Down Economy Proves Right Time
for
Nabarro to Implement CRM System
The bold step of implementing a specialised legal CRM system during a recessionary economy has proven a fortuitous decision for leading UK commercial law firm Nabarro.
Traditionally, law firms approach CRM implementations with trepidation. Considered one of the more troublesome systems to implement, they have a high rate of what might be termed 'expectation failure'. They require an open culture and a specific mindset in which to flourish, and therefore tend to require a substantial commitment to establish. Without the right culture instilled through the firm, they often suffer from poor adoption.
This was the fate that befell the firm’s legacy contact management system, says IT Director for Nabarro, Andrew Powell. “Our old contact management system suffered from some technical limitations and was never fully embraced by the firm. Whilst it just about fulfilled base level marketing functions, it was never going to become a more potent business development tool - once a system has failed to live up to expectations, it is very difficult to recover from that. "
Conversely, Nabarro had identified considerable upside to implementing a new CRM solution. Most importantly, if handled properly it would help the firm deliver added value to its client base – a challenge it had set itself despite the economic downturn.
“Put simply, a CRM system should expose the myriad of inter-connections between the firm’s lawyers and its clients,” says Powell. "By uncovering the number, reach and strength of these relationships, a firm can gain better visibility of the opportunities that exist for joined up service delivery. At a time when budgets are tight, using technology to better leverage how the firm interrelates with clients and targets can provide significant advantage."
The firm assessed a number of CRM systems, before choosing to install Hubbard One’s Contact Manager solution. “We knew that we needed tight integration with Outlook to ensure lawyer adoption, as well as the flexibility of a web-based system for our central Marketing and Business Development team. That narrowed the field considerably and we ruled out competitor products because they were either too costly or did not have a large enough user base.”
Hubbard One was prepared to adopt some of the risk in their procurement model, which Powell commends as a healthy dose of realism. “Few firms are likely to risk high capital expenditure on a new CRM system in the current climate. It was refreshing to see a software vendor with enough faith in their product to be able to suggest alternative procurement methods with a more appropriate sharing of risk.”
Live since May 2009, the decision to select Contact Manager is already paying dividends. Powell says the solution is being used to much greater effect than the legacy system.
"From day one, our lawyers have been prepared to input and share relationship information within the firm. As a result, Contact Manager is becoming a valuable knowledge asset."
Powell credits the success of the implementation to two factors, the first being strong sponsorship from the firm's executive management.
“The success of any system implementation is as much about the business processes that are put in place as the software itself. Having one of our executive partners act as evangelist for the project was critical. He presented to all of our lawyers and set them the challenge of getting to know their clients better. Through a series of practical demonstrations, he showed how we could use the system to gain information at a corporate level about how the firm was relating and communicating with its clients.”
Powell says the firm wanted to create more visibility of the range and volume of client interactions across the whole firm. “Without a step change in our CRM platform we could not possibly hope to track all the inter-connections between our lawyers and our clients. It is commonplace to undertake work across multiple practice areas for a client and there is an obvious benefit in being able to draw on those relationships.”
The second success factor was timing.
"Implementing the system during an economic downturn was more by accident than by design but has proved a fortuitous decision. Eighteen months ago, when the economy was buoyant, the sheer volume of work and competing demands on time would have endangered the success of the project. But as the economy currently stands, the potential of the system is well understood and our lawyers are more than willing to share relationship information and invest time."
Because utilisation levels are typically lower in a downward economy, the chances of a CRM implementation getting good traction increase. “In such conditions, lawyers are looking for ways to be more aware of their clients' needs. A system that can bring to the surface the rich depth of inter-connections between lawyers and clients provides information that can be leveraged to a lawyer’s advantage in future interactions.”
It also meant there was more time available for training in the new system. Nabarro elected to train its workforce using situational style learning, rather than classroom-based tuition. Scenario-based presentations, given by partners, provided valuable real-life familiarisation with the system and allowed the firm to complete training in just over four weeks.
Having successfully installed Contact Manager, the firm is also considering implementing Hubbard One’s enterprise relationship management solution, ContactNet. ContactNet enables a firm to effectively throw a net over its email traffic, address books (and other optional systems), to automatically collect and organise a firm’s relationships. It does not require lawyers to actively contribute to the process and it removes the necessity for costly and error-prone data entry practices.
Says Powell: "When integrated with the existing Contact Manager CRM solution, it will give the firm a rich database of relationship intelligence which it can expose to the whole organisation. The visibility of future work opportunities and our customer relationship processes should improve even further. The Nabarro principle is "Clarity Matters" – and that's what we’d like to achieve."
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