From the very beginning of a client relationship, law firms want to deliver high-value services. However, an old-fashioned business intake process slows down the onboarding of new accounts or the expansion of a relationship with a current client.
This happens because outdated systems require hours of manual data entry. They also allow disconnected inquiries and require complex approvals. There exists, however, an efficient solution to tackle these challenges: refreshing your onboarding process with modern business intake software. Such a refresh can optimize your operations dramatically, and offer you the following gains:
1. Enhanced risk mitigation: With a modern legal intake software, you can embed and enforce firm risk policies automatically, rather than require manual ‘policing’ by your operations team. In this way, you free up resources and reduce staffing requirements. This then results in effective loss prevention and enhanced profitability.
2. Better capture of information: From the beginning, modern technology sets up your firm for future data mining and business intelligence opportunities. By leveraging this information, your firm can increase revenue and profitability through targeted business development and by developing pricing models informed by previous, real-world examples.
3. Best use of attorneys’ time: Ultimately, attorneys have the knowledge required to capture accurate intake-related information needed for risk mitigation and future data-leverage. Getting their attention and involvement can be difficult, due to the fact that they are focused on billable activities. Yet, with modern matter intake software, you can do so with minimal disruption to their billable time.
4. Embedded auditability, defensibility and reportability: You can be proactive and start planning for any audit requests down the line, right at the point of business intake. The key is having the ability to set up and maintain a single, electronic record of all information related to business intake requests, including email communications. Subsequently, if you ever get challenged, you can get fast access to the information you need. You can trace back in time your information decisions and the reasons why you made those decisions. This proactive approach will help you react to any unforeseen challenges quickly and effectively, mitigating long-term damages, both monetary and reputational.
5. Efficient growth for your business: Today’s business intake technology conforms to the growth and complexity of your firm. As cases and your organizational structure expands, you can focus on delivering high-value services, rather than on building workflows that surround outdated software and processes.
6. Increased profitability; accelerated cash flow: Overall, modern business intake software will help you to speed up workflows with automated policies, improve communications, secure quicker approvals and perform intelligent analysis. In this way your institutional knowledge base will gain greater leverage, allowing your firm to assess your clients’ needs, while the use of your firm’s resources are refined according to your deadlines. All of this leads to quicker delivery of services and payment.
Business intake requires a multi-dimensional analysis of a vast amount of data, collected from various sources. In today’s big data environment, a manual process that could have yielded reasonably accurate results a few years back can easily be ridden with inaccuracies today because of the sheer amount of data that needs to be analyzed. In this environment, manual processes are not only obsolete and inefficient but expose firms to high risk. Technology-enabled solutions constitute the best path forward in today’s competitive market environment.
