Thursday 29 November 2007

David Fryer, CEO, BigHand digital dictation tells us how things are going one year after the management buyout

Karen Jones interviews David Fryer, BigHand CEO, who was previously Managing Partner at law firm Taylor Walton


Buyout mania has hit legal tech in the last few years with tech vendors being snapped up as though hot bargains in a sale at Harrods. But one management team which consisted Stephen Thompson and Gordon McAlpine who sold their interest in, BigHand Digital Dictation weren’t devoured by hungry venture capital shoppers: it was taken over by it’s own staff.

In a deal that took more than a year to complete, the new BigHand team and their backer (LDC) took ownership of 400 clients, a 57 percent of digital dictation market share and annual sales of over £7million. And from July 2006, they really had just one job – ‘don’t drop the baton.’ The buyout team, which consists David Fryer, ex managing partner at law firm Taylor Walton as Chief Executive Officer, Simon Lewis, who developed the software as Development Director, Steve Butterworth who now continues as Sales Director and similarly Jonathan Carter – Client Solutions Director, who all have equal shares. LDC say they have a ‘significant share holding.’

Although sheer speculation and figures are private, I estimate the deal must have looked something like 40% management team to 60% LDC with Gordon and Stephen Thompson leaving with a couple of million each. As David Fryer, who attended law college in Chester, comments. “It was a major negotiation and fortunately we stayed on very good terms with both Gordon and Stephen.” Which does say something about the four staff who undertook the MBO: it is rare to be anything but exhausted and resigned to your fate after a deal of this magnitude. The champagne would have flowed when final documents were signed.

Of all the vendors in the legal tech space, BigHand is one the success stories of the legal sector. Founded in 1996, the then founders Stephen and Gordon had done well and started toying with the idea of selling up in around 2004. They were fortunate enough to have David Fryer in their sights. David, who was a phenomenally successful managing partner at Taylor Walton, who sit below the Top 100 on the law firm charts, had got the firm ship shape and was looking for a new challenge. In 2004, David took a leap of faith, resigned and awaited fate’s calling card. It arrived in the shape of Stephen and Gordon.
“I took Stephens role really” says David, who in his managing partner role had taken on the technology purchasing, amongst others projects and had got a firm handle on the issues. “I joined to run the company and processes and although I only realised later on, this allowed Stephen to get their MBO process underway.”

Gordon and Stephen were advised to leave the deal ‘clean’ in other words walk away once it was done, which David, who is originally from Grantham in Lincolnshire,
Says. “Was pretty easy. I was doing Stephen’s job and Gordon dealt with the top twenty law firms in the market which meant relatively little selling to do and it wasn’t difficult for someone new to take over.”

David takes us back in history to show us pretty much how everything evolves: by seizing opportunity. “When the company started out it was focused on speech recognition and called VoiceWrite.” He says. “It was nothing to do with digital dictation.” Although he wasn’t involved, it sounds like it was a bit of a thankless task selling the concept. He says that a typical pilot of ten staff had similar results each time. “One would love it, eight couldn’t wait to stop using it and one would have muddled through using it because they had been told to by the boss.” We both laugh but we have the benefit of hindsight and BigHand’s obvious success to erase what must have been a difficult early start for the company. BigHand got no roll outs so in ’99 frustrated they did a review, spoke to clients and clever old Simon Lewis sat down and wrote the first version of ‘Total Speech’ which at first blended speech and digital dictation.” It didn’t take long for BigHand to scrub the speech and focus 100% percent on digital dictation and as they say the rest is history: Total Speech 2 launched as pure digital dictation. “Workflow is the clever bit though.” Says David. “It’s all so much better than analogue because work is visible. It stores in Outlook so support staff can look at a screen and see work needs doing and what work has been sent around to other staff.”

David says initially secretaries were wary of the software and suspected they would lose their jobs but in reality, late nights getting urgent reports out became a thing of the past because work was suddenly available for everyone to see. Gone were the days where you didn’t dare ask a stroppy support person to help. “It also highlights how many minutes of work are on each item so support staff can choose items dependent on how much time they have available.”

