Increasing Billable Hours By Better Tracking. How One Law Firm Increased Revenue.
April 29, 2008
To a legal firm, communications with clients mean billable hours. Tracking every phone call, voice mail, e-mail and fax that crosses a desk generates potential revenue. Optimizing your invoices to clients, however, requires managing each type of communications media accordingly.
1 Tracking
Most law firms look for the tools to supply cutting-edge connectivity between their attorneys and clients and can overlook the lost billable hours they spend with each interaction.
Your ability to accurately capture the quantity of your billable time directly affects the total amount of time you spend working. Your ability to accurately describe the quality of your billable time will allow your firm to craft timely, persuasive bills that stand the best chance of achieving every lawyer’s ultimate goal in every billable matter through each interaction, phone, fax, web, and wireless mobility.
We’ve helped numerous law firms overcome this by providing the tools to track all interaction through technology.
Technology has evolved during the last decade into dynamic business ventures designed to meet today’s fast-paced business environment. Key to this change has been the effective use of technology in providing our clients with additional value.
2 Disaster Recovery
Your Disaster Recovery Plan is the most important item in your business portfolio. It is what you will turn to if there is indeed a disaster or other serious incident.
Having a back-up communication platform will allow you to continue serving your clients. With most Law Firms communication is the core of their business. Hopefully, you will never have to use it, but if you do, it can be the difference between the loss of your organization and its survival. It is therefore absolutely critical that it is workable. How you continue to operate day to day will help guide you through the crisis.
That’s what we do at G3 — help you plan a communication platform that will provide the communication interaction you will need during a disaster.
3 Attorneys Well-Connected With Clients
Your law firm could be using state-of-the-art technology to promote collaboration between your clients and attorneys. Not only will you be delivering outstanding customer service, but you will be better able to bill appropriately. Your Clients benefit in many ways, including efficiencies in attorney and staff productivity.
Pam Ottinger is a specialist with G3 Technology Partners and a contributor to the blog. She can be reached at pam.ottinger@g3tp.com
Technology as a Business Strategy
April 24, 2008
When you think of business strategy, you think competitive advantage, or pricing, or promotion. But what if Technology could actually give you an advantage in growing your business?
When we talk with business owners/presidents/leaders, we ask the very simple question:
“Based on what you want to accomplish over the next few years, what are some of the strategies you will engage in to get to that vision.”
What we are looking for is how technology can actually help quicken the process from your Current Reality to your Future Reality.
One company we know told us their vision was to be the largest producer of their product in the state. In order to get there, they had to invest in infrastructure so they could grow quickly.
Fortunately for them, there were distinct advantages that technology could bring them–one of which actually helped them bring more customers - which was part of their goal.
Your business strategy can include many things–but technology just might be something that can touch other elements of strategy. Thus, it makes your path to your vision quicker and more efficient. G3 is committed to understanding what’s most important to your business and takes a future oriented approach to reaching your objectives. The bridge below helps illustrate this ideology.
Of course your objectives may differ from those in the model and that is where we can help. G3 adapts to your situation to provide you with the most ideal technology solution to realize your vision effectively.
Be Careful About Being in a Hurry . . .
April 21, 2008
This is a short interview with Jeff Dean, head of Professional Services at G3 Technology Partners. Here, Jeff addresses the dangerous habit of ‘being in a hurry’ to implement technology. At the end, he gives a tip on how to get ready for technology solutions.
Saving Lives By Being Wireless
April 18, 2008
As a technology specialist, everyday I see the power that technology can have in helping a business grow and helping people become much more productive—both of which potentially lead to a financial impact.
I was talking with one of our most recent health care clients last week and I posed the more serious question,
“Can proper use of technology help save lives in a hospital?”
He’s a rather profound thinker so it made perfect sense to him to explore the topic. As a note, we recently installed a wireless communication system at his site. The list below came as a result of a total diagnostic that his site went through prior to the selection of a wireless solution. Obviously, every facility is different and recommendations vary on a case by case basis.
Yes, because of faster reaction times and increased staff availability.
In diagnosing his situation (pre-sale), we found that his staff didn’t feel mobile. They felt tied to their unit. Consequently, they believed quality of care suffered because of that. With a wireless system, their mobility increased—they could perform their jobs from anywhere in the hospital. A nurse there told us a story about a common situation that used to take 3-5 hours to resolve. And that with the new communication system, she coordinated the exact same result in less than 30 minutes. Over the course of 400 nurses and 2300 patients, that two hours turns into tens of thousands of hours of productivity advancement.
Yes, because of paging delay elimination between doctors, nurses and staff.
Under the old system, nurses spent less time taking care of patients directly and personally, and more time with admin details. They all felt like patient care was a casualty. With their new system, doctors have all critical information and direct access to nurses and staff. Doctors also spend much less time on hold which allows them to do what they do best—administer care.
Yes, because more and more people are involved in patient care, which can create errors in the handoffs.
The information flow is greatly increased. (More here on patient info flow. Think about a story like I have in the prior paragraphs.) For example, it used to be when someone wanted……this happened. And it caused….
Conclusion
The basis for this argument is that hours spent with the patient instead of running people and information down—or waiting for information-will lead to better patient care and thus better referrals to the hospital. Has it saved a life yet? Well, not that we know of. But the time will come when an hour saved will be the difference between life and death.
Most Common Communication Pains Inside Companies
April 16, 2008
Recently, I read a white paper done by Insignia. It was prepared on behalf of one of our suppliers, Siemens.
In it, they revealed a study they completed in 2007– and it had some interesting information in it.
They talked to over 500 people in a variety of industries to find out what the most common communication problems were inside companies today. I wanted to share the list with you, then in subsequent posts, we will address each one, one-by-one.
Here is the list:
1. Waiting for Information. Attempting to get in touch with/get information from an individual with multiple means of communication in order to make progress on a particular process or task.
2. Unscheduled/Unauthorized Communications. Communications that disrupt the flow of work.
3. Coordination Inefficiency. Inability to fully direct or interact within a team in order to move it towards its goals.
4. Planning to plan. Time spent on planning and arrangements in preparation to actually make progress towards completing work.
5. Barriers to Collaboration. Inaccessibility of the tools needed to collaborate fully with colleagues.
6. Offsite Productivity Loss. Reduced output when working from a location other than one of the company’s offices.
7. Customer Complaints Due to Communications. Handling complaints and other incidents of customer dissatisfaction that stem from the communication policies/technology of the company.
8. Trips with Additional Communication Costs. Added costs of communication while on business trips.
9. Trips to Synch Up. Business trips taken for the purpose of receiving information that will be disseminated to a number of individuals at the same time/place and in the same manner.
10.Working from Home - Extra Costs. Added costs of communication when working from home.
I thought these were a neat way of looking at some of the ways technology can help you run your business better. You might print this off, circulate inside your company and see where your team(s) might be lacking.