International construction and insurance law specialist firm Beale & Co—which has more than 60 lawyers in London, Bristol, Dublin, and Dubai—has undertaken several IT infrastructure projects in recent years to make sure it’s on the front foot when it comes to technology. One of its major successes is the implementation of eBillingHub®, the market-leading automated e-billing solution from Elite, which it introduced to relieve the burden of manual billing processes and reduce the number of lock-up days. In a short space of time, the firm has seen significant improvements from efficiency gains and faster payments, leading to happier accounts and leadership teams.

As more and more of Beale & Co’s clients started to use e-billing (currently around 60-70% do so, including those with the highest volumes of bills), it became clear that the firm needed a more streamlined system for producing, processing, monitoring, and reporting on bills. Previously all the invoice details would need to be inputted into the relevant LEDES (Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard) file by hand, and there could be 30-50 lines of data required for each bill.

As Joe Coffey, Head of IT and Innovation at Beale & Co, points out, for a firm that currently processes around 50 e-bills per month, and expects that number to rise to 250 as more insurer clients are added to e-billing, the time spent on that task alone quickly adds up.

Moreover, the firm’s practice management system (Peppermint) only supported two types of LEDES files. So if e-bills were required in a different format, the accounts team would need to convert them and then upload them to the correct platform—which could be one of many used by different clients. “The amount of manual inputting, uploads, and tracking that the accounts team was doing was spiraling exponentially. We had to get a handle on it,” says Coffey. They set about looking for a solution, and eBillingHub fit the bill.

Immediate ROI

eBillingHub integrates seamlessly with Peppermint via an API (application programming interface), which allows bills created in Peppermint to come through into eBillingHub in a friction-free manner. eBillingHub then determines which format each client requires the bill to be in, populates the LEDES file accordingly, and identifies the correct portal the bill must be submitted through—getting everything ready for submission with minimal manual input.

“Having eBillingHub has made a massive difference to the accounts team, who were taking on an ever-increasing burden. Now, you just set up your client relationships in the system, and everything happens automatically, which in turn reduces the risk of error,” says Coffey.

Coffey explains that there was one member of the accounts team who spent all their time dealing with all the e-billing for just one client. Now that work is largely done by eBillingHub, and they just need to oversee it, making their job much easier. Resources can therefore be directed to more satisfying, less repetitive activities. Overall, the accounts team can be more productive, and the amount of overtime has been dramatically reduced.

Since Beale & Co’s accounts team can simply submit everything in one place, they only need to learn how to use one platform, rather than many as before, because eBillingHub sits in front of them all. Once the bill is in eBillingHub, users find the interface easy to understand. Any errors and issues that are flagged are intuitive, so the team can just get on and deal with them. Rejections (if there are any) come through more quickly so the firm can resolve issues faster and get paid sooner.

Visibility and reporting have also significantly improved. Now, rather than having to keep track of status on different platforms, everything is clear to see in eBillingHub, making it easier to chase bills where necessary. That also means the Chief Operating Officer (COO) has a real-time overview of what bills are in the pipeline, the totals due, and the breakdown, so that the Head of Accounts no longer needs to pull all the relevant information together. “eBillingHub takes steps out of the process at all levels,” says Coffey.

He adds that cutting back the amount of admin time required to get each bill paid is worth the investment, saying, “You can see the ROI almost straight away. When the accounts team was looking at eBillingHub there were these ‘wow’ moments where they realized that things are going to be so much easier for them to do now. They can see all those bills in there: they don’t have to dig around for these different attachments and upload to all these different platforms. Then a week or so later, the COO can see all the bills that are in there, and he’s got that visibility. And then the partners love that they can see payments start coming through faster.”

Delivering Even More Value

Looking ahead, Beale & Co plans to add more analysis into its billing processes to further reduce lock-up and improve cash flow, increase visibility, and ensure e-billing runs as smoothly as possible. For example, by analyzing rejections, they can identify common pitfalls (such as failing to add all fee earners to the portal or using narrative text if this is prohibited by the client) and train lawyers to ensure potential errors are eradicated at the very inception of a matter.

“With eBillingHub, you can address a lot of issues before you submit the bill, and you can check it before it gets rejected and the time starts ticking on your appeal days,” Coffey points out. “So, there’s not so much of a panic.”

Beale & Co employed a consultant to assist with the Peppermint integration and worked closely with the eBillingHub team to ensure the implementation went smoothly to achieve the shortest time to value. In total, the project took just 25 days of development time from start to finish.

“The support from the eBillingHub team at Elite was just fantastic,” according to Coffey. “We had calls with them every month or so initially, then weekly as we approached go-live to go through everything. We felt very supported.”

“eBillingHub is undoubtedly a fundamental part of our toolkit now. It has worked really well, and it’s had a lot of impact.”