It sounds like an ideal system to start causing some mayhem with secretaries in terms of how much work they are doing but David squashes any attempts to see BigHand software as a measurement tool. “Some instructions might be 2mins in size but have a whole days work on them. When we asked clients about this, they said the system mirrored what they knew already in terms of how staff were working.”

Developments in digital dictation now include Blackberry integration and in the future David sees the return of speech and increasingly using their software over the telephone. Already you can speak instructions into the BlackBerry, click send and it sits in the workflow queue ready for assistants back at the mother ship to action or type. The server has a 4 digit passcode but that is the only block between fee earners and getting work done.

Which is also some good news for smaller firms (and increasingly bad news for device vendors), the move to the Blackberry (BigHand also works on Windows mobile) has meant it isn’t essential to buy devices anymore, Dictation can happen on the Blackberry with a press and a ping into workflow. “It’s really for more complicated dictation that devices will be needed. Which is something to do with the breadth of legal language. Apparently lawyers use something like 30,000 words compared to the medical profession who use 5,000. BigHand charge an additional fee for mobile use.

The next phase for BigHand is ‘unleashing into the public sector’. “Property and accountancy are also looking promising areas.” Says David. Surprisingly accountants dictate a lot less than lawyers do with a 80/50 ratio and private client lawyers dictate the most.

There are eighteen suppliers in the market but many offerings are connected to practice management software so may not be so obvious. Top choices it seems are BigHand, Winscribe and nFlow with BigHand and Winscribe having a similar pricing policy. “There is plenty of market out there for everyone and we don’t talk about competition mainly because we believe our software is better, easier to put in and we are fast at doing it.” Says David.

So its all good news so far, I wondered what can go wrong? David is honest and upfront. “Whilst every organisation should prepare to become obsolete, we do see some resistance from firms who have lawyers with good typing skills. They can’t see why they need it. Fortunately we are seeing firms who have made that kind of decision in the past to reduce overheads come back to us. It’s an error to think its all just about typing. It’s not, it’s about work and instructions flowing easily through the system. A large part of dictation is instructions and in a busy, volume practice this software eases work burdens.” As well as this David thinks a move to proprietary software would be a wrong turn. “Buyers are choosing and they want software to do everything easily. Also areas like images could take us down the wrong path. Its easy to get distracted.” David thinks SOA (service orientated architecture) has been the successful route for them. “Anyone can access us through SharePoint and we work with big players like Metastorm, Visualfiles, Interwoven and OpenText, which is where most of the demand is. It’s good software and people like to use it.”

BigHand have opened in the USA and have found a fresh, bountiful market. “Analogue use was plentiful in its day and for some reason, digital dictation just didn’t get on the radar for firms, they went from analogue to typing with nothing in the middle. Says David. “The US is well ahead of the legal market on its own issues like VOIP because of the size of the country and e-discovery because of litigation but they are behind on these types of software because they assumed it would die out.” The whole team are spending a lot of time pinging back and forward to the US and Steve Butterworth the sales director has now relocated there. ©

www.bighand.com

This first appeared in http://www.citytechmag.com/

Tuesday 27 November 2007

Baker Robbins on their Thomson takover - “We needed to grow”




Karen Jones interviews David Baker, Chairman, Baker Robbins & Co, technology consultants on the Thomson buyout in January this year.


Two years after the purchase of Hildebrandt, Thomson set their sights on another stalwart consultant in Baker Robbins completing both purchases in the month of January but with a two year time gap. (Hildebrandt Jan 2005 and Baker Robbins Jan 2007).
Although there is much speculation that Baker Robbins won’t be able to remain independent in this corporate structure with a host who has many products to sell to law firms, market commentary confirms that Hildebrandt, who were acquired two years before Baker Robbins, have successfully managed this task.

David Baker, Chairman at Baker Robbins, is undoubtedly one of the worlds tech brains and would make great company for a night of beer and in depth tech discussions. You just have to mention DM, WANG, mainframes and PC’s and he is off talking passionately about his past and the tech world and problems law firms are facing.

He started life as many of you did in a completely different area: architecture. In 1973 after finishing a degree in architecture he started work in a government office using his quantitative skills for drafting but soon became interested in the tech side of the business. To set himself off on a new career he went back to school and took another degree in architecture, biased toward computer science. This led to him later becoming part of the first team that developed a CAD (computer aided design) system.

