Why all Law Firms Need CRM - xRM4Legal

Why All Law Firms Need Client

Relationship Management (CRM)

White Paper

Date: September 2011

Client Relationships

2

WHY ALL LAW FIRMS NEED CRM SEPTEMBER 2011

Acknowledgements

Prepared for the USA Law Firm Webinar, this document was developed with support from

seminar hosts and in direct collaboration with the following:

xRM4Legal.com Contributors

Rocky Sharma, Senior CRM/xRM Consultant

Feedback

To send comments or suggestions about this document, please click the following link:

http://xRM4Legal.com/content/contacts

Powered by Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, xRM4Legal is more than just marketing and Client Relationship

Management (CRM). As a new and innovative marketing and business development solution for law firms

and other professional services organizations, xRM4Legal offers the most complete set of solutions for

marketing, business development and client care. Our comprehensive platform includes Web, E-mail

communications, relationship and contact management, social CRM, analytics and SharePoint solutions.

xRM4Legal is backed by a national and international team of legal industry specialists providing design,

consulting, technology, implementation, hosting, training and ongoing support services.

www.xRM4Legal.com

Legal Notice

This document is provided “as-is”. Information and views expressed in this document, including URL and

other Internet Web site references, may change without notice.

Some examples depicted herein are provided for illustration only.

This document does not provide you with any legal rights to any intellectual property in any product. You

may copy and use this document for your internal, reference purposes.

© 2011 Asia Pacific Dynamics Corporation. All rights reserved.

http://xrm4legal.com/content/contacts

http://www.xrm4legal.com/

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SEPTEMBER 2011 WHY ALL LAW FIRMS NEED CRM

Table of Contents

Preface ................................................................................................................... 4

About the Author ....................................................................................... 4

Grow, Protect, Sustain ............................................................................................. 6 Determining Your CRM Needs .................................................................................... 7 Why Should CRM Be a Priority? ................................................................................. 8 Making CRM Work in Your Firm.................................................................................. 9

Searching for clients, exploring relationships ................................................. 9

Creating contact records, connections and lists ............................................ 11

Reviewing activities, creating and sharing opportunities ................................ 16

Creating a targeted mailing/event list ......................................................... 19

Software Might Not Help ......................................................................................... 22

Presenting the business benefits ................................................................ 22

Calculating ROI ..................................................................................................... 24 Getting Started ..................................................................................................... 25 How We Can Help .................................................................................................. 26

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Preface

About the Author

David Blumentals has 20 years‟ experience in IT and Professional Services.

With a background in economics, finance and insurance David moved into

marketing and business development in 1989.

Since 1997, David has focused on the successful delivery of Client

Relationship Management (CRM) systems, often integrating with Practice,

Financial and Document Management Systems.

After working with Epicor‟s Clientele CRM in the late 1990‟s and developing finance and CRM

software systems in the early 2000‟s David started working with Microsoft CRM 1.2 in 2004

and Microsoft Dynamics AX in 2007. David continues to work today with Microsoft Dynamics

CRM 2011 in both on-premise and hosted, cloud computing deployments.

David has held several Director level positions with leading Australian IT groups. A major

project was development of the BankNET financial management system and 2003 partnership

with the Australian Taxation Office on their Electronic Commerce Initiative to test the process

of electronic lodgement of the Business Activity Statement from a „Web environment‟.

In May 2008 founded Client Profiles Asia Pacific, an offshoot of Client Profiles Inc, based in

Atlanta Georgia. As a Microsoft ISV Partner of the Year and Professional Services Partner of

the Year in 2009 and 2010, Client Profiles established an impressive client base across

Australia-New Zealand including six of the top thirty law firms.

More recently, David has established Asia Pacific Dynamics Corporation as a support vehicle

for both clients and Client Profiles implementation partners globally. He is also a director of

VARCentral, a leading supplier of hosted, eCommerce software solutions to IT Resellers across

Australia and New Zealand, www.VARCentral.com.au

David can be contacted at [email protected] or +61 409 245 354.

Sydney – Sydney Wharf 9, 56 Pirrama Road, Pyrmont NSW 2009 Australia

London – 40 Bank Street, Canary Wharf, London E14 5NR UK

New York – 1330 Avenue of the Americas, New York City NY10019 USA

For North America please call: +1 (212) 653 0379

For Asia Pacific please call: +61 2 9571 4853

http://www.varcentral.com.au/

mailto:[email protected]

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“CRM turns frogs into princes.”

Anonymous

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Grow, Protect, Sustain We work with a lot of law firms around the world as they consider the implementation of CRM

solutions, and many of them don‟t have a firm grip on what CRM is, why they need it and what results it can bring to them. They aren‟t sure what they should spend on a CRM solution and they ask, "How do I justify this system?“

Many firms have also put their CRM projects on hold as a result of other IT projects, the

economy, or because they think what they have now is OK. What priority should you give to CRM? Hopefully we can help with what you need to know and if there is a fit in your firm.

