Legal CRM Strategy Corner

Why We Chose Microsoft CRM4Legal

John Guyer of Hinckley, Allen & Snyder talks about Microsoft and Client Profiles, and how this great pairing of companies helped place his firm on a path towards the holy grail of law firm business development – mining relationships.

• Firm: Hinckley, Allen & Snyder LLP
• Providence-Based Regional Firm
• 3 Offices
• 165 Lawyers
• 350 Total Staff
• Previous Technology: Custom SQL marketing database
• CRM4Legal Project: Firm-Wide Rollout
• Business Driver: Technology to support the growing need to identify relationships (and potential business conflicts) associated with rapid firm growth. The need for a firm-wide database of contacts, companies, and related parties to act as the “relationship portal” and to integrate with the firm’s other applications.

There are a lot of applications out there that claim to do CRM. We went down this road very purposefully and we felt very good about it from the very beginning and we feel great about it today. One of the things I look for as much as possible in a piece of software is a nice homogenous solution. What I mean by homogenous is this: I don’t know if you’ve been around long enough to remember the “old days” of technology where a variety of things were used that didn’t work very well together. It was a very “heterogeneous” environment. Microsoft, in those years, was very much a rising star, and as more and more people adopted Microsoft technologies, we had fewer and fewer problems of integration between various key products. Microsoft CRM has benefitted from this development in that, with Microsoft CRM, you have a very homogenous solution that allows you to integrate with the variety of things you have.

Integration with Your Enterprise
I’m relatively new to the legal industry in that I’ve been involved in this particular vertical for about seven years, but I’ve been in software for a long time. I remember to this day, one of my first impressions in legal software was the maintenance release on the service release of a product and it floored me. And it wasn’t unique to one particular product. You see this regularly in the legal space. The software is poorly written, the integration is poorly done, and the more you introduce from the various vendors, the more unstable your environment gets and the higher your maintenance costs go. With Microsoft CRM, we’ve stabilized our environment and reduced our support costs dramatically by focusing on solutions that work together with minimal hooks as possible. By this I mean products that simplify the integration points. This is a strategy that Microsoft uses internally as well where they simplify the amount of integration points to as few a number of standardized conduits as possible. You get that same benefit from MS CRM — it’s a great way to go because it really reduces that complexity.

Simply put, Microsoft has made our world easier by getting as much of the world as possible to use their products. With Microsoft, I don’t have to worry about running an alternative product and hearing the words, “yeah, but it doesn’t work with Microsoft Word” or, “why aren’t we using Office?”. We recently acquired a firm that was using alternative technology and it was interesting talking to their IT staff about some of those same conversations, and those were the types of things they were hearing. If you standardized on technologies that the market is predominantly using you will be better off. Microsoft CRM integrates with Office, it integrates with Outlook, it integrates with Word, and that is a fantastic way to go.

To continue reading this article, go to www.clientprofiles.com/real/real_hinckley_allen.html

 

Law firm survey on user adoption makes solid case for Microsoft CRM

By Dave Hutchinson, Executive VP Sales and Marketing, Client Profiles

Legal marketing expert Larry Bodine’s excellent blog featured an interesting article today that caught our attention, mainly due to the fact that its underlying message greatly underscored the main reasons why more and more law firms these days are choosing to implement CRM4Legal, developed in conjunction with Microsoft, to help them leverage contacts and manage their business development operations.

The post ‘Spot Survey: Less than Half of Lawyers Use their CRM Systems’ cites a study conducted by Lexis Nexis at the recent ILTA conference in Las Vegas. In the post, Mr. Bodine writes that, according to the survey, “many lawyers find current systems in place are too difficult and time consuming.” A whopping 70% of respondents agree that many lawyers in their firm are reluctant to use their CRM system because they believe doing so is too difficult, while an even higher number, 80%, believe it will take too much of their time.

On a positive note, the vast majority of respondents in the survey -- 94% -- say that “integrating specialized CRM capabilities directly within the e-mail and contact management application lawyers in their firm use every day – such as Microsoft Outlook – would enable their firm to capture more useful CRM data and leverage that data in a better way.”