David joined Arthur Anderson in 1980 and became their lead tech consultant advising law firms. He says, “The key issues then were practice management and word processing which was dominated by WANG. There was some software that still concentrated on image processing as well which later, in a fire sale, became the Windows image viewer written in WANG code.” We digress a moment to talk about WANG’s disappearance which has become as legendary as the Titanic sinking. “Their downfall was pushing into the PC business without realising that there needed to be standardisation and that margins would be small. They concentrated on proprietary projects which ended up unravelling them financially.”

David says back then the big PMS supplier was a company called PSS based out in Phoenix, USA. They dominated the top 100 law firm charts with law firm accounting and litigation support. “They later sold out to Infomatics.” Says David. PSS were good for larger firms providing automation of processes but went the way of WANG. They made several attempts to create a next generation product but all failed. Half the problem is that even though academic studies show we only use 10% of our computer capacity, vendors are burdened with producing complicated things to market which often aren’t used.”
A break through for the legal sector came in 1987 with the development of Elite, by Alan Rich, who now concentrates on capital investment for tech vendors. “It was a family business who managed to successfully turn their software into a market leading product. Infomatics couldn’t keep their software fresh but Elite did and have continued to do so.” Says David.

Continuing David confirms that Baker Robbins & Co never take money from vendors for recommendations and this will continue with the Thomson tie up. Although he concedes. “Our relationship is a symbiotic one with vendors: we rely on them to provide technical help and have to work closely with them. It’s the subtle art of co-operation which is essential.”
Also back at this time, the 1980’s, David says he was keen to get PC’s on to desktops. “I like to look at ways to apply technology in different ways and knew this could make a real difference.”

Of the Baker Robbins business David explains their methods. “We focus on evolution of the business but have realised that in doing so we create more problems. For instance once we had got PC’s on desktops, PC networks ended up forcing the fee earner to manage their data. It meant a document management problem to address.” In 1998 he he sat down with a company called Soft Solutions in Utah, to come up with the concept of document management software. “Others supplanted it in the end.” Says David. “Because it couldn’t scale up but even new vendors like iManage (now Interwoven) brought new problems for record retention and litigation hold (preserving all papers including digital in one space pending a litigation).

David says there has been over engineering and categorisation of systems which married with best practices altering over time has caused what he calls “perfect storms” – times when there are great opportunities for vendors to sell products. This naturally leads me to ask if Baker Robbins advise vendors but David is reticent. “We try never to favour anyone and work with them all. Its part of our core belief that we need to keep a level playing field.”

With around a hundred staff at Baker Robbins, David says he took a year to complete due diligence on the transaction with Thomson. “We had to vet the concept of remaining independent.”

Before the buyout Brad and David owned “more than fifty percent” of the company with a “dozen or so more shareholders” which included key staff selected because of “leadership and business development qualities.” In the new entity neither have any shareholdings but David says they have been incentivised to do well.

He says of his reasons for the buyout were that he realised they would eventually hit a plateau. “All organisations do. We knew it meant we would have to do something different or change the model we were working with.” Continuing he says. “People are our assembly line. Our best approach to business development was getting seasoned individuals in front of clients to show them we could make their pain go away. It held us in one spot and created a dilemma, we needed new skills to work out how to grow. We were always resource bound, although a hundred staff sounds a lot, we needed more people to do things our way and didn’t believe in sub contracting. Thomsons involvement allows us to attract more of the right staff with their balance sheet behind us.”
Critics say that as law firms become more sophisticated over the generations of their software, advice from organisations like Baker Robbins was becoming less necessary, something that may have caused them to worry about the future, which may be another reason for the sale. David disagrees. “Things that occur for the first time like DM are more labour intensive and law firms definitely develop more experience and business trails off. It wasn’t a problem though, we have a look ahead mentality and are students of the industry. Looking ahead, tells us that solutions create new problems which helped us re cast our practice many times over the years. We could have just kept doing this.”

