Evaluating the purchase of a true Relationship Management, Marketing and Business Development System

Posted by Michael

 

I was in a demo a couple of weeks ago and realized a firm had caught a torrid case of Demo Fever…

This post will likely come off as a rant, but it has been bottled up inside of me for too long…  With my years of experience, and the scars to show for it, leading or being involved in some 200 law firm CRM projects with Lynch Marks and Client Profiles, I have gleaned a bit of experience along the way…  Some thoughts:

·         ERM… SchmERM:  I challenge anyone to this debate.  Plain and simple, CRM comes first!  Anyone that tells you different is working their own agenda.  ERM technology is fabulous, BUT THE RESULTS NEED TO BE ACTIONABLE!  You need a clean repository to feed this rich and vibrant data.  I love ERM, but it will fail without a CRM system in place to actually do something with the results.

·         We integrate with Outlook:  OMGosh, let’s define integration!  Linking from Outlook is not integration!

·         Product X is the Gold Standard:  Gold Standard of what…  Failure.

·         We need a CRM “gatekeeper” Steward:  Why…  It is a proven fact that a fleet of data stewards do not know the data better than the users do.  Make them accountable for their data.  YES, you do need someone to be responsible for your critical data, but only focus in on your most important contacts and minimize your investment in this function.  Statistically, 90+% of contact updates are accurate, why feed the beast of Data Change Management…

·         How many times do you need to try to go to market to get it right:  Think integrated practice management and marketing systems…  Too many cooks, diverse technologies and competing priorities…

·         Proposal Smoke and Mirrors, Vapor Ware, Gobbledy Gook:  I pity firm’s as they try to hone in on evaluating vendor proposals and comparing like for like total cost of ownership today…

When evaluating the purchase of a true Relationship Management, Marketing and Business Development System.  Some key points to consider…

From my days as a Consultant assisting firms through product selection, my personal mantra was to help firms stay away from demo fever.  Focus their attention on their firm’s unique core requirements.  Rabidly trying to keep their focus and not get caught up in the glitz and glimmer of a sales professional’s demonstration. 

Remember Lawyers need three things to effectively adopt and use a CRM system:

1)     Relationship Intelligence:  Knowledge of who we know and at some level more importantly who we do not, with the ability to seamlessly track business development activity and other contact touch points;

2)     Rational List Management:  it must be easy to add contacts to mailing lists based on interest.  “Don’t show me another paper based view of my contacts on lists”; and

3)     Data Quality: Clean data without the need to employ a host of data support staff.  The system must support the internal processes and not require the firm to invest in many people to administer the system.  Let’s make the users have some level of accountability for accurate data, supported by strong duplicate detection capability and simple data integrity reporting.

Above all, ease of use is the key!   Every vendor says they “integrate” with Outlook.  Only CRM4Legal is built from the inside out as a core component of the Microsoft Office Suite and integrated Microsoft tool stack.   

Don’t buy the sales pitch, Check references, tear the proposal apart to effectively compare what you are buying and more importantly what you are not….

Important proposal points for review:

Software purchase: 

·         Per User License purchase, or subscription model ???  What happens in year 4 and after? 

·         How many modules do I need to buy in order to get the functionality demonstrated?

Annual Maintenance: 

·         What is included?  Software Assurance, Upgrades, Help Desk Support…

·         How many upgrades can we expect? Future and historical?  How much do I need to plan in services to deal with upgrades?

Consulting Services:  What is included?  or more importantly, what is considered Out of Scope!!!  This can be a huge point of contention when evaluating proposals.

 A complete proposal requires:

·         Project Management

·         Technical Implementation Support

·         Discovery, Design and Project Planning

·         Data Migration

·         Training (IT, Marketing, Trainers, Help Desk, End Users)

·         Best Practices Documentation

·         Ongoing resource staffing and support

 

Comments

[guess who]

You were right - definitely a rant. And unfortunately your rant comes off as a Client Profiles sales pitch. I, too, have been in the legal industry for many years and have seen the good and bad sides of all the vendors involved, and I'm very familiar with the Interaction shelfware problem. Keep trying with CRM4Legal but save the victory dance (and rants) until you've actually delivered. I'd love to see a full-on sucessful MS CRM implmentation in large law, but haven't yet. Can you point to one?

[Geoffrey Hyatt]

Michael, that is a good summary, and most people can probably understand why you sound a little agitated. You are correct that too many firms choose a product by watching demos, instead of starting with a self-developed list of business requirements. For example, even "Integration with Outlook" is not a business requirement. What does the firm actually want to accomplish? Even "a clean set of contacts" is not a business requirement. "Sending professional mailings to targeted lists" is a business requirement. "Finding our best relationships to a target company" is a business requirement. "Getting lawyers to use the system" is not. If firms are very thoughtful about what they actually want to achieve, they will do a better job achieving it successfully.

And with which product? That depends on the requirements. MSCRM is best for some, IA for some others, Hubbard for others. There isn't one right answer for every firm.
And as to which comes first, the CRM-chicken or the ERM-egg, that also depends on the firm's priorities, requirements, strategy and resources. Each firm is different, and so are their needs. As a vendor, we all want to come first, but the customers need to chart their course.

Full disclosure: I'm the CEO of Contact Networks, and we have an integration with Client Profiles that is being implemented at a mutual customer (a top 10 global law firm). We very much like the Client Profiles product, and the very candid people behind it. Likewise, we also integrate with InterAction and Hubbard. We don't pick who we do and don't work with, we do what our customers tell us to do.

[immo koop]

I agree this is really interesting and helpful report, provided data explained in this report is reliable and true.