Microsoft and Client Profiles have been keenly aware of these problems with legal CRM since 2005.  At that time Client Profiles and Microsoft partnered to develop the first law firm CRM product built entirely within Outlook, since that’s where the vast majority of lawyers spend a large part of their day. Considering the fact that the CRM4Legal solution was specifically developed in order to directly confront these issues of user adoption,  it’s no surprise that Microsoft CRM is now experiencing a high level of acceptance in the legal industry.  This, coupled with the delivery of useful attorney/client information such as integration with the law firm’s financial system, other software solutions such as SharePoint, and relationship intelligence data, makes CRM4Legal an option that is increasing user adoption.

To be frank, companies who developed software that has been at the center of the problem for years are late to the party in touting CRM systems that lawyers will actually use. As the survey demonstrates, many law firms made heavy investments in CRM systems that lawyers found too difficult and time consuming, and were ultimately left with hefty bills and a CRM system that isn’t being used. Microsoft and Client Profiles have been at the forefront of confronting the issue through three generations of the CRM4Legal product. As a result, user adoption among firms running Microsoft CRM is high, and law firms now report greater success integrating CRM into their workflow.

We could not agree more with the 94% of respondents who believe that working within Outlook is the key to CRM success, which is precisely why we teamed up with Microsoft in the first place, back in 2005, to create CRM4Legal. The record is clear -- while other CRM providers were struggling with the problem of user adoption, Client Profiles and Microsoft were setting out to fix it.

Software Advice Blog Names 15 Best CRM Industry Solutions

Law firms running Microsoft Dynamics CRM4Legal understand the value of a Client Relationship Management system that is tailored to the unique requirements of legal practitioners. The beauty of Microsoft CRM is its ability to be customized for specific industries, and through Microsoft's vibrant partner network, core Dynamics CRM has been extended to meet those needs across a range of vertical markets.

The Software Advice blog now names the 15 best Microsoft Industry Solutions, and their choice in legal is Client Profiles, winner of the 2010 Microsoft Software Developer of the Year award. To find out more, please follow this link.

Client Profiles First to Earn Microsoft Certification in Professional Services

  

Client Profiles has been awarded AMR Research Industry Certification for Professional Services by Microsoft and AMR Research, a Gartner company. This recognition makes Client Profiles the first Professional Services organization to be certified as an industry expert through this program. The certification system is a new and innovative way to allow Microsoft Dynamics Partners to demonstrate their industry-specific expertise.

The Program is based on objective, research-based findings from an independent industry analyst (AMR) and allows customers to easily differentiate those partners who are proficient within their specific industry. Certification enables Client Profiles to stand ahead of the pack of Microsoft Partners and be recognized for its expertise within Professional Services, and specifically the legal industry.

According to Dave Hutchinson, Executive Vice President Sales and Marketing for Client Profiles: "We feel extremely honored that Client Profiles has been named the first Microsoft partner to receive AMR Industry Certification for Professional Services. This certification validates our legacy of providing world-class solutions and support within the Professional Services industry and is further demonstration of the value Client Profiles has delivered."

To receive this certification, Client Profiles provided customer references to validate industry knowledge and expertise and also exhibited a 20+ year track record of providing industry proven solutions within the Professional Services arena.

Enhancing Client Relationships with the Application of Social Networking

 

By David Blumentals

Social networking is continuing to grow rapidly with the number of social networking users having doubled in the last two years. Statistics from Nielsen Online show that social networking has now overtaken email in terms of worldwide reach.  Social networks are so big, in fact, that many of them are competing in size with some of the largest countries in the world.  Apparently the Chinese social network QZone is even bigger than Facebook. Facebook is bigger than Russia.  LinkedIn, Bebo and Xanga are bigger than Canada.

The big question is what does this mean for the business of law?

With the Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal, law firm partners and lawyers can communicate quickly and easily with their followers and/or connections. Marketing professionals can identify their most influential advocates and better manage the brand. Business developers can discover new leads and zero in on key opportunities and pitches, and client service staff can proactively identify and address issues.

CRM4Legal Social Networking Accelerator
The Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal can help law firms capture useful data from social networks by:

• Identifying and tagging public online conversations about their industry, firm, brand and services.
• Analyzing message effectiveness by measuring impressions, replies, and other key metrics.
• Using pre-built analytics to track follower count and identify evolving trends in real-time.
• Gaining instant visibility into brand health with the Social Networking Dashboard.
• Using powerful analysis capabilities to identify the biggest online champions, influencers and complainers.

The Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal can help law firms increase the awareness of their brand and services and improve sentiment by:

• Identifying key influencers in each practice area to increase brand awareness.
• Automatically tracking public online conversations of interest within the client system of record.
• Rating and tracking the sentiment of specific social networking conversations.
• Tracking online reaction to new firm announcements or developments.
• Keeping track of competitors by monitoring their public online conversations.
• Using social networks as a source of market research by creating online focus groups.

The Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal can also help law firms engage social clients while managing and tracking their efforts by:

• Quickly spotting developing PR or perception issues and addressing them.
• Authoring social networking messages directly from the client system of record.
• Automatically tracking responses to social networking messages or conversations.
• Seamlessly integrating social networking channels into existing marketing campaigns.
• Launching online marketing programs that engage social clients in their preferred environment.
• Seamlessly tracking responses and leads generated from online marketing efforts.

Supporting Law Firm Business Development
The Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal provides key capabilities to help law firm business developers gauge interest and find prospects by:

• Tapping into social networking contacts to jumpstart “warm” lead generation efforts.
• Identifying prospects by focusing on conversations and topics relevant to the practice area or service.
• Better measuring the online influence of each contact based on follower counts and postings.
• Leveraging online career information to better understand the contact or decision maker.

The Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal can help law firms business developers engage in more relevant conversations by:

• Engaging in online discussions with prospects and clients right within CRM4Legal.
• Viewing social networking conversation history within the client system of record.
• Instantly seeing a social networking profile for each contact for a more holistic view.
• Effortlessly creating new contacts in CRM4Legal from social networking contacts.
• Easily creating an opportunity in CRM4Legal directly from social networking sites.

Accelerator Components
In order to help law firms implement these strategies, Client Profiles offers the Social Networking Accelerator for Microsoft CRM4Legal.  Accelerators for Microsoft CRM are add-on modules developed to address specific business needs. The Social Networking Accelerator allows Microsoft CRM4Legal users to discover online conversations, identify influential people, and engage with them on social networking sites using their client system of record—Microsoft CRM4Legal. Additionally, the Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal includes the same easy-to-use interface and industry leading analytics that allows law firms not only to capture data but also make sense of it.

The solution is made up of the following components:
1. Social Network User, Social Network Contact, Social Network Status, Configuration and Controller entities.
2. Customizations for tracking social networking activities.
3. Workflow plug-ins for retrieving and posting messages to social networking sites.
4. Plug-ins for monitoring the sentiment of contacts and statuses on social sites.
5. Six workflow definitions for handling posts and retrievals of messages from social network sites.
6. Four reports for analyzing social network traffic and impact.
7. Script extensions to the application user interface.
8. Documentation of the social networking capabilities, reports, custom entities and installation.

Reed Smith Improves Efficiency, Strengthens Client Ties with CRM Software

 

Posted at Microsoft.com

Reed Smith, one of the world’s leading law firms, was challenged to maintain close relationships with clients as it and the number of its clients grew in a highly competitive legal market. A team in one office would not always know what teams in other offices were doing with the same client. To better coordinate teams around the world, Reed Smith deployed CRM4Legal, a customer relationship management (CRM) system from Client Profiles, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Using CRM4Legal, which is based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, Reed Smith has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of its global client teams. Better, more holistic insight into client activities has naturally led to stronger, deeper client relationships. Reed Smith also uses the CRM software to guide its business development efforts and streamline its new-business research by about 30 hours each month.

Read the entire case study >

The Three Pillars of Law Firm Technology

By David Blumentals

Have you ever wondered what makes a law firm successful in terms of its information technology? You may come up with many answers to this question but when your answers are subjected to scrutiny, every answer will boil down to three things.

• Client Relationship Management
• Practice Management (integrated front/back office)
• Document Management

Client Relationship Management
Let’s face it, at the heart of any law firm is its clients.  Without clients, there is no billing.  Without billing there is no firm.  Client Relationship Management in a law firm is all about knowing who are your clients, what you do for them and how you can do more.  Effective Client Relationship Management has to be the first pillar of your law firm.

The end goal of your firm is to serve this group of people, and all your energy should be channelled to do so. The moment you step away from your path, your firm is doomed. Do not let your vision be blurred by the shine and sparkles of fancy newsletters, client lunches and expensive marketing events. You have not achieved anything if you are not serving your client right.

