Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/37773
SHAREPOINT AS A PATHWAY TO IMPROVED CLIENT SERVICE legal information they would need for their projects. “The client sees that we are not going to learn on their nickel and that we are not going to have to reinvent the wheel,” said Matt Norton, partner and team leader of the resort and hospitality practice. “With Parkway, they see how our know-how will be put to use for them from day one.” As usage of Parkway grew, so did business within the resort and hospitality practice. In fact, Parker Poe attributes its more than 20 percent revenue growth in the year following Parkway’s launch to the investment it made in the project. Interest and demand from clients also grew, many asking for direct access to the valuable information within the firm’s intranet. As a result, Parker Poe expanded its intranet capabilities through the use of SharePoint as an extranet platform, and provided secure, remote access to the practice and regional sites and content that was previously only available to firm attorneys and staff. Today, the number of these intranet and extranet sites has grown, as has the strength of the relationships Parker Poe has formed with its clients. A GLOBAL CONVERSATION: SHAREPOINT AT REED SMITH Reed Smith’s SharePoint project followed a similar path and shows the benefits of incremental investments made as new opportunities arose. As a global firm with multiple offices around the world, the firm’s primary objective was to build a place where communication and common culture could be fostered and encouraged. It wanted to share information across all its offices, reinforce its brand and stimulate collaboration on client development programs. The firm developed “ouRSpace” — a global intranet that embraces the blogging capabilities of SharePoint as a means to allow individuals to communicate. Blogging, has to a large extent, replaced communication that was previously done via email, and its senior leadership team is using it as a primary mechanism for firmwide announcements. The site also embraces rich media with an embedded media library that allows it to collect and deliver video across the firm, further supporting the common culture and open communication that ouRSpace was created to support. Following the launch of ouRSpace across the firm, Reed Smith began to deliberate on how it could further leverage the infrastructure to provide more direct value to clients. The result was “ouRSite” — an extranet platform through which clients can log in and access all the matters Reed Smith is engaged in on their behalf. The site includes simple document- sharing capabilities as most extranets do, but more importantly it opens up project work details directly to the client and provides a personalized dashboard with real-time updates on all engagements with the firm. The site enabled Reed Smith to create a new way of managing projects by exposing detailed matter information and time tracking data to the client. In a similar fashion to Parker Poe, Reed Smith is now using the high degree of transparency available to the client as a tool to win new business. Its ability to expose task-level detail around matters to clients provides a point of difference and creates a new communication paradigm that allows Reed Smith to offer a richer level of service and improved benefits to the client. www.iltanet.org Portal Platforms 27