Hitting the tendering target

How Addleshaw Goddard set about improving its overall approach to marketing, with the implementation of a system to streamline pitching processes at all levels of the firm.

By Lucy McNulty.

Organisations, today, have become reluctant to place any type of contract for legal service without some kind of competitive tendering process. As a result, law firms are increasingly required to flex their marketing muscle in order to survive. Indeed, it has become vital for firms to closely monitor their pitching techniques to ensure that their proposals are still meeting, if not exceeding, clients’ requirements. In the current climate, Lance Sapsford, head of business development at UK firm Addleshaw Goddard (AG), has gone one step further in an effort to perfect the pitching process by embarking on a project that aims to up AG’s game across all facets of its pitching operations.

Pitching problems
“Pitching is, obviously, a big part of any law firm’s business,” says Sapsford. “A good pitch is all about making sure that you define your message clearly, understand what you are offering, what the client actually wants and why the client should commit to switching to you, or continue working with you. It’s the front line of all business development (BD) activity.”

A good pitch is evidently an important means by which to win business. Yet, in his two years working within AG’s BD team, Sapsford came to realise that the pitching process was not operating as efficiently as it should for a firm so committed to pursuing a business-growth strategy.

“The divisional structure of AG had encouraged the development of different methods of working within each division so we were becoming increasingly conscious that we had a certain amount of duplication of effort and a significant mismatch in the way we conducted pitching operations across the firm,” says Sapsford.

If AG was to win more business it would need to differentiate itself from other firms, in terms of the pitching experience it delivered to existing and potential clients, and therefore it would need to significantly improve its pitching operations.

“As a firm we are constantly striving to express ourselves in a way that is different and the way we articulate our distinct set of values comes clearly into focus when we are pitching,” says Sapsford. “In embarking on a project to improve the proposal process, we saw an opportunity not only to bring consistency of process but also consistency of messaging around what we are trying to achieve and how we differ from other firms, by becoming more efficient.”

Planning the project
Encouraging firm-wide efficiency, however, would be no easy task. Sapsford needed a software system that would enable easy access to the most relevant and up-to-date information and, by extension, give the entire AG workforce a greater familiarity with the data available and, therefore, the ability to relay the same message within pitching operations. His first step towards finding such a system was to collaborate with the IT team in search of the appropriate software.

“I knew that we were not operating as we should but I also knew that there existed technology that could help us to improve,” says Sapsford “The IT manager began looking into the marketplace to determine what suitable systems existed, eventually settling upon Hubbard One’s Elite Business Development (EBD) and Proposal Generator and Experience Manager (PGEM) suite of products.”

If successfully integrated, the software would enable AG to effectively and efficiently manage BD demands, through the incorporation of several modules into the firm’s system, which would help enhance communication and support its unique marketing and client-services needs. The PGEM suite would enable the proposal development process to be automated and streamlined so that more time could be spent adding value to pitches. Both technologies, therefore, had the potential to significantly alter the way in which pitching operations were conducted at AG.

“The IT team had chosen technology that was sufficiently advanced to be easily integrated into our existing systems and versatile enough to handle a whole range of media in use now, as well as any that may be in use in the future, such as DVD proposals or online presentations,” says Sapsford. “It could also be designed entirely with us in mind with the end result being a wholly bespoke system with which we could construct pitch documents unique to us.”

Overcoming obstacles
Amassing the content
Before the software could have any effect on the firm’s pitching operations, however, the BD team first needed to gather together all the content (such as CVs, practice area descriptions and so on) that the systems depended upon in order to succeed.

“Huge effort had to be invested in gathering together all the necessary content and rewriting or reformatting it,” says Sapsford. “This all had to be done while we were still getting on with our day-to-day jobs, so it was quite a challenge.”

Achieving firm-wide buy-in
The software alone, however, would not streamline the firms pitching processes nor enable the firm to differentiate itself from its competitors. In order to make a difference it needed to be properly integrated into practice systems so that staff at AG could make full use of it.

“Since signing up for the software in July, we have viewed this project as a one-off opportunity to put ourselves on a completely different footing to other firms,” says Sapsford. “We do not want the software to be seen simply as a marketing toy and we also want to make it very clear that this is a BD owned not an IT-owned project, so we have invested a lot of time into determining how we can get the systems to be culturally adopted by the firm.”