Of the forward momentum in the company, Brad and David continue to be in charge but report to David Hanssens, President of Consulting Services for Thomson. David says of the change that it’s “early days” to make any judgements but that David was at Bain Consulting previously so understands how change works. “He integrated West professionally and with understanding. He was also able to articulate the need for professional services and underline how important they would be in the implementation of products for Thomson. He realised this and brought Thomson to Hildebrandt to gather strategy and process skills. He did the same with us to bring in technology and process expertise. It all helped that we had a previous alliance with Hildebrandt and had been working with them for some time.

As we have an expert in our midst I ask him for his top three things that he thinks will change our landscape, we get onto topic one and no further as it expands from a comment to a chapter. “I think Microsoft will become a challenger to third party software suppliers particularly in the records and DM space. Before the Vista launch, Microsoft were working on a Vista file service but pulled it because they realised it would change everything that existed so far, including long standing partnership agreements.” He reflects for a moment. “It would have been like something HP brought out called “NewWave” some years ago. It would have a development language on documents that would trigger actions for workflow with wizards to show fee earners how to proceed with information embedded in the documents. With NewWave this was possible but with added horse power from Microsoft it could start to take over search functions, DM, litigation readiness and KM. It could upset all the current relationships and systems in the market today. It’s hard to know where they will go with it now or what the implications will be.”

http://www.brco.com/

This first appeared in http://www.citytechmag.com/

Monday 26 November 2007

Bindmans, a hundred user law firm, tells Citytech about their tech plans and latest SharePoint intranet implementation

Kambiz Jahanshahi, joined Bindmans, who have 100 staff, this year in April after a career spanning IT consultancy and a media company called the GB group, where he ran the IT and websites. “I left there in April then joined Bindmans.” Says Kambiz. “It was an interesting time to join because they were undertaking a substantial review of technology. They wanted to digitize their workflow. One of the big projects underway was the launch of an intranet system based around MySQL. After a review, I didn’t think it was user friendly from an admin or end user point of view. It was using the TYPO3 content management tool whilst the firm is moving down the .NET and SQL route. It didn’t really fit in with forward motion.” Kambiz took time out to consult the management committee and canvass opinion within the firm to see what they wanted to achieve with the intranet. “It seemed SharePoint ticked all the boxes so we stopped work on the system we had and bought SharePoint instead.” He says he’d used it before at GB Media so was comfortable with how it worked. “It’s user friendly and it’s the same sort of interface that people are used to with Windows. It was a no brainer for me.”

Although there are many champions for SharePoint in legal, there are some detractors who still believe it’s too complicated for smaller firms to undertake, so I ask about buy-in from the staff. “We have an ongoing training process and at first people are intimidated. They think it seems complicated with a lot of features but people get excited once trained and jump on the band wagon very quickly.”

As to how they manage the content, Kambiz says they spread the work load throughout the firm. “We have two people acting as content editors in their spare time and individuals in different departments have been happy to take charge.” He confirms that he does any technical work and keeps an eye on consistency. As to resources taken up with the project, Kambiz says. “We haven’t allocated any extra resource to the SharePoint intranet, it is not labour intensive.” He adds that Bindmans previously had an intranet “for updating news and policy” but says they didn’t have the same interaction as they do now. “It was a much smaller scale project.”
So the next logical step usually for those implementing SharePoint is to bring other software components into it to allow staff to benefit from everything in one interface and reduce complication. Kambiz says this is likely to happen. “We are looking at CRM systems at the moment. The purchasing hot list includes AiM’s marketing module because Bindmans use their practice management system along with Laserforms. “We are also reviewing Microsoft CRM, Goldmine and there are some others in the mix.” Says Kambiz although he does confess that Goldmine is not a hot favourite.

As a new entrant into legal, the CS Group took over AiM in dramatic style in the last year, so I ask for his view of AiM. “We are very happy with the performance of AiM despite the change in company management. I constantly find new features to work with. It’s great.” He says.
Kambiz explains that Bindmans is in the process of implementing a DM solution based around INVU who were not a vendor I’d heard about. “They are big in the financial sector, user friendly and easy to get to grips with. We launched our test systems last week and it’s integrated into AiM and pulls matter centric documents in. We are looking at INVU to build internal workflows to move documents around.” He adds that this may be a candidate for a SharePoint connector utilizing software like Handshake. “We want a single area where everything is accessible. With INVU if we pass the trial we will go ahead and implement the connectors with their DM system. We want to cut the use of paper everywhere.”

