Re-engineering processes: Improving worklows to increase efficiencies

KM partner Duncan Ogilvy shares his experiences in re-engineering Mills & Reeve’s business processes to better meet client needs

Key takeaway points

1. Create a clear understanding of the business challenge – client feedback is vital

2. Create a climate for innovation in terms of client value as well as efficiency

3. Scope and resource each project properly, including dedicated fee-earner time

4. Managing change through to conclusion takes grit and a lot of time, but it’s worth it

 

We keep being told that clients want more for less and, in the current climate, why should law firms be exempt from the productivity and cost pressures under which their clients are working?

This may be easily said, but it is challenging to actually deliver more effective solutions without significant attack on profits. It is also hard to shift clients beyond a simple fee negotiation towards a more enlightened and wider-ranging view of value.

Our knowledge management team is coordinating Mills & Reeve’s response to this challenge, focusing on re-engineering individual work streams.

We are finding that, for maximum benefit, the work stream should be of reasonable size, cover significant business issues, be well led and be supported by a willingness at the top to embrace change. There should also be sufficient fee-earner resources to support an initiative. Each of these aspects are covered in detail below.

Getting started

Work unit size

Any re-engineering initiative will involve significant investment, so unless the work area is of reasonable size, it is hard to secure a return on that investment.

We have found it most effective for an initiative to concentrate on a homogenous work area. So, bulking up by combining a number of work streams limits the opportunity for improvement.

Business issues

“If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” or, more to the point, if the business leaders do not perceive there to be a problem, what is their incentive for change? This is where the client angle is so important.

If a client has taken its business elsewhere, or compared us unfavourably to another firm, or if client pressure is squeezing margins, making it hard for a team to perform financially, partners take note and there is a general awareness that there is a ‘problem’ that needs ‘fixing’. You then get everyone’s attention and motivate them to embrace change.

Initially, it is the leaders who need a clear perception of the business challenge but, once the project gets underway, it is vital to share that with the wider project team, to give context to the work ahead.

It is surprising how little awareness there may be of business dynamics below partner level, yet once the scene has been set we have found everyone is keen to play a full role in addressing those business issues.

Partner leadership

The most significant influence on the working lives of our fee-earners and secretaries is their on-the-ground leader, usually the partner with responsibility for that work area. If that person is a persuasive individual who tends to generate loyalty in the team, it certainly helps our prospects for a successful project.

Our most successful work so far has been in areas where the partner in charge has really ‘got it’ and sees our re-engineering programme as fundamental to the future of that part of the business. This person need not be actively involved personally, provided they are ready to support it.

This is vital when one considers that a re-engineering project does not stand in isolation from the rest of a team’s business, and may well have pricing, staffing, marketing and other business implications for the team.

Resources management

To properly analyse a work area takes time and there is no one who knows a team better than its members. A project such as this needs resources over and above the spare time of busy fee-earners.

While one may be able to count on a professional support lawyer and the fee-earners who turn up for workshops to generally support a project, our best initiatives so far have benefited from the dedicated time of a fee-earner.

The allocated fee-earner may be less than 100 per cent dedicated to the project, but a serious commitment of say two days a week is, in our experience, required. It stands for something if it is willingly invested by the team.

As with any project, proper scoping is required and there will be other resources, such as IT or marketing for instance, that need to be factored in.

Engineering change

In the first year of our ongoing re-engineering programme, our executive board selected five work streams, partly by reference to the above criteria, and our programme was born.

We also enlisted the help of a consultant, who has proved invaluable. It has been helpful to have input from someone experienced in other sectors, with practical experience of efficiency approaches such as Lean Six Sigma and, frankly, with the ability of an outsider to challenge existing paradigms.

Each project kicked off in a workshop for a mixed group including secretaries, trainees and senior and junior lawyers. It soon dawned on me that lawyers:

• don’t naturally do ‘radical’;

• like detail more than the big picture;

• think they know their clients inside out; and

• default to fee-earning at the drop of a hat. 

So this was not going to be easy!

In a workshop setting, we got the team to consider:

• what we do well; and

• what we could do much better.

