Revitalised CRM

Putting in place the architecture - and culture - to drive improved client-relationship management at international firm Simmons & Simmons. By Helga Butcher

One of the most common themes in any piece of client research is the inability of lawyers to understand their clients’ business. Three years ago, with this in mind, Simmons & Simmons began a project to ensure that all lawyers and business-support staff worldwide had access (on their desktop) to a single, integrated view of their clients. This would cover the breadth and depth of the relationship, including the financial position of, and most up-to-date market information about the client. It was one of the largest projects the firm had ever undertaken.

The business-management solution condensed 12 finance systems, four electronic-contact systems and up to 2000 individual Rolodex lists into one. Simmons & Simmons was the first firm of its size to roll out such a solution.
But more fundamentally, the programme has been instrumental in overcoming a culture – found in almost all law firms – of individual ownership of client information.

The project was not merely about introducing a new IT system. It was a major change programme. Simmons & Simmons recognised that in addition to installing the technology for its lawyers and business-support functions to become more client focused, it also needed to provide the necessary training, coaching, analysis and reporting to ensure success.

Separate client-relationship management (CRM) and billing systems, the more common approach by law firms including Simmons & Simmons in the past, made it very difficult to gain a clear understanding of the business relationship with a client. This was compounded as clients became more global and increasingly used the firm for many different areas of law across multiple jurisdictions. A lack of shared knowledge and limited communication was hindering the ability to win new clients and risked damaging existing relationships through poor client management.

It would not be unusual for clients to receive separate bills from each office working on a matter. Equally, it was possible that partners pitching for new business would be unaware that another practice or office had a pre-existing relationship, which could be leveraged.

The lack of a CRM system also led to instances where clients would receive multiple invitations to events and seminars, or were invited to inappropriate events (for example, football-hating clients being offered hospitality at the FA Cup final). Mistakes such as this could demonstrate a lack of understanding of the client and be harmful to a successful and continuing client relationship.

The project
From the outset this was an ambitious project, involving 20 offices in 13 countries, 2000 staff and numerous client management and financial systems. Simmons & Simmons managed to roll out all elements of the project within 18 months, as originally planned. Fully supported by the managing partner and the board, the project involved a core team of 20 people, comprising experts from the finance, IT, marketing and business-development functions as well as lawyers.

The roll out was carried out in five key phases, with each phase adding a number of offices, which were grouped together on a geographical basis. The last group of offices went live in May this year.

The architecture put in place includes: an online-forms tool to manage the client, matter and pitch-inception process, risk management and conflict checks; Thompson Elite for financials, time recording and billing; InterAction to record contact information, manage relationships and data and enable effective management of the relationship; and, a reporting tool, accessible to all users. The result is a single, global view of a client in terms of relationships held and revenue billed, regardless of the number of relationships across international offices and practices.

Managing the change process
In addition to the leadership provided by the board, a dedicated change manager has been driving the development of policies and procedures forward throughout the process. This is a global role as it involves all offices, working alongside management and business-support teams. The change manager is supported by a targeted internal-communications programme, to keep everyone up to date.

Data stewards
There is no central data ownership: the onus to keep data current rests with each user, whether they are a lawyer, marketing and business-development professional or human-resources team member. A global team of data stewards assists in ensuring that the firm manages its data as an asset, and establishes and maintains data standards. The team runs and maintains regular reviews of the business data held by the firm, supports users, and takes responsibility for specific areas of data. The stewards regularly run proactive data-cleansing exercises and advise lawyers and support staff on all issues.

Marketing community
Acceptance has been very high across the marketing and business development community. All client events, both technical seminars and corporate hospitality events, as well as the distribution of publications, are now handled through the business-management solution. Marketing and business development are able to respond swiftly and effectively to requests from industry groups or practice areas for the distribution of events information and publications. Lawyers are able to track acceptance records of events, removing the need for endless e-mails with updated acceptance lists, as the information is updated in real time.

Segmentation has also become much easier as the tool enables marketing and business development to ensure that the right contacts are targeted with relevant information.

Reports
Reports bring out the real value in any CRM system – without them, users are simply asked to feed the system without getting anything tangible in return. We have developed a series of reports, which help client teams, marketing and business-development professionals make informed decisions, based on the data held in the business-management system. The reports serve as a platform to create dialogue between these functions and enable everyone to further develop client relationships.

Benefits to clients
As a client relationship broadens across offices and/or practice areas, or indeed when new lawyers join the team, the time taken for teams to get up to speed on a client is reduced. Lawyers now have access to a wide range of information, which would otherwise be very difficult to obtain if client management remained the responsibility of a single partner. Alongside this, all lawyers involved with a client have a greater knowledge of them, their issues, challenges and needs.

Clients also secure a seamless service in terms of client management and case-matter management. In particular, they no longer receive multiple invoices or extra ‘surprise’ invoices, when they think that their final invoice has already been paid.

Dialogue with clients has also increased significantly, enabling a greater and more sophisticated understanding of their business and helping us to help our main contacts more effectively on a day-to-day basis. To give an example, client issues, challenges and needs across an entire sector were tracked over a period of time via the business-management solution. The information was then collated and analysed in time for the firm sector team’s annual-planning meeting. Not only was the analysis from this exercise used to help structure service offers for clients and prospects, it was also fed back to clients in face-to-face meetings, to help them better understand the marketplace they
worked within.

Clients are also able to actively control which alerts, publications and other items of information they receive from Simmons & Simmons. The technology is in place to put the client in the driving seat simply by clicking on the relevant choices in an e-mail, which are then fed automatically into the system.

Firm benefits
The introduction of the system, in conjunction with an ongoing programme of training, guidance and advice to lawyers and business-support staff, has helped change the culture of the firm – changing control over client relationships from one partner to management by the firm as a whole. For law firms, which traditionally worry about the impact of lawyer departures, being able to strengthen relationships more effectively across practice areas and different offices, has created a clear, if less identifiable, benefit.

News and information on their clients’ business is being provided to lawyers and marketing and business-development professionals at the touch of a button, via external links embedded in the business-management solution.

In-depth analysis provided by the reports is helping to identify client relationships that are weakening, by showing which contacts are not being kept in touch with and highlighting client relationships where revenues are falling. It is also able to spot at an early stage a client which used to instruct in multiple offices, and is no longer doing so.

There is also increased financial clarity due to the introduction of a single finance system, which links up the whole firm. The amount of income that has to be written off due to late billing from a particular practice or office, which cannot be invoiced to the client, has also been substantially reduced. The introduction of a single billing system has substantially reduced the time spent on billing and write-offs.

Where do we go from here?
Introducing the technological elements of the business-management solution at Simmons & Simmons is only the start. Now, the focus is on ensuring that everyone benefits – clients as well as Simmons & Simmons lawyers and business support. We believe that we have the right building blocks in place to ensure ongoing success.

Helga Butcher is client-relationship manager at Simmons & Simmons. She can contacted at helga.butcher@simmons-simmons.com