Digital White Papers

CREATING AN INTERNATIONAL CLIENT-FACING KNOWLEDGE WEBSITE The Alliance's International Practice Groups (IPGs) are crucial to the cultivation of know-how in key areas of HR law throughout the organization. One function of the IPGs is to produce client-facing legal knowledge products. Over the years, they have developed a body of publications, in particular a range of international HR law guides — published in hard-copy, book format — providing analysis of specific topics across the various jurisdictions covered by Ius Laboris. These provide an important resource, demonstrating the Alliance's geographical reach, the member firms' local expertise and the coordinated work of the IPGs. The working party's report noted some uncomfortable home truths: •Most existing and potential clients would now be relying mainly on electronic sources for legal information, a trend bound to accelerate with the escalation of social media and improved accessibility via mobile devices. Ius Laboris's online offering in this respect was limited to relevant material. In addition, some of the IPGs' forthcoming publications were not necessarily suitable for the printed book/PDF model. We required more creative and flexible formats. •Our system was unsatisfactory for notifying clients and contacts about the latest significant legal developments by means of "newsflashes" and "global alerts." The content of these publications WHERE WE STARTED Three years ago, the Alliance started to take a hard, critical look at its external knowledge strategy, and a working party was formed comprising the chairs of three of the IPGs and knowledge managers from three member firms. Having canvassed views across the Alliance, the working party discovered many of the member firms' leading individuals and marketing teams already had extensive, valuable feedback from clients on the Ius Laboris knowledge offering and how it might be developed and improved. Pooling and utilizing this intelligence was deemed better than seeking direct client input (e.g., via a survey or one-on-one interviews). a single "Knowledge" page on its corporate website, which was dull, static and outdated in its appearance and functionality. •More specific, the previously mentioned international HR law guides were available in this section of the website only as single PDF files. This would increasingly fail to meet user demands as it was difficult to search for and locate was good, but they were communicated solely by email. This rather scattergun approach meant that after being sent they simply vanished, without being stored anywhere and made available for future reference. •Continuing with the status quo would be dangerous. For our offering to remain competitive, we needed a more sophisticated,

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