Exchange Home   >   Case Studies   >  Maurice Blackburn

ELITE 3E Yields Significant Return on Investment for Maurice Blackburn

COMPLEX BUSINESS RULES DICTATE A ROBUST TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM

Maurice Blackburn (MB) is one of Australia’s leading labor law firms, acting in the interests of individuals or communities that have suffered loss due to illegal corporate behavior. Through its commercial practice, the firm also offers a broad range of services to unions and the corporate sector.

The bulk of MB matters consist of low-value, high-volume work with lengthy work-in-progress (WIP) cycles and multiple billing triggers towards the end of a matter. The ability to quickly generate and distribute billing information based around an extensive set of billing rules is critical to the financial health of the business.

In addition, MB is a highly distributed business with 18 national offices across several legal jurisdictions, making the management of the firm’s business rules even more challenging and complex.

As a result of its distinctive business profile, the MB practice and financial management system requirements are both broad and atypical. They encompass law firm processes familiar to most firms, yet they require a level of flexibility and scalability that is lacking in most technology platforms built for firms of this size.

COLLABORATION BETWEEN MARKET LEADERS

		I expect the return on investment to be significant and I believe the benefits we can reap from the solution are enormous. We are already experiencing a notable improvement in operational efficiency. Neil Mackay, CFO, Maurice Blackburn

MB was one of the first firms in Australia to partner with Elite a Thomson Reuters business, when the Elite Enterprise platform was first launched in the Australian market in 2003. MB required a robust system with a solid financial foundation that could handle the firm’s rapid organic growth over time. Firm management decided on Enterprise, because it was the most suitable product in the market and because of Elite’s market leadership and reputation as a global provider of legal enterprise solutions.

When ELITE 3E was initially released, the MB management team was reticent to investigate this new solution. However, upon a review of the platform, the team recognized that the majority of their very specific billing and reporting requirements could finally be met. The 3E platform is designed from the ground up on Microsoft .NET and provides an integrated development environment (IDE) that enables firms to become more agile in responding to client needs. Firms are able to incorporate new features with speed and reliability not possible with prior technologies. This represents a fundamental shift that empowers firms to take control over personalizing their solution, thus reducing the total cost of ownership.

“We selected 3E because we needed an advanced practice and financial management system that we could configure to meet our unique billing and business process requirements,” explains Neil Mackay, Chief Financial Officer.

After an intense and successful development and implementation period, the firm went live on the system in September 2008 and has plans to implement further functionality within 3E over the next five years. “I expect the return on investment to be significant and I believe the benefits we can reap from the solution are enormous. We are already experiencing a notable improvement in operational efficiency,” adds Mackay.

SOPHISTICATED CUSTOMIZATION CAPABILITIES

MB’s implementation of 3E provides an excellent example of how firms can benefit from a new technology platform.

“We believe 3E is transforming the legal professional’s attitude towards software solutions. It allows law firms to embed their business processes into the applications and fits the way they work, not the other way around,” says Kim Massana, senior vice-president of Strategic Marketing & International at Elite.

		It’s fair to say that users truly have a unique user experience depending on what part of the business they touch, while system administrators still have complete control over how the system operates. Justin Westbrook IT Manager, Maurice Blackburn

The extensive business process capabilities built into 3E enabled the firm’s IT department to build the firm’s complex business rules directly into the 3E workflow process. With its business rules native within the system, firm users interact with the standard interface as the system automatically conforms to the firm’s workflow rules for processes such as routing and authorizations.

Justin Westbrook, MB IT Manager, and Lincoln Broomhall, IT Solutions Developer, were excited about 3E’s possibilities right from the outset. According to Westbrook, “Out-of-the-box 3E does pretty much everything law firms need to do. Moreover, 3E offers a depth of functionality to customize the application and target the needs of specific users. It’s fair to say that users truly have a unique user experience depending on what part of the business they touch, while system administrators still have complete control over how the system operates.”

The IT team has built more than a dozen core business processes into the system and hundreds of business rules that ensure that fee earners, legal assistants and administrators can accomplish their tasks.

From a process perspective, the team has streamlined soft disbursement management, bank statement processing and a number of other administrative tasks. The team has also ensured that users enter information into any workflow only once; has built suburb and postcode lookups across the system; and has automated the distribution of information through the 3E notifications engine and the scheduling of system reports. In addition, they have automated some simple but time-consuming tasks around updating matter status information, so that when certain criteria are met, 3E updates relevant matter information without manual intervention.

“It’s surprising how much these small but valuable process enhancements have helped with information accuracy,” shares Broomhall.