So were the bigger DM vendors considered? “When I joined, both Interwoven and Open Text had been reviewed but to go that route meant a large investment and we would have had to change our working practices.” He echoes a theme that is rising like cream with many IT staff. “I would rather bring a system in to work the way we work, not to force the way we work around it. INVU seems to deliver that.”

Kambiz, who has been in the IT world for seven years, used IT consultants, Concentra for the SharePoint project and is happy to sing their praises. “They seemed to know where we wanted to go.” He says. “Everyone was really impressed by what they were able to offer. We just told them what we wanted and they built it for us. We knew from internal meetings what features we wanted then leveraged their knowledge of this type of project. We were very happy with them.”

And to the elastic topic of implementation times? “Start to finish SharePoint was about a month.” He explains the speed. “Before I started we went through what we needed, then refined the system, we had a consultation and went through with stakeholders about what was required. So in was pretty much done in three weeks.”

Of his move into a partnership structure, which can often take newcomers by surprise, he says the transfer into a law firm was pretty easy. “In media, like law it’s also about managing information, so it’s a very interlinked industry. We worked with a wide variety of media which included video. Law firms will have the same challenges. Everyone is moving away from documents and it’s all going digital. It’s more about managing the volume and enabling users to consume it effectively.” As VM ware is the new big thing, I wonder if it’s on Bindmans agenda? “We are looking at VM ware because we have a number of small servers working on sole tasks taking up space.”

Other projects on the list for review are diary management systems, core infrastructure changes whilst the office is under renovation, remote working and consolidation of current systems. “We have a large number of small servers taking up space that we would like to lose.” Kambiz says extranets for clients are also a goal for next year. “We want to publish bills, have clients see progress on matters and accept documents by secure intranet linked to the DM.”
So in the big is beautiful but smaller is more agile does Kambiz think that SharePoint is helping smaller firms lift their status? “I think SharePoint is really helping us raise our game. Its extremely powerful and if you wanted to have it custom built it would cost a fortune but off the shelf, SharePoint does what you really need it do.” His peer support group from his media days includes developers at Westlaw and Sweet & Maxwell “I get to meet their tech guys and get information on how other firms are doing things.” He says, then makes an important point for legal aid firms. “There are changes in legal aid which mean law firms are having to be more efficient. We can use technology to bring overall operation expenses down. It will take away chunks of cost for archiving information if everything is stored in digital libraries. I think law firms are realizing it’s a route they have to go down. Smaller firms have to be as efficient as possible.” He adds that Sweet and Maxwell are looking into digital paper solutions including sending resources out to fee earners on the road for downloadwithout a laptop with links into DM systems.

As to the tech team at Bindmans, there are two staff which includes Kambiz on the implementation side and a second member who runs the support and help desk. “We call on some of the PA’s and IT responsible staff in the firm to take on support, then we have team leaders here who are senior content managers.”

For firm wide ITprojects, decision making starts with Kambiz, then goes to a working group to identify requirements, a spec’ is created and the partnership get final sign off. Although smaller schemes don’t need to run this route and day to day, as you would expect, decisions are made by Kambiz.

And a final word on SharePoint? “Staff morale has really improved because it’s given everyone a chance to contribute to something within the firm. We are in the middle of an office renovation but our office manager is keeping the office updated about improvements with photos and work information. It’s making people happier and they feel more connected.”
Www.bindmans.com
www.invu.net/
www.concentra.co.uk/

This first appeared in http://www.citytechmag.com/

Maitland Group: law, trust, accountancy and corporate services firm tell Citytech about their latest Lexis Nexis InterAction purchase






Paul Kerins is Head of IT at the Maitland Group who are a recent ‘win’ for Lexis Nexis InterAction. Maitland are a law firm with trust, accounting and corporate admin groups and have eleven offices around the world.

Paul Kerins started his career with the group working on IT systems in1998 with a past history as IT and project manager.

