An EPIC event: Thomson Reuters Elite VANTAGE EMEA 2014

30
Sep
2014

Joanna Goodman

Joanna Goodman attended Thomson Reuters Elite VANTAGE EMEA regional user conference at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel in London

Although September is always a busy time for legal IT events, and this year is no exception, VANTAGE EMEA saw record attendance by law firms across the UK and an expanded group of vendor partners. The programme included keynotes from Thomson Reuters Elite senior executives, user group meetings covering popular product lines and new product launches and demonstrations.

This year, the organisers seem to have given more thought to audience segmentation. As well as sessions on particular products, there were specific executive briefings and a roundtable session for a small group of consultants and media representatives, which gave us a chance to get to know Elite’s senior executives and ask them directly about the company’s roadmap. It was interesting for me, as a writer, to find out what some of the UK’s top legal IT consultants consider to be the burning issues right now.

The opening keynotes showcased Elite’s efforts to bring together its product lines into an end-to-end practice management solution. As Bill Burch, VP of Global Sales, explained, Elite’s 4,200 customers in 42 countries support a variety of products.

Burch highlighted five market transformation trends:

1. Legal budget – as corporate departments are spending more on internal legal services than on external counsel

2. eBilling – three years ago, only 36% of law firm clients required eBilling; today the figure is 80%

3. Tech explosion – including the number of applications that firms are using. The challenge is to manage all that technology

4. Legal process outsourcing – is more widespread, but can create quality issues

5. Increased competition – creates pricing pressure, which has led firms to focus on project management, workflows and other ways of offering value from the client’s perspective.

As all firms are aware, the ‘new normal’ includes intense competition, and competition brings change. Firms need to compete in order to gain and maintain competitive advantage and this means changing the way they work to create and deliver value.

Elisabet Hardy, VP of product management and marketing, observed that technology drives change, which produces yet more technology! Technology users are impatient, and this means they want mobile apps. 

Hardy introduced EPIC – Experience, Productivity, Intelligence and Connection – the guiding principle behind Elite’s product suite. Experience is delivered by Workspace and Workspace mobile, which integrate workflow between 3E and MatterSphere. Productivity is about the pathway to 3E for Enterprise customers, notably the express services package, which includes blueprints and processes for 3E standard workflows, and delivers 50% faster data conversion. The idea is to convince existing Enterprise customers to convert to 3E. However, Elite still has more customers using Enterprise than any other product. Intelligence is about bringing together Envision’s dashboard, 3E’s financial reporting, eBillinghub’s data intelligence and Business Development Premier’s automated data collection. Connection is about combining 3E and Design Gallery.

Chief technology officer Eric Sugden gave us the debut demo of 3E Financial Reporting which was launched at VANTAGE together with Xcelerate Budgeting and Forecasting.  The challenge here, which I picked up again in the exhibit hall, is to make data intelligent to reflect firms’ and clients’ requirements. Mobile is a key focus area – ‘Do your kids have better apps than you do?’ asked Sugden, who then explained how product development is reflecting the EPIC theme, building integration between Elite products and between Elite and third-party products.

Notwithstanding the slick demonstrations and a full development programme, it became apparent that customer satisfaction with Elite’s older products remained high enough to mean that many firms were in no hurry or even unwilling to upgrade – 737 firms still use Enterprise which remains Elite’s most popular product. This is a genuine issue as 3E is also a mature product – it is eight years old. This is a double-edged sword for Elite: satisfied customers are of course a good thing, but the company is keen to move on and convert their customers to exciting new offerings that are being developed especially for today’s business and regulatory environment.

This was discussed further in the media session, where it was explained that Elite is focusing on software development and integration between Elite products and the wider Thomson Reuters product portfolio. It is therefore working more closely with its growing partner network to deliver on its overarching strategic objectives at a practical, law firm level. The media discussion also touched on issues around implementation, project pricing and delivery. 

The second keynote at VANTAGE is typically from an external organisation. Patrick Hurley VP, global implementation, introduced a memorable presentation from Elite’s charity partner, Macmillan Cancer Support. Lindsay Grieve, Head of Customer Management explained how Macmillan captures and leverages customer interaction data to deepen relationships with all stakeholders, improve the customer experience and reinforce the Macmillan brand. 

Most of Macmillan’s efforts go into caring for people – cancer patients, but also fundraisers and other stakeholders. For example Macmillan is rated best charity for supporting its London Marathon runners. Customer insights are used to build relationships and guide product and service development and customer champions play a big role in delivering and promoting customer excellence via a variety of media. Although it is relatively straightforward to collect feedback, there was still some apprehension about asking people who Macmillan had helped to become e-campaigners. Notwithstanding this, when Macmillan sent this request by text message, they got a 27% response and there are now 5,000 e-campaigners. Another key strategy is customer segmentation and identifying the best approach for particular segments. 

Personalised customer experience is a critical brand value and Macmillan recently moved its website to a Tridium platform. Next steps include linking its Microsoft Dynamics CRM system with social media and looking for the next platform for customer and stakeholder engagement.

Grieve’s final point demonstrated how the immediacy of social media helps to keep Macmillan’s message real. Macmillan’s publicity efforts feature real people and one poster showing a photo of a cancer nurse prompted a twitter response from the daughter of one of her patients. Grieve finished his presentation by reading out her follow-up letter to Macmillan – the nurse had been her mother’s angel and her support had helped them both through their darkest hour, so she wanted to send her and Macmillan a special thank you on Mother’s Day.

The letter was not easy to read out or listen to, and the effect was that everyone in the room was a bit lost for words, but eventually a few people asked some questions. 

The presentation was followed by a Macmillan coffee morning which was a few days early. Grieve had explained earlier how the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning is Macmillan’s flagship fundraising event, and that it had caught on because it was something that everyone could do and it reflects the personal touch that underpins the Macmillan brand. VANTAGE and Macmillan managed to make even the conference coffee break into something special with cupcakes on sale for a good cause.

The exhibit hall networking event featured a broad selection of Elite’s partner organisations. I noted a focus on helping firms leverage business intelligence data, and saw excellent demonstrations from DW Reporting and C24. It was interesting to meet Peer Monitor, a live peer-to-peer benchmarking programme that enables firms to compare their performance against that of their peers (firms select their peers as these may differ according to geography or practice area) using real-time metrics. Peer Monitor is well established in the US and recently launched in the UK. 

A busy schedule meant I didn’t get around all the stands, so apologies that I didn’t catch up with some leading names in legal IT that have featured in my various columns and articles: e-know.net, IntApp, Phoenix Business Solutions and Professional Plus Solutions – to mention just a few. 

VANTAGE is focused on informing and educating Elite users, but once again it highlighted the major trends, aspirations and strategic dilemmas affecting legal IT and legal services generally. As always it was a privilege to attend and have the opportunity to catch up with Elite’s UK and US teams. Thanks are due to Thomson Reuters Elite for an informative and inspiring event. 

For JK. Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.