As with any new initiative, a certain investment in time was required if the software was to have any effect on the proposal process at AG. It needed to be fully accepted by the firm as a viable alternative to current pitching operations.

“Our goal in the roll out of the software is to make sure that the return on investment is clear,” says Sapsford. “We don’t want either the EBD or PGEM suites to go unused, or to be seen as something that isn’t of value to the firm or as something solely of value to the BD team. We want everybody at AG to recognise that anyone can use the software should they need to.”

In order to encourage staff to recognise the benefits of the changes being implemented, Sapsford first had to secure partner sponsorship for the project. “We chose a partner sponsor who is on our steering group,” he says. “He was chosen specifically because we knew that he challenges anything he is going to be involved in and wouldn’t let us simply dump any old IT system into firm operations.”

With partner sponsorship, the BD team could then focus its energies on developing an effective training programme. “We have put in place a coherent programme that is being phased across divisions, with different levels of exposure to different groups of people within the firm,” says Sapsford.

As the software would be used for different reasons by different factions within the firm the BD team devised a training programme that structured training accordingly. For example, some would only need the software to make use of its grab-and-go functionality, which enables the user to rapidly produce credentials pieces and practice area descriptions, so would receive instruction only in that particular functionality.

“Our training programme aims to instruct those members of staff who will dip in and out of the software right up to those who will be using it for the big ticket, firm-wide panel view for their biggest clients,” says Sapsford. “There will also be some partners who will not want anything to do with the changes we are implementing and in those instances we plan to give them only a very basic knowledge of what the software entails, while their secretaries will be given far more detailed instruction.”

Benefits
As the project nears completion the benefits it will have on firm pitching operations are, in Sapsford’s view, very clear.

“Having taken the time to amass firm content, we have now got a much closer handle on what knowledge we have and where it is stored, what message we are sending out to the marketplace and what deals we have thanks to the technology and the deals database contained within it,” says Sapsford. “Crucially, having this level of knowledge about firm data also helps us to see where the holes are and where we need to improve our knowledge base.”

With a system in place that is capable of enhancing control over firm data, the opportunity also arises for augmenting practice knowledge further through cross discipline projects.

“The project presented us with an opportunity to work with the knowledge management (KM) and human resources departments at AG,” says Sapsford. “The ability of the software to capture and store information such as CVs, provides staff with a very coherent KM system. It enables you to stop worrying about where the knowledge and information is, as all the correct and up-to-date information is now stored on one platform. The potential for other teams to take advantage of this is huge.”

With all the necessary content stored in the same domain, employees’ time can be spent focusing on how they express themselves in a pitching environment as opposed to “scrabbling around for information”.

“It’s not a question of saving time per se,” says Sapsford. “It’s about being able to use time more efficiently because clearly the important bit in pitching is not wasting time wondering where a particular CV is, it’s understanding what the client wants and interpreting what that means for us in term of service delivery.

“In fact, both systems really help to encourage staff to concentrate on expressing themselves in a pitch rather then reinventing the wheel,” says Sapsford. “The PGEM suite in particular condenses the process of building a high-quality pitch document from two days to a couple of hours.”

The future…
With a structured training programme in place, the next step on the agenda is piloting the software.

“We have a software pilot about to go ahead in one of our divisions, where we will be testing the software live,” says Sapsford. “The PGEM suite is also about to be piloted, although as we have tested the software continuously throughout the integration process some people are already very familiar with how it works.”

The BD team has, according to Sapsford, “broken the back” of the project, with the phased training programme being the only element holding up the process.

“As we are phasing our training division by division, instructing people in the systems is one of the major elements governing our timeline in terms of getting the software fully integrated into the firm,” says Sapsford. “Getting the software fully incorporated is my primary focus at the moment, but we are very well advanced. I envisage it all to be fully integrated by January 2008.

“It’s a really nice opportunity to have a clean sheet of paper to review the way we do things at AG. We aim to get the maximum benefits out of this project. There are obvious steps we can take in terms of client relationship management and web development once the systems are firmly in place.”