Paul tells us why they chose Lexis Nexis InterAction. “We were looking for something the entire group could use and because we were multi site, it had to be web based. We wanted it to integrate with Outlook and Exchange so started off looking at a variety of systems.” Here John Finch, Project Manager at Maitland joins the interview to fill us in on the technical details. “I had specific responsibility on the IT side.” Said John. “I managed the process; systems we looked at and internal documentation. We went the traditional route of looking at a shortlist of products and in fact went a long way down the line with Sage MME and SalesLogix.” John says they also looked hard at Microsoft CRM but felt the online offering was outstripped by other products.
John says between the two main choices, Sales Logix and Interface he felt the SalesLogix was a stronger product, but the stumbling block was lack of web functionality. They then reviewed Sage MME and were going to choose it but on a pilot were trying to map entities with contacts and found it was being pushed out of it’s comfort zone.

John tells us about past CRM efforts at the firm. “We’ve attempted CRM before on an office by office basis but never tried to get something running at group level. We wanted a system to cover the eleven offices we have and from the IT perspective, wanted to consolidate our databases. He concedes that cultural issues may arise but is pragmatic. “You always have problems with systems of this type. We have a certain amount of buy in from people who’ve already used CRM systems. Marketing are heading up the roll out and have a training programme in place that should address this and will bring big dividends.” Paul nods in agreement. “The issues were mainly geographic and we needed to bring information together. As John has said Lexis Nexis InterAction met our requirements.”

As to other technology within the firm, Paul confirms that they have KM, an intranet and online libraries across their four operating divisions which are: legal, trust and corporate administration and accounting. They also have specialist software for the groups. Products used internally include Microsoft, GENI, Jobstream and Immediacy which is web content management software . “We go for best of breed.” Says Paul.

IT support runs out of the Isle of Man with IT staff in London, Luxembourg and South Africa. Paul says there is a problem finding vendors because of the firms sheer geographic dispersal, so they tend to have different vendors in different locations and standardise what they do. “For instance choosing one hardware supplier like Dell.” Says Paul. Language problems can also be a problem, so he sticks to English language software but concedes: “It can throw up issues for us.”
Picking his brains, I ask about trends he is seeing. “The need for ever more connectivity, more bandwidth and email becoming all consuming.” He says before adding. “The sheer number of servers needed for technology is incredible. It used to be one server, now its twenty or thirty.” He confirms, like most, that he is reviewing virtualisation software to save on office space.
Paul says Maitland stick with dedicated suppliers and says of the vendors they deal with, Lexis Nexis InterAction get the thumbs up. “They were good to deal with.” I ask about vendors generally. “We do get sales calls every day but we just handle it as part of the business.”
The plan with InterAction is a big roll which will then integrate into core systems like Jobstream, a specialist trust billing and accounting system. “We are pushing integrated systems.” Paul takes a minute to tell us about Jobstream. “It’s in the top two software suppliers offshore and is a niche company in the Isle of Man. There are very few bits of software that does what it does. It has everything you need for the trust business: client accounting, portfolio management, time recording, billing and fund administration.”

In the IT department Maitland have ten staff. “We are about right in size.” Says Paul. “Although we’re having to recruit more IT staff. There are some things you just can’t do remotely but we try and use remote relationships in each jurisdiction as much as we can.” He adds. “We travel a bit between offices.”

Finishing off, Pauls says the IT budget is four percent of turnover “ It will vary depending on what we are doing. It can be lower if no software purchases are made.”


This first appeared in http://www.citytechmag.com/

“The world is flat.” Off shoring






Ian Prince was a former IT director at JP Morgan and Deutsche bank before deciding at forty five to set up his own consultancy: Prince OMC. The OMC doesn’t stand for anything but was a way to set the company apart on web searches.

Prince OMC is a strategic consultancy dealing with off shoring or outsourcing projects for banks and law firms (captive or non captive). Their notable deal in the legal sector was with Philip Rooke, Head of IT at CMS Cameron McKenna, who earlier this year signed a deal worth £10million for a five year contract to outsource a number of areas (data centre support, network, security and managed desktop services and application development, support and management) to a company called HCL who have offices in London and Chennai, India. Cameron McKenna now have employ forty staff emloyed using this method.