The goal of most law firms is to make a profit by Growing, Protecting and Sustaining clients

(G-P-S). The truth is … that most law firms do a poor job of marketing, managing clients and growing business development.

So why do you need a legal CRM system? Because the problem is… you don‟t know which clients you will lose, how many you have called on, or what the rest of your firm is doing that

will affect your success or failure. Just knowing how many calls to clients or prospective clients have been made is often done by asking them!

For years, law firms relied on lawyers to maintain good relationships with clients. They kept

their own client records, followed up on new opportunities and grew the client base and service reputation. But when lawyers change firms, or the partners don‟t know what the lawyers have promised (and vice-versa), this gets many firms in trouble.

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Determining Your CRM Needs To work out a firm‟s CRM requirements a few simple questions can be asked:

How many new client prospect telephone calls do you make each day?

Does everyone who communicates with a client know what other practice groups said to them or did for them?

Is all client information kept in one place for easy reference?

Do you have several databases of information that you need to access for a 360 degree

client view? Are you able to manage the top 20% of clients that give you 80% of your revenue and

90% of your profit?

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Why Should CRM Be a Priority? The simple answer here is because it can have such a profound effect on your firm! It greatly

affects staff satisfaction and turnover, the ability to target and close new business, the management of client interactions and profitability, and so on. How much do you think these few functions alone can affect your law firm?

Sometimes firms lose deals because one hand doesn‟t know what the other was doing. How

much would actions like this affect your law firm? How many times does this happen at your firm? How do you know? And how do you know how many calls your lawyers make to clients?

Or… how much time do the lawyers spend with that "one problem client?" And how could it be fixed?

Answers to these questions are what justify the need for CRM software! When firms start to probe, they find that many things are going wrong and being covered up and they‟re costing

the firm a bundle! And don‟t say that your firm has everything working perfectly, because this happens at every law firm! Do an anonymous survey to the "worker bees" and you will find

out.

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Making CRM Work in Your Firm

Searching for clients, exploring relationships

Scenario: You are attending an industry conference or meeting and would like to see what

information the firm has on some of the companies or contacts that are attending, their

positions and if known to anyone else at the firm.

Purpose: This scenario aims to demonstrate how to search for contacts, explore existing

relationships and profiles to build up information ahead of meeting a client or prospective

client.

Steps: Type in the client name “Microsoft”. This will display the following list of head office

and subsidiary records:

Clicking on Microsoft Corporation will display the following client record:

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From here we can review information that is tracked and maintained internally like Client

Number, Business Type, Client Manager/s and so on. We can also review information that is

tracked and maintained externally to the firm – like that aggregated from relevant executive

and business networks.

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Other details about the client organization can also be recorded such as Industry and

Revenue:

We can obtain a quick one page / “taxi pack” report by clicking File and Print Preview.

Creating contact records, connections and lists

Scenario: Having attended a conference or networking event you have collected two business

cards that you would like to add to the firm CRM system. You know there is also a seminar the

firm is hosting next month that you think might be appropriate to invite them to.

Purpose: This scenario aims to establish how to check the database to see if the contact is

already known to the firm, add new contacts from business cards, add you as a known contact

and add the contacts to a firm event list.

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Steps: Clicking on the associated Contacts list displays those contacts currently known to the

firm who work at Microsoft Corporation:

Clicking on the link to Steve Ballmer will display the following contact record:

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You will notice additional navigation pane options for Education, Employment History,

Expenses and Languages. These are examples of additional entities that can be added to

xRM4Legal for managing and integrating HR and Experience Databases – for Expertise, Matter

Level Experience, Education, Bar Memberships, Accreditations and Other HR related

information.

To create a connection with this contact record click on Connections in the navigation pane.

This will display those people in the firm already connected. Some connections are

automatically created such as when a Client Manager is assigned or when a Business

Developer is working on an Opportunity – also when professional staff are recorded on a

Matter. These tend to be the critical “Who Knows” relationships.

Connection records are used in the Outlook synchronization rules to keep CRM records up-to-

date and current between various users that have an interest in that client contact.

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To create a connection just click the Connect button. We can select the role and enter a

description.

15


Clicking on Marketing Lists displays those lists currently associated with Steve:

To add Steve to another list click the Add Existing Marketing List button and select the list:

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A full Audit History of changes to the Contact is recorded:

Reviewing activities, creating and sharing opportunities

Scenario: After bumping into an old client you found out that good opportunities are

emerging in new areas of their business as a result of the recent changes in their General

Counsel.

Purpose: This scenario aims to establish how to record activities so we can share

opportunities and general activity information on our firm contacts with colleagues as well as

aid cross-sell opportunities to others and set reminders so you and your assistant can manage

meetings and action points generally.

