September 22, 2006
Law Firm Business Intelligence Systems
Business intelligence is the No. 1 priority of CIOs worldwide! Operational systems generate an overflow of information. For sound decisions, managing partners and functional managers need less information, not more. However, that information has to be specific to their area of responsibility. It needs to be instantly digestible and must be actionable information. Dashboard technology, like the example below from Juris, is an excellent example of a tool that provides the managing partners or practice leaders with situational awareness coupled with drill-down capability for quickly identifying steps that can be taken to change the outcome rather than just analyze variances after the fact.
The more successful firms do not stop at internal business intelligence. They also look externally for competitive intelligence—particularly for information that lets the firm compare its performance metrics with the best of similar law firms.
As noted in an earlier post, Legal Benchmarking Comes of Age, surveys are being replaced by services that automatically extract firm data and information and provide the participating law firm with timely peer group comparisons. The leaders in this movement include Juris, Inc., with its soon to be released Juris® Insight service, Redwood Analytics, and ThomsonWest with its PeerMonitor™ service. Reflecting the growing interest in this new technology, Juris, Inc., along with Redwood Analytics, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Citigroup and BNA, sponsored a Legal Benchmarking Symposium on September 20, 2006.
It is worth noting, however, that the value of benchmarking your law firm metrics against those in your peer group has marginal value unless you have first addressed business intelligence needs internally. It is a continuum as illustrated below. Extraordinary value comes from having all the pieces of the continuum in place. The value of each component is materially less than their aggregate value.
Problem No. 1 for midsized law firms is that 80 percent of those firms still do not yet have the first piece, planning, in place. Business and competitive intelligence has little value if you have not first determined where you want to go and which key metrics indicate your progress.
Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.
Related posts
Filed under Benchmarking, Technology by Tom Collins