Law firms have invested in plenty of technology to facilitate more efficient collaborative working since the pandemic collided with business norms in 2020 – fast-tracking a number of plans to make the business of remote and hybrid working as productive as possible.
However, some organisational challenges have been around for rather longer – effective customer relationship management (CRM) across those with multiple, highly-pressured client-facing units, for example.
Our new ways of working may have highlighted and intensified the need for more transparency into how different parts of a business are performing – understanding of which client activities to prioritise for growth or change, and ‘who knows who’ to make connections for cross-selling and optimising sales success. But at the same time firms have long acknowledged the need to tackle how the data underlying business process is caught, connected and cleaned.
“Historically, the data that drives law firms has been quite untidy,” says Katherine Neylan, business development and marketing director at Stone King. As we all saw out the challenges of 2021, her firm went live with a huge name in this space, Salesforce. She sees it as an enabler of significant change to how data could be managed, monitored and digested.
“I have worked with different CRM systems throughout my career, and I was clear we must have a new one that met our specific needs as a business – rather than necessarily choosing something specifically designed for any law firm,” she explains. “You can then adapt for the business of law.”
Stone King considered three alternatives and “Salesforce ticked all of the boxes” on paper, she continues – not least for the core focus on data hygiene; the ability to maintain accurate records.
Another compelling aspect was access to timely insight based on that data. “Law firms have always had a lot of information stored in several places – financial, business development, case and practice management systems,” Neylan says. “Salesforce can effectively pull it together into a fee-earner summary that can easily be viewed on one computer or mobile screen. You could quickly see a snapshot of activity for a single client, for example.”
In addition, that view now links up to other sources of data the firm regularly calls on in its work – maintained by Companies House and the Charity Commission, among others.
“External sources are potentially other sources of truth,” says Neylan. “We can assess whether our own business data is up-to-date for ourselves, but Salesforce is very useful at incorporating data from other organisations.”
Multiple roles at play
The top-level case is that the new setup will make it significantly more efficient for a fee earner to deliver on several lines of responsibility during their working day – client work, management matters, and business development.
“Professional services providers also need to be salespeople – but sometimes the latter can drop to a lesser priority,” continues Neylan. “The job is first and foremost to deliver for existing clients.” For example, this can also mean picking up developments for colleagues on days they are absent.
“If a client calls up unexpectedly, the focus is clearly on that specific query. In that moment it’s useful to surface information very quickly – such as connections elsewhere in the organisation, where individuals are within a hierarchy, and even payment status.” On top of that is the connection to other sources when needed to verify details are accurate.
“You often find client details entered into a law firm’s various systems several times – perhaps a subsidiary has different names or addresses – and Salesforce is also helping us to reconcile that. You can effectively link them all together, streamlining conflict-checking, and again manage that process quickly, perhaps on the phone.”
Update engine
As for the BD role, fee earners could of course be learning incrementally more about client relationships with each touchpoint. “As well as being up to speed, the change will help us to develop a more holistic understanding of our clients as part of a process; rather than just knowledge within people’s heads built up over years of working with their clients,” says Neylan. “That’s something that becomes more challenging as a business grows.”
Finally, a bolt-on to Salesforce called Pardot will help Neylan’s team to streamline their marketing communications. Again, this involves bringing some information from different systems together, and with greater trackability of outcomes.
“Stone King does a significant amount of work for schools, social enterprises and charities, as well as businesses and individuals – and at the start of the pandemic, when guidance was frequently changing, we were supporting all of our clients with updates virtually every day to help them navigate the impact of the pandemic,” she says. “We were continually going back to clients offering support on different topics, which was– useful for them as they were responding to the challenges, while it also effectively grew our database.”
And that means more data to monitor and manage. “Salesforce will help the marketing team to track the performance of such campaigns through our website and on social media. We’ll be more automated, with less jumping between different systems to report, analyse and improve.”
After only a month on the system, some of this is a way down the road. Going live has certainly been a “wow moment” for some at the firm, Neylan says. “People are particularly impressed at how quickly data is now surfaced, including on mobile, and how that improves spontaneous internal communication about clients.”
But she will introduce change gradually. “It’s a huge offering in total, and so we’re starting people simply with the process of viewing and regularly updating information.” Training to date has revealed an intuitiveness here, which she is keen to build on with Salesforce integrator Upper Sigma as more processes follow.
“Systems integration is complex and a challenge with any IT project, but there is a simplicity to Salesforce, and we’ll introduce people to more over the next six months.”
Specifically, that will focus on support for maintaining the correct contact levels with clients, and people at all seniorities in the business to build more profitable relationships.