Question
Hello,
Now that we’ve had a successful implementation from Enterprise to 3E, what further improvements should we look into? Your suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
- O'Melveny & Myers
Answer
Rather than suggesting specific projects we’d like to advocate more of a ‘marginal gains’ improvement mindset and approach. Having a process in place that allows firms to constantly improve on the foundations and platform that they have put in place ensures that the system stays fit for the future challenges that law firms are all facing. Remember, you’ve done the hard yards and heavy lifting in getting 3E up and live – what we advise as a follow up is a move to ‘little and often’.
For example:
Upgrades – Firms that drop regular upgrades off the project list year after year eventually get to a point where they have to upgrade – but it’s a much more significant project requiring huge effort and even bigger costs due to the size of the changes
New functionality – In a similar vein to the above, new software versions bring improvement opportunities and can bring benefits to the working practices of not only the finance team but more importantly to the fee earning community and business as a whole.
System monitoring, performance and data hygiene – Many firms invest in additional internal resource in maintaining the health of their systems but too often they rely on manual processes. System balancing is a classic example of a process that can be automated but firms rarely introduce this capability. Similarly, data cleansing and master data management are other good examples of activities that either get pushed to the side or absorb a lot of internal resource, when there are automated solutions available to help.
Keeping pace with incremental change – Businesses are evolving constantly, legislation is revised regularly and clients are demanding more from firms. We are in an era where small, timely improvements in response to these changes can make big differences to the overall efficiency of firms.