Practice Management
If Client Relationship Management is the heart of the law firm, Practice Management (front/back office) is probably the brain. After serving your client right, communicating effectively and managing their goals, the next step is managing cases and matters while accounting for your time and invoicing correctly – the third pillar to your law firm. 

A good Practice Management system should be like an oracle for your office.  Designed to increase your office’s productivity and profitability, practice management provides users with the tools to better perform their jobs and meet clients' demands.  Docketing, Court rules, Conflict of Interest / Conflict Avoidance, Time and Billing are all features.

Document Management
Properly managing documents, including incoming and outgoing mail, emails and faxes is the central focus of a Document Management system.  This is indeed a “must have” to avoid the difficulties of ineffective file management and time consuming effort of finding “the hard file”.  There are also challenges in managing precedents and also the time consuming task of re-generation of existing precedents.  Simplicity in operation and the look and feel of existing Outlook, Word and Excel applications are often key.

Integration, integration, integration
Many firms allow their systems to grow gradually, adding new software as the need arises. This often leads to a confused mix of incompatible and inefficient programs.

Sometimes different functions, such as marketing and finance, each enter the same or related data into a system separately, duplicating effort. Separate information “silos” can each hold some information - but bringing it together to get the whole picture can be difficult. This can cause confusion or frustration for clients, lawyers and staff.

Effective planning minimizes these problems by allowing you to think ahead about how your needs will change and how your systems will need to grow. This kind of planning helps you develop a well-integrated system strategy and delivers major benefits, including:

• Systems that grow with your firm rather than needing to be replaced
• Improved efficiency and fewer errors
• Better access to information, leading to a more responsive service and better relationships with clients
• Better use of staff time and greater job satisfaction
• Reduced costs

A parting thought
Which one of the three is more important? Well, this is tricky to answer as none of them is more important than the other two. It is all about striking the right balance. We suggest forming an equilateral triangle placing each one of them at each corner of the triangle, with your integration strategy sitting right in the centre, equidistant from each one of them.

Client Profiles Adds Three New Members to CRM4Legal Team

Posted by Jorge

Client Profiles announces the addition of three new team members to its CRM4Legal product and services division. Matthew Haisten joins the organization as Senior Project Consultant, David Prior joins as CRM Business Development Manager and Kimberlie McKendrick joins as CRM Training and Support Manager. These new team members will serve as consultants and technical advisors, supporting clients and firms interested in CRM solutions and implementing CRM4Legal technologies throughout the North American, European and Asia Pacific regions.

Matthew Haisten, Senior Project Consultant, joins the CRM4Legal group as a seasoned business strategist and offers more than 18 years of success in planning, developing, and delivering comprehensive, customized IT solutions. Prior to joining Client Profiles, Matthew served as Principal of his own consulting practice, implementing CRM solutions that allowed organizations to strengthen and grow their client relationships. Previously, Matthew served as Director with Intellinet, a nationally recognized provider of IT strategy consulting services based in Atlanta.

David Prior, CRM4Legal Business Development Manager, brings extensive expertise in a diverse range of software applications within the legal industry. For more than 10 years, David has provided best practice solutions to firms of all sizes, most recently with Thomson Reuters, and previously with Interface Software (now a LexisNexis company) and the Sage Corporation. While with Thomson Reuters, David helped successfully sell and implement the Apex CRM application to AmLaw 200 firms. He also helped prepare and implement Elite's Practice Manager, a web based attorney dashboard, into numerous large firms and their existing client base. During his final three years with Thomson Reuters, his primary focus was on business development for the ProLaw Case Management application. David has also performed numerous speaking engagements regarding CRM in law firms, the attorney desktop and how firms can leverage technology to advance their practice.

Kimberlie McKendrick, CRM Training and Support Manager, joins the CRM4Legal group from a previous position as Marketing Manager within the Client Profiles sales and marketing team. In her new role, Kimberlie will manage day-to-day support issues of CRM4Legal clients and play a lead role in developing and executing training curricula as new firms implement Microsoft CRM4Legal technology. In her previous role with Client Profiles, Kimberlie provided marketing leadership while building and executing marketing programs and strategic development initiatives for the organization. Kimberlie also managed and maintained the company's partner relationship with Microsoft as an ISV Gold Certified managed vertical partner.

