C24 wright hassall casestudy a4 3pp
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Wright Hassall is a top UK law firm that wanted to improve its data management to better inform business decisions and growth strategies. It previously used multiple data warehouses that were costly and complex. Wright Hassall implemented C24's Bi24 business analytics tool, connecting it to key data sources. This provided self-service reporting across the firm and enabled dynamic client dashboards. Access to insights has changed workflows and informed partner strategies, helping Wright Hassall achieve ambitious growth targets through improved reporting and decision making.
C24 wright hassall casestudy a4 3pp
- 1. Harnessing big data for business growth About The Client Wright Hassall is a top-ranked firm of solicitors based in Warwickshire. Lexcel and IIP quality accredited, they provide legal services including: corporate law; commercial law; litigation and dispute resolution; employment law and property law. They have both business and private clients and work nationally from their Midlands-based headquarters. Background Established in 1846 and now employing over 280 staff, Wright Hassall is one of the UK’s leading law firms, with ambitious plans to continue expanding their business. With over a century of experience, Wright Hassall carefully balance the demands of a traditional firm with their forward-thinking, technology-led growth objectives for the future. Recognising the shift in the legal sector and the need to ‘do things differently’, three years ago the firm made a conscious effort to recruit externally to bring in a range of new skills from different sectors to drive best practice, especially in the area of big data, analytics and business process management. Prior to engaging with C24, Wright Hassall pulled data from a number of different systems and applications. The data was then processed and stored in multiple data warehouses across the firm. This was costly and complex to manage the links between the warehouses and to maintain the links between the firm’s applications and the warehouses. Any IT changes created further workload on the technical team to repair the feeds going into the data warehouses, taking time away from more innovative development work. This inability to process, change and extract data easily meant that it could take up to a month to develop and run a new report, and in an industry where information is critical (and for a forward thinking firm focused on growth), these timescales were unsustainable in the long term and so Wright Hassall decided to evaluate how they could improve the management of data across their organisation. How Bi24 supports leading law firm Wright Hassall in its ambitious business growth plan PARTNER CASE STUDY “Data is now driving behaviours within the firm. When partners are creating their forecasts and business strategies for the year, they are now proactively seeking out data insights from the Bi24 tool to inform their strategies” IT Director, Martyn Wells Company: Industry: Solicitors & Lawyers Location: Leamington Spa Warwickshire.
- 2. Choosing a data analytics solution Wright Hassall first engaged with C24 Ltd, a Six Degrees Company, via a recommendation from their Practice Management System (PMS) software vendor who already worked closely with C24 to deliver a software-as-a-service PMS solution to legal firms. Wright Hassall initially evaluated a number of big data tools, however, they “wanted to move away from traditional offerings”, commented Martyn Wells, IT Director at Wright Hassall, in order to reduce the overheads generated by the existing data warehouses. Other solutions considered would involve the upgrade of their data warehouses; a technology that the firm was keen to move away from in favour of a more flexible and agile approach to IT. Martyn Wells explained, “Data warehouses meant massive overheads in terms of staff resources to maintain them and the costs of running them. We wanted a self-service solution that allowed business users to be autonomous in their reporting. We chose C24 because we wanted to take away the overheads incurred by the legacy data warehouses, and we found that by utilising their professional services to implement the solution, we accelerated the delivery of our business outcomes”. Furthermore, working with C24’s data specialists meant that Wright Hassall did not need to increase headcount within their IT teams to deploy the solution. The Solution C24 implemented Bi24, C24’s business analytics and reporting solution for law firms, and connected the tool to Wright Hassall’s key data feeds across management reporting systems, practice management systems and marketing applications. Wright Hassall called on C24’s data analytics specialists to accelerate the solution implementation and connect the big data tool across the organisation; setting up bespoke reports and user level reporting visibility to ensure that appropriate access was given to the right people within the organisation. About C24, a Six Degrees Company C24, a Six Degrees Company, is one of the UK’s leading privately owned specialist managed service and hosting providers, based in the Midlands, UK. Working with businesses all over the globe, the company manages, secures and delivers critical business applications to over 100 countries, with a particular focus on the legal sector.
- 3. Business Outcomes Easy access to data and insights has changed the way teams work at Wright Hassall, providing users across the entire organisation from Managing Partners to support staff with the ability to perform on- demand, self-service reporting whenever they need to. Data can now be pooled between different applications to drive greater insights across work in progress cases and ensure better returns on investment for marketing activities. One of the most important developments is the ability for the firm to create dynamic client facing dashboards that assimilate information into one place; showing the client’s current billing position, work in progress, outstanding payments due, hours worked and activities undertaken. This enables Wright Hassall to keep their clients up to date and provide them with regular reporting so that they are aware of payments due, which is increasingly important in a post-recession era where maintaining healthy cash flow is a business reality. Additionally, Wright Hassall are now able to extend their reporting capabilities out to customers of their clients, for scenarios where updates on legal matters are required to be reported to a client’s wider customer base. For instance, Wright Hassall can provide reporting via portals to the tenants of their property management clients with updates on tenancy agreements, disputes and queries. This enables Wright Hassall to differentiate itself by becoming a data services provider to its own clients, in a way that suits the business models and growth objectives of its key client base. IT Director, Martyn Wells, highlighted the change in the business through the introduction of better reporting practices. “Data is now driving behaviours within the firm. When partners are creating their forecasts and business strategies for the year, they are now proactively seeking out data insights from the Bi24 tool to inform their strategies”, commented Wells. “We are also seeing how better reporting through Bi24 can allow us to stay competitive in an age of fixed price fees, enabling us to continually assess costs and margin positions for better business decision making. Data is now supporting us in achieving our ambitious growth targets.” We chose C24 because we wanted to take away the overheads incurred by the legacy data warehouses Martyn Wells, IT Director at Wright Hassall. Find us on: For more information about C24, visit www.c24.co.uk or call 0121 550 4569 Alternatively follow us at the C24 blog, on twitter and Linkedin.