Steps: Clicking on Activities displays those open appointments, letters, phone calls and event

responses currently recorded:

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Clicking the Add New Activity button allows us to record the details of the activity:

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From the Activity we can also create a new Opportunity record by clicking the Convert Activity

to Opportunity:

Client and potential new matter details can be recorded together with revenue forecast,

selection criteria/processes, deal and pitch information. Activities, Connections and

Documents can be associated with each Opportunity record.

You can share Opportunity details with colleagues by clicking the E-mail a Link button.

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Creating a targeted mailing/event list

Scenario: You have written a report with relevance to senior legal counsel at financial

institutions and want to send it to these clients.

Purpose: This scenario aims to establish how to create a targeted mailing/event list through

filtering contacts and assigning contacts.

Steps: Clicking on Marketing Lists displays those marketing/mailing lists currently recorded:

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To create a new Marketing List, click the New button and enter details as below – note that we

can specify either Static or Dynamic list:

After saving the record, we can filter and assign Marketing List Members. In this case we will

select only Contacts with a Banking & Finance subscription set to “Subscribed by Client”:

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Clicking the Find button displays the contact records that match the criteria.

With dynamic marketing lists you can rest assured that your special reports will reach the right

set of client contacts.

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Software Might Not Help A health warning!

While some law firms are becoming more tech-savvy about marketing, others do struggle.

As a software system designed to promote business development cross-selling in law firms we

are asking lawyers to download their contacts into it so that other firm practice areas can take

advantage of them as well. The problem is that many of the lawyers don't want to divulge

contacts.

"It's the fear of sharing,"

says one law firm business development manager.

"Like a journalist having to reveal their sources to another journalist. For lawyers [a reluctance

to share client contacts is] fundamentally the most difficult thing for the law firm to

overcome."

"It's a fight to get [lawyers] to download into the CRM program,"

adds the chief knowledge officer at another firm.

"The software has got to be very easy to use," they say. "They've got to see a ton of value in

it without a lot of risk.”

Another problem is matching the right technology to a particular firm. As one chief marketing

officer puts it:

“It’s like shooting squirrels with a cannon.”

Some firms make the mistake of going too “heavy” with CRM and spending way too much

money and time.

“It is often more basic information that's important rather than knowing everything about a

given client.”

Presenting the business benefits

1. Centralized and reliable information/knowledge base (deal flow, sales pipelines etc.) for

reporting ROI on marketing/business development investments.

2. Improved communications (clients, prospects, affiliates/referrers/industry marketing

lists) – “Name and Shame”, “Walk on Water” reporting.

3. Better collaboration across staff/teams/practice groups.

4. Stronger relationships - clients/staff/associates/partners.

5. Greater efficiencies - staff can do more with the time they have.

6. Eliminate processing fall throughs using triggered alerts.

7. Full, complete audit trail of marketing, business development, client care activity.

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8. Enhanced client satisfaction through better ownership, improved service

levels/escalation and follow through.

9. Better business analysis, automated trend reporting to make informed decisions using

dashboards/KPI reports.

10. Single view into marketing/financial/client management.

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Calculating ROI For years law firms have sought to justify a CRM investment based on ROI. From our

perspective, it is important to base metrics on tangible, measurable goals. High level metrics can include:

Enhanced contact management and relationship intelligence Improved marketing and mailing list management

Data quality

Knowing who your top clients are is critical but also tracking the various touch points is important.

Client team support and cross selling is a highly quantifiable and important aspect when calculating ROI. Some integration with practice management will help calculate the value of

new matters generated from marketing events, newsletter subscriptions, opportunity and pitch management.

Apart from these are many intangible benefits such as:

Increased client satisfaction and stronger brand equity

Increased partner satisfaction Superior market intelligence

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Getting Started It is fairly easy to see where the benefits of CRM exist in most law firms. If you are close to

the processes that turn a prospect into a client, and guarantee his or her satisfaction, you know what would help your law firm be more successful.

The next step is to take action to document, justify and convince yourself that the investment will help guarantee your firm‟s long term success.

Our recommended approach to most firms is to start small. A small “private cloud” hosted

deployment can start from $99 per user per month. Some basic tailoring of the system can be done in a few hours with user training conducted over a few days. Data migration can often

be performed by users cleaning their Outlook Contact lists and then tracking those in CRM. For firms that require an on-premise implementation licences start at just a few hundred

dollars per user.

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How We Can Help What we do is help law firms and their staff become more effective business developers – to

increase client billings with less effort.

What we believe in is that it is no longer just enough to be good at what you do. You must

also be good at winning new clients and have systems in place to retain them.

We can help coach people to become systematic, organized, disciplined, innovative and

tenacious in their business development activities.

Why use us? Track record – We are more focused on change, not just education.

What are we looking for? Firms that share our beliefs and want to create a consistent source

of new clients and secure revenue streams where they are in control and are prepared to

invest to get it.

For more information:

David Blumentals

Director, CRM/xRM Strategy

www.xRM4Legal.com

[email protected]

http://www.xrm4legal.com/

mailto:[email protected]

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