Digital White Papers

11 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER MARKETING AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Data-Driven Business Development Initiatives: Is Your Firm Utilizing the Complete Value of Existing Assets? slow momentum further. These efforts require collaboration that quickly consumes the remainder of the business development team's time as they try to get approvals and feedback. Geing through these obstacles is imperative to a successful data-driven approach. It will provide more consistent data and increase available time. With more free time, business development can bring in new elements of data science that drive analytics to provide revenue- driven results. Managing the More Painful Aspects of the Process How does a firm move past the inherent difficulties of ad hoc, reactive data practices? Innovative firms are breaking down barriers by leveraging technology that enables data capture, automation and analytics. With 72 percent of respondents looking to invest in technology in 2017, it is at the forefront of business development leaders' minds With an understanding of how lawyers work, many firms realize they can use the maer life cycle to their advantage. Leveraging certain points such as maer opening, changes in maer status and the close of a maer can trigger workflows to the proper stakeholders who then fill out a template with additional maer- specific information. This is a critical strategy for capturing accurate data. Embedding data capture in the way lawyers work increases the likelihood of gathering complete client, maer and experience information and eliminates duplication of effort aer the fact. Data capture also helps the firm achieve consistency in data, making it easy to find, analyze and possibly even benchmark. Beyond data capture, the modern firm can also leverage automation to address other processes that consume business development time, such as workflows for marketing and pitch content approval. Lateral integration is another great example where automation can take on a big role. Upon hiring new associates, workflows can kick off quickly to get the laterals' backgrounds into the system, connect them with others and match their experience with incoming maers and pitches. With the Data in Order, Now What? The possibilities for data-driven approaches to business development are endless. Legal can learn a lot by looking outside of the industry at the part data play in strategic business decisions and driving revenue. Hotel chains, airlines and phone companies have done this well. They leverage data to understand their consumers, study buying paerns and evaluate experiences to capture repeat business. The key to successful data-driven initiatives is to start small, build momentum gradually and not dwell on perfection. In an ideal world, there would always be complete and consistent data to drive statistical models. Unfortunately, this isn't realistic; a fact those dealing with data daily realize all too frequently. There are plenty of techniques available to work around these challenges, so do not let them hinder your efforts to build a successful initiative. Data-driven approaches are high on the agenda of business development leaders. When asked what they desire from their data, answers varied from the practical use of project management and pricing to the more exotic white space analysis. Understanding the needs of two practices or lawyers working together and considering various attributes such as location, type of work and client size can inform discussions and help drive positive changes in behavior.

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