In fact, it's often a significant cost in both £ notes and time
Put aside the watering down through pilot to rollout of 'this will transform your practice' to 'this will take away a bit of admin'
Take the lofty sales website at face value - this piece of tech does indeed save hours of time
You've tested that in the proof of concept, it holds in the pilot and you've rolled out and everyone says it saves them time
And put aside the billable hour - this is pure efficiency gains on fixed fee matters
Your internal matter profitability reports, in the short term, will likely show improved profitability because they're based on a standard cost model
But... and here's the gap... if you don't do something with the time saved, there is no financial benefit to the firm
And by 'something', there are really only two options:
- reduce headcount and save on the salary costs
- win more work, so the same number of staff can support higher levels of revenue (now assisted by the tech)
You need to couple the new tech with wider practice management, and I see this get lost in operational siloes within firms -
Between Innovation, LPMs and IT managing the tech implementation on the one hand, and with practice group leaders managing the fee earners on the other
What impact does the tech have on fee earner utilisation, how are you managing that, and what are you doing on sales pipeline?
If you don't have an answer to these broader questions, your tech implementation is not going to deliver a £ of benefit on its own
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