PROCESS & PRODUCTIVITY GAINS

10-Click Invoicing Provides Unquestioned Efficiency
Through enhancing 3E’s standard proforma process, the MB IT department has developed a billing procedure specific to their exact requirements, which has led to the firm’s impressive “10-click invoice” process. From the initial generation of the invoice, all the way through to sending the invoice out the door, the entire process takes only 10 clicks of a mouse. This level of efficiency is critical to ensure that the high number of transactions is processed in a timely manner while also keeping administration overhead costs as low as possible.

“The business advantages in being able to streamline our billing process are of course obvious,” says Mackay. “Our ability to process and generate bills is at least three times more efficient than it was in our previous system and arguably more.”

The inherent flexibility with the firm’s invoice process also enables departments and locations to drive quite a lot of the functionality. The process satisfies the needs of the firm’s various business units, regardless of whether they are based on traditional WIP billing or more structured billing methodologies.

Better Matter Management Yields Tangible ROI
3E’s business process capabilities also enabled MB to make significant improvements in matter management. One of the most valuable improvements was the implementation of a completely automated matter lifecycle process. With workflow customizations, teams working in the standard system can move matters seamlessly between relevant team members, offices and departments—all the way through to final settlement.

		Our ability to process and generate bills is at least three times more efficient than it was in our previous system, and arguably more. Mackay

“The automation of and the ability to natively track and report on these critical business processes allows far greater insight into WIP buildup, which in turn allows for better informed management decisions. The implications for firm profitability are significant,” says Mackay.

The 3E IDE plays a significant role in the capability, because it allows the firm to have control over the customization of the user interface. MB management has deployed a unique interface with the exact information users need to make decisions at any stage of the matter from one screen, which eliminates the need for them to search for additional details. “This simple improvement alone saves an estimated 20 minutes per day per legal assistant, which in monetary terms would total AUS $500,000 per year,” adds Mackay.

Reporting and Analytics Dashboard Drive Key Performance Indicators
The 3E business analytics engine has enabled the MB team to develop a series of business rules directly within the system that automatically track a number of key client metrics, and generate and distribute reports to the appropriate parties. Through the 3E self-managed warehouse capability, the IT team has created specialized dashboards for users to access the full suite of 3E native reporting functionality, while also providing access to a number of key Crystal Reports templates.

“The ability to leverage our existing Crystal Reports skills and investment has helped with any change management required to analyze and access reports, while still taking advantage of the benefits of 3E’s reporting environment,” says Mackay.

Previously the firm was constrained by standard reporting inquiry screens available in Enterprise. For a non-standard business such as MB, this meant certain key data stored in user-defined fields had to be accessed via another option, usually a report writer.

3E’s built-in Report Designer provides the flexibility to develop customized layouts and schedule report generation specific to the firm’s needs. Furthermore, each report is a live object that can include links to supporting detail as well as buttons that allow users to take action or comment on results. These capabilities save time for lawyers and assistants and enable management to drive KPIs through the business.

		It is extremely hard to estimate the financial impact of customized report dashboards, but it is likely in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Mackay

“It is extremely hard to estimate the financial impact of customized report dashboards, but it is likely in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each year,” says Mackay.

The Book-to-Bill report is a key example of how MB staff can drive KPIs, particularly when managing more than 36,000 clients at any one time. A customized 3E report generates the volume of the firm’s backlog and gives management the ability to catalog and analyze exactly what type of work they are undertaking.

“This gives us an invaluable advantage by providing enhanced visibility of our prospective business and conversion success rates, which helps us improve our marketing and business development efforts,” adds Mackay. “Plus we can analyze those conversion rates by referral source, which also helps us manage our advertising spend to much greater effect.”

Tracking the conversion of prospective clients to live matters is of significant importance, because the team can better manage their client engagement process as well as the resources allocated in this area. “Again, our in-house development within 3E provides us with exactly the information we require to manage this process automatically, replacing what had once been a semi-automated and resource intensive process,” says Mackay.

INITIAL ROI LEADS TO FURTHER INVESTMENT

The conversion from Enterprise to 3E has proved to be the right move for MB. Besides the efficiency gains the firm has already realized, the extensive workflow capacity of 3E and the IDE have clearly enabled a number of other productivity gains.

“Thanks in large part to its IDE, 3E has greatly simplified our management processes by providing a state-of-the-art technology platform with extensive workflow capacity and configurability,” says Mackay. “We look forward to maximizing the full potential of the platform throughout the firm.”

Back to Exchange Home   |   Contact Exchange