"Based on the tremendous growth of our CRM4Legal group and the expanding needs of our client base, we identified a need for a new group of professionals to complement the existing team", said Whit McIsaac, President and CEO of Client Profiles. "Matthew, David and Kimberlie bring a very powerful mix of diverse law firm experience, a deep understanding of the Microsoft technology stack, and broad Dynamics CRM know-how. Having consultants with these skills as part of the CRM4Legal client team is a tremendous benefit to the Client Profiles organization. We are excited about the impact that our clients will enjoy based on their immediate engagement on these projects."

Client Profiles Haiti Earthquake Response

In response to the tragic earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12th, Client Profiles is calling on employees, family and friends to make donations toward emergency relief efforts. All donations made by our staff will be matched by the company. We recognize that this terrible tragedy has affected many lives, and our thoughts are with everyone impacted by the devastation in Haiti as well as our Haitian-American law firm clients who are in the Miami area. Our donation will be made to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund (http://www.clintonbushhaitifund.org).

Mobile Giving: Text the word "QUAKE" to 20222 to donate $10 to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, charged to your cell phone bill.

What is your law firm doing about social networking?

By David

Social networking is continuing to grow rapidly with the number of social networking users having doubled in the last two years. Statistics from Nielsen Online show that social networking has now overtaken email in terms of worldwide reach.  Social networks are so big, in fact, that many of them are competing in size with some of the largest countries in the world.  Apparently the Chinese social network QZone is even bigger than Facebook. Facebook is bigger than Russia.  LinkedIn, Bebo and Xanga are bigger than Canada.

The big question is what does this mean for the business of law?

While used by individuals, law firms are now trying to capitalize on the growth trend.  When used effectively, social networking can provide marketers, business developers and law firm staff with new ways to develop and manage meaningful relationships.  But the real value of social networking can’t be achieved in isolation.  Indeed, law firms need to look at core business processes and client management initiatives to consider how social networking can enhance and extend practice development.

What does social networking mean for law firms?
Social networking sites not only provide the ability for users to communicate with each other but also to find like-minded individuals. Power shifts from the organization to the consumer as law firm clients are able to channel and exert their influence.

As social networking sites grow in popularity, firms can no longer rely on traditional forms of communication – newsletters, seminars and events – to enforce perception of service offering and branding.  Conversely, the new communication channel can provide firms with new ways to discover and maintain a persistent connection with the most vocal constituents.  By harnessing this information firms can identify their most influential clients, drive participation in developing new client services and improve sentiment of the firm and its brand.

While some law firms may still question the relevance of social networking, un-monitored conversations that impact their business are likely occurring online right now.  It is important that firms be involved in these conversations.  Ignorance is not bliss.  Social networks are a channel that law firms need to monitor and engage in.

So what does social networking have to do with CRM4Legal?
At the heart of any law firm are clients, and social networking represents an opportunity to build even more mutually rewarding and candid relationships with those clients.  But for firms to realize tangible business benefits, they need to better plan, manage and measure their social networking efforts.  This is precisely where CRM4Legal intersects with social networking.

The Gartner research group contends that that in social networking, “CRM is where you are going to see the ROI in the business model as opposed to anywhere else.  It’s all about connecting and engaging in new ways with clients.”  This is hardly surprising.  Clients using social networks want meaningful engagement with firms.  And firms want a way to manage and measure their success in client service.

When social networks and CRM work together well, law firms gain the ability to better listen to client conversations and engage on their own terms while managing and measuring their efforts.  In simple terms, integrating social networking with CRM delivers optimal marketing, business development and client care service efforts.

Social Networking Accelerator for Microsoft CRM4Legal
In order to help law firms implement these strategies, Client Profiles offers the Social Networking Accelerator for Microsoft CRM4Legal. Accelerators for Microsoft CRM are add-on modules developed to address specific business needs. The Social Networking Accelerator allows Microsoft CRM4Legal users to discover online conversations, identify influential people, and engage with them on social networking sites using their customer system of record—Microsoft CRM4Legal. Additionally, the Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal includes the same easy-to-use interface and industry leading analytics that allow firms not only to capture data but also make sense of it. With the Social Networking Accelerator for CRM4Legal, marketing professionals can identify their most influential advocates and better manage the brand. Business developers can discover new leads and zero in on key opportunities and pitches, and client service staff can proactively identify and address issues.