Connecting People in New Ways, Anytime, Anywhere
Partner Solution Brief
Embedding Microsoft Lync functionality into the New
Business Intake for SharePoint solution transforms how
law firms think about critical business processes and
translates into real-world cost savings.
Partner: Clarity Consulting
Website: www.claritycon.com
Partner Size: 70 employees
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Professional services: Software
engineering
Partner Profile
Clarity Consulting is a software
development consulting firm that was
one of the first Microsoft Gold Certified
Partners in the United States. Based in
Chicago, Illinois, and the Midwest Partner
of the Year in 2005, it has been working
with the Microsoft technology stack since
its founding in 1995.
For more information about Clarity
Consulting products and services, call
(312) 863-3415 or visit the website at:
www.claritycon.com
New Business Intake for SharePoint from Clarity Consulting
helps large law firms mitigate the risks associated with taking on
new business while accelerating the client intake process. By
incorporating Microsoft Lync Server 2010, latency in the process
is further reduced by streamlining communications and
facilitating presence-based routing.
Business Needs
New business intake is critical to
every law firm. Firms often have
complex rules that govern the
reviews and approvals necessary
to open new business. They
require the collection of large
amounts of data with frequent
communication back-and-forth
to obtain and clarify details.
Conflict of interest checks are
often urgent and a timely
response can affect a firm’s
ability to win new business.
In many firms today, this
information is collected and
processed through paper forms,
emails, and phone calls. In the
best case, this manual process is
inefficient and often results in
duplicate work. In the worst case,
crucial steps are missed,
exposing the firm to significant
liabilities.
Solution
New Business Intake for
SharePoint from Clarity
Consulting helps manage
complex workflow, collection of
metrics, out-of-office routing
rules, and other functionality that
law firms expect from an
enterprise-class business process
management platform.
Built on blackpearl, the business
process management platform
from K2, the Clarity solution
enables law firm personnel to
work within the familiar Microsoft
SharePoint interface and deeply
integrates with the Microsoft
Office client software.
New Business Intake for
SharePoint integrates directly with
the financial, conflicts, records,
and document management
systems most commonly found in
large law firms. Clarity dashboard
and reporting components allow
firms to view detailed information
regarding process performance,
work queues, and request status.
With Microsoft Lync Server 2010,
process participants such as
attorneys, conflicts analysts, and
finance members are able to view
the real-time presence of key
personnel and can initiate instant
messages, email, voice calls, and
even conference calls directly
from the application. Any
communication that is initiated as
part of a specific business request
can be captured and stored as a
record related to the request.
When urgent requests are
received, New Business Intake for
SharePoint uses the rich presence
information in Lync Server 2010
to locate personnel with the
appropriate skill set who are
currently available to assist. Firms
can define rules for alerts and
notifications to use multiple
methods of communication
including email, short message
service (SMS), instant messaging,
and phone calls.
The solution optionally includes
a custom-built interactive voice
response (IVR) component that
callers can use to perform selfservice tasks, such as looking up
the status of requests in progress
or giving voice approvals for
tasks.


Benefits
New Business Intake for
SharePoint is the clear choice to
meet the complex needs of large
law firms. It helps law firms to
mitigate the risks involved with
taking on new business by
ensuring that required reviews
and approvals are obtained.
Benefits include the following:



With complex workflow
capabilities—such as parallel
task processing, time-based
escalations, and presencebased routing—the needs of
even the largest law firms can
be met.
This solution brief is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published November 2010

Business rules and processes
can be easily changed, using
intuitive and self-documenting
visual designers, to keep pace
with firms’ growing needs.
The solution’s intelligent and
streamlined interface reduces
the time to initiate requests
while also improving data
quality.
Key decision makers can keep
business flowing, regardless of
their physical location, through
the use of both mobile devices
and the Lync Server 2010
client.
Detailed metrics captured
throughout the new business
intake process provide
necessary audit trails, reports,
and information for ongoing
process improvement
initiatives.
New Business Intake for
SharePoint integrates with
firms’ enterprise systems, so
the need for data re-entry is
eliminated, which saves time
and helps reduce costly errors.