Building a Culture of Change … via Knowledge Management, Technology and the Collaborative Cloud

17
Nov
2010

Eric Hunter

Sometimes the most dangerous stance we can take within our specialty field or business niche is to make assumptions. Take for example the legal industry’s reputation for not being 'first movers' when it comes to implementing new technologies, especially with respect to existing configurations and environments. Historically, risk aversion is considered sound business practice for the sake of maintaining application stability as well as ensuring client privacy at all costs. However, the shifting landscape of today's emerging collaborative cloud environments within the global business and social media scene, and the immediate and potential opportunities for the legal industry and its clients, invite renewed bravado. Evolving collaborative cloud environments connect knowledge management (KM) and technology with business drivers that ultimately lead to a culture of change.

Knowledge Management and the Collaborative Cloud: Investigate now not later

Consumer driven social media and collaborative cloud technology are rapidly driving competitive change within KM platforms for business environments globally. Competition for ad revenue in social media, mobile technologies and consumer driven search engines is entering the enterprise level market place in the form of collaborative cloud platform solutions for business. Bradford & Barthel, recognizing both opportunities and risks afforded by cloud hosted collaboration, has chosen to step forward into real time collaboration via Google Apps.

Most of the focus given to Google Apps is that of a cloud solution for businesses. The cloud certainly offers risks and advantages, but only focusing on the fact that Google is in the cloud actually 'clouds' the focus of the benefits within the evolving collaborative platform. As a KM Director, I am intrigued by the potential for organizational behavior change that exists within this business model. A platform that evolves day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, with all processes integrated into this single evolving source, ensures continual behavioral change and adaptation within the law firm. We’ve experienced this behavioral change at Bradford & Barthel to the extent that our users have shifted from considering change a productivity threat, to driving change at the user, department and management level.

Intersection of KM and technology
Google's licensing model is ground breaking; costs are per user, per year and spelled out in black and white on its website. This is a profound shift from the traditional licensing model, and a bigger change for the legal industry as it affects both existing and emerging third party vendors engaging with these platforms. Law firms and clients benefit in that the continually evolving platform operates within a new pricing model; eliminates licensing upgrades, and automates large scale roll-outs. Best of all in this scenario; budgeting, and paying for new technologies is no longer a guessing game. As our firm experienced first-hand, substantial cost savings (conservatively 10:1 for us) are an immediate benefit.

Shifting to the collaborative cloud environment means outsourcing technology, starting with firm infrastructure, piece-by-piece, and continuing with support resources. Support resources typically outsourced to Google, include helpdesk, administration level support, design, and automation, just to name a few. The administration console is simplified in the cloud. Project leaders become domain administrators while focusing on strategic level implementation. Technology staff traditionally focused on administration and technology, transition to strategic planners and trainers in this evolving environment. Since large scale roll-outs are automated, 'training the trainer' by project leaders becomes commonplace practice throughout departments and within practice areas.

Over time, as more and more processes are migrated to this environment, not only the technology staff, but the entire firm adapts to both a tactical and strategic focus. This is all part of building a 'culture' of change within the firm. At Bradford & Barthel, our culture shifted- departments bridged together through collaborative technology, behavioral change, and transparent processes. The platform itself enables the firm culture to become the focal point when it comes to experiencing new ways to share, search, and store information. Similar to how Google Search in the consumer medium searches an extensive repository of knowledge without transitional folder structures, the information management applied in Google Apps evolves within the legal environment. This unique enterprise level search, collaboration and transparency concept changes the core of how an organization thinks about their approach to business.

Emerging business trends and evolution forward
Both social media consumer and business enterprise collaboration help drive behavioral change through collaborative cloud environments. As Microsoft and Google continue to compete and adapt their evolving collaboration platforms within the business environment, each threatens the other's market share on a global scale. Google's third party vendor marketplace provides incentive for Microsoft third party vendors in Practice Management, Case Management, Business Intelligence and other areas to adapt their platforms and pricing to protect their market share. Emerging vendors are encouraged to create new platforms to integrate within this per user pricing model, thus bypassing the traditional competition within the industry. Competition is good for business, and good for the legal industry since it leads to lower licensing costs, encourages innovation, and by default, thrusts legal into a 'first mover' position.

What about the host of vendors offering legal industry specific platforms and services that have yet to integrate with these cloud environments? Are the current capabilities in the collaborative cloud ready for immediate large scale rollout in firms already heavily invested in alternative systems with integrated third party applications? No, but the signs are there, the investment path defined, emerging business trends identified, and the evolution in transparency and behavioral change, at both the consumer and enterprise level, continually progress.

As collaborative cloud environments continue to evolve, it is in a law firm's strategic interest to investigate these developments from perspectives in business change management, knowledge management, technology, and client service integration. These solutions enable firms to invest ahead of their clients, and to evolve ahead of consumer behavioral change.