Philip Rooke was unavailable for comment, because of a trip to India, but silicon.com says this move resulted in twenty staff being made redundant and ten moving to work for HCL. A more flexible and skilled work force along with cost saving were said to be behind the deal. This undoubtedly was a tough people decision for Philip Rooke, as it would be for you, but for CMS Cameron McKenna it was a no brainer: reduced costs means more profits at a time when firm benchmarks include embarrasing profit per partner articles in publications like Legal Business if profits are down.

Ian says he gathered experience of the offshoring model when at JP Morgan. “JP Morgan acquired shares in a bank called ICICI in India, then later took them over.” Ian agrees that there are problems in dealing with out sourcing abroad. “Mainly it’s cultural.” He says. “The British over assume and Indians oversell. It means you need to take this into account before signing any contract.” Despite this he says the off shoring model is proven and effective particularly for IT/application support, business processes, knowledge process outsourcing and legal research.

Jack Diggle also works at Prince OMC and has a similarly impressive background spending time at ABN AMRO and Goldman Sachs outsourcing middle and back office functions to organisations like the Bank of New York. He says that time in Africa in his teenage years also planted a seed of interest in outsourcing. “ABN AMR have been in the top ten percent for using this model.” He says. Eastern Europe is now rising up to compete with India for this work which Jack says suits different clients for different reasons. He also adds that different jurisdictions are best for particular expertise: “Russia is good for programmers and the Philippines for accountants because of the educational focus in the regions.”

I wonder about reputational damage, which is becoming an increasing problem as the media ‘bust’ organisations on a daily basis for inethical practice in other counties. Ian is quick to dismiss this as a problem. “Depending on the type of work we undertake which could be setting up another arm of your law firm in India or attaching an outsource company to your law firm, both have involvement with HR and best practices for employees and employee rights are in place. He adds that data protection requirements are also inbuilt in their strategy.”

Jack adds a comment. “Where we see this benefiting law firms is in taking on more work than they’ve previously been able to deal with and in retaining experienced staff. If you have good staff doing basic work, they aren’t going to stay.” Ian agrees. “Firms can ramp up and ramp down depending on work flows.”

In terms of who this model works for Ian suggests that Magic Circle benefit most but that law firms with around a 1000 staff will also discover practical benefits. “Firms will save around thirty percent on their wage bill but other cost reductions will also arise naturally.”

The top five reasons you should review Prince OMC:

Specialist in law firms following the CMS Cameron McKenna deal
Prince OMC bring experience of thirty years from global institutions and “can move quickly.”
Breadth of offering: IT, BPM, LPO (Legal process outsourcing) and KPO (knowledge process outsourcing) as third party and on or off shore
De risking. “We have done the reseach and take the risk out of this model.”
A solid relationship with the managers at companies they use abroad

This first appeared in http://www.citytechmag.com/

Interwoven update

Interwoven had their recent annual event at the Hilton in the Edgware Road in London, I caught up with two of their key figures to get their views and updates on the industry and Interwoven.

Neil Araujo who was a founding member of iManage, which through merger became Interwoven, is a Citytech global top 100 leader with sixteen years industry experience. kicks off the interview by running through some recent achievements from Interwoven. “We’ve just started in the accountancy space to expand our market which is currently running at one new law firm deal a week.” This he says is a combination of gravitations and new clients.
The battle for talent was something that rose out from the two day event, Neil, who is based in Chicago and is VP of Marketing, tells us why. “Firms want the best talent they can get, so increasingly need to be ‘desktop ready’ for the new keyboard generation, who are up to speed with the Microsoft template when they arrive. It’s about consumerisation of the desktop and meeting their expectations rather than making life complex and perhaps losing them to another firm.”

Neil says search is at the top of the agenda for everyone although concedes that the web and Google experience has not made it into many organisations yet. He tells us why. “Google can afford super computers, which are out of the scope of most of us, but the notion of one type of data is really only relevant for the web. Most firms have disparate data everywhere so applying one rule is complex and a difficult job.” He mentions managed and unmanaged data which refers to organised data like document management and then mass unorganised areas like email boxes. “We are making sure with our new search software ‘Universal Search’ that we work across all of these areas and archives.”

