smith can now better identify opportunities for cross-selling legal services and better serving clients. Client teams run account-plan goals reports that show precisely where they are in meeting their annual goals for each client. Teams can drill down and see the status of every objective, how each team member is progressing in their individual task assignments, and where the team needs help.
“We can run won-lost reports on new-business attempts, track our pro bono work, and view many other performance criteria,” Gregory says. “Having detailed insight into our client contacts makes a big difference in how we build the business. We can see what worked and what didn’t.”
Plus, Reed Smith gains all these insights with far less work. “We are streamlining our new-business-development research by about 30 hours a month, which enables us to respond to client requests sooner,” Gregory adds.
Rapid Adoption
The fact that CRM4Legal is so intuitive and has been so warmly embraced has been a big win for Reed Smith. “Each month, I look at how many new activities have been added to the account-plan goals, and this metric has steadily risen,” Gregory says. “Attorneys are making CRM4Legal the one place they record everything, which is critical to our success with the program. It is incredibly intuitive; people actually enjoy using it. This is half the battle and a very significant achievement for any law firm rolling out a CRM system.”
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems that your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to:
dynamics
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|“[Clients] expect the staff in one office to |
|know who knows them in another office. We |
|needed a CRM system that would give us a full |
|view of our clients.” |
|Victoria Gregory, CRM Systems Manager, Reed |
|Smith |
|“Because CRM4Legal is built on Microsoft |
|Dynamics CRM, it works seamlessly and |
|completely within Office Outlook.” |
|Victoria Gregory, CRM Systems Manager, Reed |
|Smith |
|“Attorneys see the value of contributing to |
|CRM4Legal because it helps them be more |
|efficient and effective. They spend less time |
|updating one another on conference calls and |
|trading e-mail messages.” |
|Victoria Gregory, CRM Systems Manager, Reed |
|Smith |
|“We are streamlining our |
|new-business-development research by about 30 |
|hours a month, which enables us to respond to |
|client requests sooner.” |
|Victoria Gregory, CRM Systems Manager, Reed |
|Smith |
| |
|Software and Services |Partners |
|Microsoft Dynamics |Client Profiles |
|Microsoft Dynamics CRM | |
|This case study is for informational purposes | |
|only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR| |
|IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. | |
| | |
|Document published March 2010 | |
For More Information
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For more information about Client Profiles products and services, call (866) 720-5005 or visit the Web site at:
For more information about Reed Smith services, call (412) 288-3131 or visit the Web site at:
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