Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/43390
CREATING A CATALYST FOR CHANGE: NEW E-BILLING AND MATTER MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS MAINTAINING HIGH QUALITY Now that our matter management solution has been in place for a couple of years, our team reviews our billing guidelines yearly and delivers revisions to our firms along with a "Message from the General Counsel." This message includes information about economic conditions for manufacturing companies and how important it is for the law department to not only manage risk, but also keep legal costs to a minimum. Since this is not technology that you can just set and forget, there is still a need to make sure things are running smoothly. To do so, we established a process to ensure data quality in the system. We run maintenance reports regularly to make sure invoices are being submitted in accordance with our billing guidelines, and to make sure internal users are approving invoices and maintaining data integrity on their matters. With five fiscal years' worth of data in the system, our main focus is now on harvesting the information in a way that helps us assess how our corporate legal department is doing and how our top 10 law firms are doing. We are also focusing on developing reports and dashboards that are more forward looking and that support planning. LAW FIRM REVIEWS: PUTTING DATA TO GOOD USE Late last year, our team produced a set of management reports generated from the matter management solution. Selecting our "top 10" U.S. firms and using the data housed in the system, we created a portfolio for each. The portfolio included a historical view of the firm's activity over the past five years in the following areas: • Total amount spent • Amount spent per matter • Hours billed by timekeeper and role in the firm • Hours billed to each task code • Amounts billed to each expense code • Hours billed per diverse timekeeper Each of our law firms was provided with a copy of its portfolio, and meetings were held between the firms' managing partners and our legal team. The response from the firms and from our team was very positive. Sharing the portfolio with our top firms has really enhanced the quality of communication. SETTING NEW OBJECTIVES With the goal of an information-enabled department in mind, we never thought of our matter management and e-billing solution as just e-billing. We clearly met the objective of getting invoices paid electronically but, more importantly, we began to realize the true benefit of our e-billing solution. Our legal team became more cost efficient, made better decisions and was better positioned to assess our overall risk. Today, Rockwell Automation is focused on the continuous improvement of the solution and reporting on our results. Over the next year we are setting our sights on new and higher objectives in order to provide dashboard-type reporting that will allow our legal team to make better decisions with more forward-looking metrics and dashboards. ILTA www.iltanet.org Corporate Law Departments 31