SJ Berwin Implements Redwood Business Intelligence to Support Nimble
Organisation
Practice Management System (PMS) without significant
Company: SJ Berwin
Industry: International Law Firm
Product: LexisNexis Redwood
investment in manual programming and the resulting
long timescales. This initial, relatively small, need
provided a starting point for the firm’s exploration into
Business Intelligence.
Multinational Law Firm Relies on Redwood
Software, Research and Expertise to Support
Critical Business Decisions
“Having assessed our technology and process options
for creating the specific report, we soon came to realise
that true law firm Business Intelligence had huge
potential in helping SJ Berwin meet its business
objectives and weather the recession.” Comments Mike
Background
SJ Berwin is a multinational law firm with over 700
lawyers and 1000 support staff, serving thousands of
clients in more than 32 practice areas. With such a
wide remit and large client base spanning multiple
geographies, the firm generates huge amounts of
billing, financial and client related data, all of which
resides in disparate data silos across the firm.
Whilst a number of the very large firms may have teams
Giles, Finance Director, SJ Berwin, “During this initial
exploratory period Redwood emerged initially as a
consultation partner as we attended its events and
accessed their extensive knowledge base relating to
Business Intelligence for law firms, however having run
an extensive market research project we decided to roll
out Redwood, across our finance department initially, as
a core business intelligence toolset.
Technology
of analysts able to develop bespoke solutions to the
For SJ Berwin, Redwood’s fully built data warehouse
problem of profit calculation and attribution, for the
ensured a quick ramp up for deployment. The high
majority of us the result is either that those with relevant
level of consultancy and training at the firm’s disposal
knowledge and expertise can try to cobble together a
during the implementation of Redwood ensured that
profitability model from the data produced.
relevant project stakeholders from across the firm were
Unfortunately this tends not to be readily available,
able to up-skill very quickly as well as educating users
accurate, or reliable and hence does not inform the
on the potential of the technology.
business of the decisions that business needs to make
and the issue is subsequently just ignored.
Challenge
Initially SJ Berwin looked to build a single complex
report which could not be extracted from its current
The benefits of Redwood were realised from first use.
“We were immediately able to view our business from a
different angle, once Redwood had been deployed”
says Giles, “Instead of the utilisation reports we had
been running in the past; the output from Redwood
provided full time equivalency. This brought to our
consistency of payments for individual clients. We used
attention unexplained missing billable hours in our time
a report that stemmed from the daily inventory to
recording system. We were quickly able to identify
analyse our major clients. For those we found with
where these hours had been lost and act as a business
inconsistent payment history, we tried to understand
in a nimble fashion. Had we tried to accumulate this
what promoted this; were we not billing correctly or was
data from our systems without Redwood Analytics, the
it something to do with our internal organisation? The
time taken to collate would have rendered the data
results of our analysis led us to make proactive changes
useless.”
with regards to our client relationships, ultimately
Financial Intelligence
Following this initial success, SJ Berwin drilled deeper
into its data to identify the corporate business unit’s key
clients. This practice area had long operated under the
belief that due to the fragmented nature of their client
projects, no one group could be counted as ‘loyal’.
Redwood produced a trending report that examined
transactions and billing patterns over the past 5 years.
This uncovered clients that had repeatedly placed work
with the firm over this period, paid within short payment
terms and referred additional work. For SJ Berwin’s
client management and business development teams,
this was invaluable information that helped with client
segmentation exercises.
Business Adaptation
SJ Berwin’s fee-earners have accepted Redwood due
of its flexibility which directly meets individual and team
needs. As information can be presented in an unlimited
number of formats, users can immediately manipulate
the firms’ data to answer their particular queries or
support business decisions. As inventory management
becomes a focus point for law firms during the
economic downturn, this was of immediate interest to
SJ Berwin.
Giles elaborates, “We can now look at our daily
inventory which gives us the ability to plot the
increasing collections and identifying opportunities for
additional billings.”
Redwood’s Profitability Module was also put to work by
the firm to assess the utilisation rates for each business
unit by analysing how each practice area was staffed
and managed. This helped when assessing the need
for new hires or making decisions around replacing
members of staff that leave the business.
Empowered Decision-making
One of Redwood’s strengths is its ability to support and
inform law firm management decisions. For SJ Berwin
the rapid reporting functionality ensured that its finance
department could substantiate any claims or
recommendations for change. Prior to implementation
the firm wrestled with the frustrations of multi-iterative
reports and long time scales for production. Redwood’s
power lies in its intelligent view and manipulation of
data, empowering the firm to make decisions based on
real-time data.
Access to Valuable Knowledge and Research
Aside from technology, SJ Berwin recognised that
working with Redwood gave them access to a huge
amount of research and knowledge. This information is
generated by its client community and through
exercises such as the Redwood Think Tank, a
gathering of industry experts and international Finance
Directors (not necessarily Redwood clients).
“A Redwood Think Tank study that we found very
beneficial investigated the factors behind client attrition,”
says Giles “This report detailed the five trends that we
could watch out for to guard against attrition, with
practical advice on how to identify these warning
signals. This had a direct impact on how we manage
our client relationships.”
Future plans
SJ Berwin is considering extending the Redwood user
base internally by providing the Redwood Dashboard to
department heads and partners. This would allow the
analysis of the client and business portfolio for specific
practice areas, geographies or indeed individuals,
handing back the ownership of business information to
those at its frontline.
Mike Giles sums up his experience of working with
Redwood, “the term ‘Business Intelligence’ comes with
some preconceptions and we were certainly guilty of
misunderstanding what BI could do for SJ Berwin
before we started discussions with Redwood. From
initial consultation to implementation and post purchase
education, we have viewed our relationship with the
team at Redwood as a partnership that directly affects
the management of our business.”