Bindmans selects Hubbard One to create targeted mini-sites

Prominent UK human rights law firm Bindmans has selected a web development solution from legal marketing experts Hubbard One, giving it the ability to create cost effective, targeted websites.

The firm has purchased Hubbard One’s Mini-Site Builder, part of a suite of web software tools called Web Center that enable law firms to use the web to communicate effectively with target audiences, while making it easy for non-technical staff to edit and publish content.

Bindmans IT Manager, Kambiz Jahanshahi, says the purchase is the first step in a series of technological overhauls the firm is looking to implement, and lays the foundation for selecting further elements of Hubbard One’s legal marketing toolset, such as its customer relationship management software, in the future.

“This is a good stepping stone decision for the firm. Hubbard One’s Mini-Site Builder provides us with the core content management platform upon which we can build incrementally as and when we want to, moving towards creating a single, integrated business development platform.”

Jahanshahi says the firm develops mini-sites for specific business development needs for the different practice areas. However, he says, there have always been issues with developing sites which are cost-effective and easy to manage.

“Because we didn’t have a standard template or a common technological platform, each mini-site was developed independently – with new design and build from the ground up. It turned out to be quite a time consuming and costly process”.

Jahanshahi says the firm also struggled with the fact that the mini-sites were quite technologically disjointed. “We were missing a common platform for each of them, which meant we could not easily share content across the various sites. It was taking us a good deal of resource and time to keep them up-to-date.”

The need to create a site for the firm’s new Business Crime Unit, as well as pressure to update its existing terrorism law and civil partnerships sites, sent Jahanshahi looking for a platform that could host all three. “I was keen to reduce overall production costs and ease administration wherever I could,” Jahanshahi says.

In researching a suitable solution, Jahanshahi discovered that very few companies offered the type of functionality he was after, but he says the name that did keep popping up was Hubbard One.

“It became apparent that Hubbard One had a number of different marketing tools, such as CRM software and the Mini-Site Builder, which formed pieces of a comprehensive set of business development tools.”

Realising this technology provided the opportunity for Bindmans to grow its marketing technology in a modular fashion, the firm asked Hubbard One to develop a mini-site template around an existing design.

“The Mini-Site Builder simplifies the whole website creation process,” says Jahanshahi. “Once you have the template in place you simply press a button and create the mini-site. You can then upload content and update it as you wish. This can be done by non-technical people and it minimises the need for IT to be involved. It becomes a function of marketing, which is where responsibility for the site should reside.”

He says the firm will add functionality to the system as and when it’s needed. “There are additional mini-site capabilities, such as blogging, which we can bring online when we feel it is appropriate. The beauty of the system is that we can extend our marketing functionality in a practical and controlled fashion, bringing on board new capabilities, such as customer relationship management software, down the track if we so desire.”

Once the Mini-Site Builder is installed, Bindmans aims to move all three of its mini-sites onto the platform and will eventually move its main website there as well.

“We now have a tool that allows us to consolidate all sites into a single area. It also gives us comprehensive content management capabilities which allow us to realise the key driver behind this exercise – the ability to establish a repeatable process in the creation of websites, which is both cost effective and time efficient.”

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20th - 23rd October 2009