Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/37773
“Effectively integrating SharePoint with time and billing systems, CRM systems and other sources of useful client data is, for the most part, a solved problem.” out of a desire by the North Carolina firm to compete with larger firms by finding innovative ways to demonstrate the firm’s expertise and its ability to use that expertise to provide superior client service. In what Steve Fletcher, Parker Poe’s CIO, describes as a joint venture between marketing and IT, the firm invested in developing Parkway — an intranet platform that makes attorneys more productive through the common intranet functions of publishing firm news, providing access to administrative forms and policies, and launching applications. Equally important to the firm, Parkway also serves its client marketing and business development interests. Perhaps the best example of how Parkway is used to boost attorney productivity — and how demonstrating that productivity can help the firm win new clients — is how the resort, hospitality and planned development practice has leveraged 26 Portal Platforms ILTA White Paper SharePoint to compete. Hundreds of pages and thousands of documents, files and audio and video presentations are organized within SharePoint and serve as the focal point for every attorney and staffer in the practice. For each of the countries or regions in which Parker Poe is active — specifically, the Caribbean and Latin America — SharePoint sites and dashboards include links to the country’s relevant legislation and litigation, legal forms and agreements, daily newspapers, reports, marketing materials and other local information. Parker Poe partners saw Parkway as a way to boost business development efforts by showing potential clients the depth of expertise and client service that the firm could bring to new accounts. The firm demonstrates to clients or prospective clients exactly how the firm might serve them through leveraging immediate access to the documentation, contacts and