We got the team thinking about key ‘moments of truth’, i.e. the parts of the service visible to clients. How well do we do it and how important is that part of the service to the client?

After one of these kick-off workshops, we arranged formal meetings with three clients, each a loyal client overall but not all working with the firm in this work area.

The message came back loud and clear that while the work we do is itself thorough and of high quality, and particularly appreciated for complex matters, we were too expensive for routine work and inflexible in the way we interact with client organisations. Their perspective of which ‘moments of truth’ matter to clients were not the same as ours.

It was a huge moment in the project when this information was fed back to our team. It created a great motivation for change. In fact, the quality and accuracy of that client feedback has helped the project ever since and is largely responsible for its subsequent success. Client feedback drove this agenda and created the ‘burning platform’. Clients appreciated the investment in them and tended to reciprocate.

After kick-off, we ran workshops to undertake detailed analysis of each work stream to chart ‘as-is’ processes, documenting who carries out what functions, including at client level.

We have found it helpful to have a good mix of skills represented and to create a challenging but fun environment. An added benefit of this process for a multi-office firm such as Mills & Reeve is the chance to spot and deal with local variations in practice and create an acknowledged best way of doing things.

It was inconvenient to drag people from several offices to a central point for these workshops, but the effort always seemed to pay off both in diagnosis and now, later on, in making the new ways of working stick.

We checked the accuracy of our ‘as-is’ picture by posting Visio charts prominently in each office and inviting comments. This gave wider prominence to the project and laid the ground for the next workshop, the aim of which is to create a completely fresh take on it (‘to-be’ processes).

In this workshop, tasks were bundled together for efficiency, moved down to paralegals or even automated. Often, the traditional relatively passive role of the client was challenged. In some work areas, we have found that clients are keen to play a far more active role if they see a financial incentive to doing so.

It is not easy to get lawyers to think radically and to come up with innovative solutions. Instinctively, they propose incremental improvement, which is valuable in itself but potentially misses some great opportunities.

We found the structure of a workshop to be helpful as it strongly encouraged people to come up with lots of ideas. It was only after the brainstorming activity that we assessed ideas for viability.

Technology also plays a key role. For example, if work is being spread around, it is helpful if the flow is underpinned by a case management system. If the client is to participate actively, a client portal for two-way online communication and data transfer is required.

Lessons learnt

One year into the programme, although I am now confident that we are on the right lines and are delivering genuine benefit to the business, it has not all been plain sailing. Lessons learnt include the following.

Technology

The programme has required significant IT input. On reflection, we would have brought the IT professionals in earlier to give them a flavour of our requirements at the outset. When we were all involved, they came up with ideas we would not have thought of without them and helped us to tailor the solutions to the business requirements.

Client feedback

Having described the compelling value of accurate client feedback, I should admit that we have not always managed to get that. In another work area, we don’t have the strong and consistent client message to drive us and, on reflection, I would have insisted upon that, probably participating myself to ensure it happens and is sufficiently rigorous.

Dedicated project support

If fee-earners’ time is not properly committed, they will drift away from the project and get sucked into client work. Without their time, it is hard to maintain momentum and the project will suffer.

Business benefits

As the person at the centre, accountable to our executive board for the return on the firm’s investment, it is obviously vital for me to ensure that whatever we embark upon we see through. I have highlighted some ingredients of our best work and some traps for the unwary. It is still early days, but there is already evidence that:

• this approach can enhance efficiency – there is scope for a significant shift of work to paralegals, for example, with a consequential price reduction and/or margin increase; and

• the process we have adopted can inspire innovative solutions to enhance value in the eyes of our clients.

I am convinced that this approach will drive business benefits, but I owe readers a word of caution: it’s really hard work! Without a focus on individual work streams, we would not have achieved sufficient precision in our analysis. The areas we have taken on so far are a small proportion of Mills & Reeve’s practice.

Managing the change through to conclusion takes grit and a lot of time. It is not a one-off exercise and we need to develop the innovation competence into our working methods and client offerings on an ongoing basis. It is gratifying to me that this is seen as the preserve of our knowledge team and it gives a context to all that we do.