Peer to Peer Magazine

52 (ML), integrated risk management (IRM), and advanced security protocols are taking center stage. This alphabet soup of software offerings are all vying for limited resources and are changing all the time. How on earth are you going to keep all of this straight? Are you going to invest in training to keep your people up to date on all of the latest and greatest development in this space? That's not an option for most firms, especially for teams who have day jobs beyond technolo planning and investment. You could turn to your software provider for advice and guidance. But the reality is that instead of one trusted software vendor who could get you the most from your technolo, you now have many vendors. The challenge is figuring out how to get everyone to play nicely to determine if their road maps align with strategic plans. If not, then the problem is to find suitable alternatives. Getting expert guidance The apparent answer to address this challenge is to work with a trusted technolo partner that understands your business and has experience across all of the areas where your firm has invested. If the partner doesn't have direct experience, then it should have strong relationships with those that do. For example, if you're thinking about: • Ways to organize your data architecture for the future • A change in the way the data flows in the organization • A more holistic view of people and clients You have a lot of factors to consider and pieces to put together. Be sure the people on your team, both internal resources and external partners, all understand this and appreciate the potential complexities. To deal with these complexities, your team needs to have foresight and expertise to address your entire ecosystem in a unified way – which bring us to the next point. Taking a unified approach to technolo decisions Law firms have historically prioritized their PMS over other solutions. The focus has been on getting the PMS up and running so people could enter time, open new matters, and onboard new clients. The emphasis was on analyzing matter profitability and so forth all from a PMS-centric point of view. Or, people were primarily focused on the technical functionality of reporting widgets. Firms need to move beyond these views. The compelling imperative firms are now facing is to pivot to a new way of working and thinking about the business. Firms will have to spend a lot more time thinking through the relationships they have, client needs, how they deliver on those needs, and the profitability of that work. Pivoting successfully around these priorities will have implications on the way firms organize data, the systems they implement, and how they address change management. For example, when you do business acceptance projects, implications affect your PMS. When you do PMS projects, there are implications for your business acceptance and CRM processes. The consequences grow exponentially the more systems that you have. Connecting the technolo dots What this all means is that technolo decisions cannot be made in isolation, just as business decisions cannot be made in isolation. Firms must bring all projects and processes together and treat the software landscape and the data it generates as a connected system. Firms will have to spend a lot more time thinking through the relationships they have, client needs, how they deliver on those needs, and the profitability of that work.

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