The Interwoven Universal Search tool, which launched at the end of September 2007, is like Google with a one box window and many other additions to improve information searches. “It automatically categorizes taxonomy on the fly.” Says Neil before adding in the usual Interwoven punchy style. “We are confident it will knock out most other search vendors and have made it the core search engine on Worksite.” He highlights its usability. “If our clients can use the web, they can use this.”

Mobility is still at the top of the can-we-work-faster-list as well and Neil says there is a big emphasis on performing effectively, even if fee earners are at the mercy of slow internet facilities or dial up whilst travelling. “We want people to be able to work in all sorts of conditions.” Something that many of us will relate to if you’ve ever needed to get an urgent report done whilst in a hotel that doesn’t consider internet a priority. “Firms are so global.” Says Neil. “We want to work on these types of issues.”

Email management processes continue to be the not-new-at-all-big-thing but Neil says as an information management company, Interwoven will keep an eye on this fire ball. He also highlights risk as a key issue and says it comes back to hiring. “Firms have got to hire the best people and also have information hygiene as part of their normal practice.” He tells us why. “If you are ordered by the courts to provide data and your systems are all over the place, it has obvious consequences and at the very least will cause internal panic, tempers flying, higher costs and red faces. Information these days must be easily accessible and organised or your reputation is at stake.”

Neil thinks internet technology is moving forcefully into law firms (and enterprise in general) and says it’s all part of the ongoing consumerisation of the desktop. “It’s the biggest thing I’ve seen.” He says. “And it’s coming whether firms like it or not but the great thing is that much of it will be simple to implement; just like flipping a switch, which will be great for IT directors.”
Ben Kiker, who is SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Interwoven, joined last year and also offers his thoughts. “The last year has been about reviewing where we needed to be to accelerate. We’ve invested more into marketing and it’s leadership team with twenty five more staff hired, bringing us up to sixty five in total. “We are making it a priority to get around to customers who include Singapore Airlines, to really understand what they are doing.” He says. “We have found that firms are investing in IT to grow and because business models are changing.”

Through big deals Interwoven has done with government bodies, they’ve identified themes like the battle for talent. “Baby boomers are leaving industries in droves as they reach retirement and are taking serious knowledge with them and just walking out the door. It’s causing a significant squeeze on staff. Then you have children born at the keyboard who want to access Wiki at work and want more creativity.”

As we alight on Wiki’s, I ask how Ben thinks marketing staff should protect themselves from this surge of un authorised content which can have a negative impact and included a recent US assistant solicitor posting a derogatory song about his law firm online. “Marketeers have to realise that they can’t control their brands anymore particularly with user sites like TripAdviser which just reveal bad bits about hotels in a minute if they aren’t on form. Life is more about transparency now. We are using podcasts, blogging and RSS feeds to develop our Interwoven community and be more open.”

Of the tech world, Ben thinks the general conversation about technical IT has moved on. “Techies now want to talk about broader topics and many roles are diversifying. He mentions an Online Experience Director role at Singapore Airlines and says that most line managers and tech directors are increasing internal collaboration. He adds that people are looking at their web presence a lot more now than ever before. “Ten years ago websites started with marketing then went back into IT but are now firmly back in marketing again.” Says Ben. “There is a lot of investment going into online offerings and people are analysing how purchasers use their websites. Clients like Tesco are introducing lifestyle areas and online forums to invite people in and show them their brand. We’re also investing in our public facing image because we think it’s critical for attracting talent and clients. The online canvas is an incredible opportunity.”
Finishing off Ben says. “DM is the majority of our revenue but the stars are aligning in other areas. People are spending again and the tech investment cycle is in the right place. We’ve had successive growth over fourteen quarters and want to expand and interact with customers more. Community is important to us and we want to help be a facilitator between areas like IT and marketing. We are also broadening our appeal into areas like search because research shows that this is what clients want more than niche operators something that may make life difficult for specialist vendors.” ©

This first appeared in http://www.citytechmag.com/