Fieldfisher has extended LexisOne to its 76 users in Brussels as part of a planned 2018 European network rollout, having gone live on the Microsoft Dynamics 365-backed enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in London, Amsterdam and Silicon Valley in June 2017. According to a statement out today (31 July) Brussels was completed “within a matter of weeks – including the data migration.”
Fieldfisher selected LexisOne in 2015, swapping out Thomson Reuters Elite Enterprise practice management system; an Aderant PMS in Birmingham (where Fieldfisher merged with Hill Hofstetter in 2016); Chrome River for expense management; and its Cascade HR and payroll System among other systems. It integrates with Lexis Interaction, Fieldfisher’s CRM system.
The ERP was deployed in 15 months on schedule and while Fieldfisher initially experienced delays in billing in London, in December 2017 the firm announced a record H1 revenue performance of £76.8 million, representing growth of 20%.
Fieldfisher has said that cost savings from using native cloud SaaS solution are estimated to be £1.76m over five years. In December when we spoke to Fieldfisher’s managing partner Michael Chissick in depth about the rollout, London, Amsterdam and Silicon Valley had gone live on core time and billing and the firm was in the process of rolling out Power BI.
Despite going live in June, by December Fieldfisher still had around a year to go to fully roll out LexisOne and Chissick told us: “It was always the contractual plan that we would have a long period of optimisation. We never intended to be at this point a finished product. The firm couldn’t have coped with every functionality on day one because it’s such a complicated product – there was always going to be a period of change and optimisation.”
In terms of the LexisOne user experience, Chissick told us: “The Windows 10 type feel is so much better than 3E and Aderant. We obviously use Office 365 Business and we’ve consolidated round Microsoft. The look and feel, the interface of LexisOne is quite wow.”
LexisNexis has localised the functionality in LexisOne to ensure that the solution delivers against the regional requirements in Belgium – for example in finance, tax, regulatory reporting and HR.
“The ease with which we have been able to roll out LexisOne to our Brussels office is indeed commendable,” Fieldfisher’s finance director Mike Giles said. “There’s been no disruption to our live platform in London. The roll out could not have gone smoother. This is the power of the LexisOne cloud model. This roll out is the first of several geographical extensions since going live with the core business last year.”
Andy Sparkes, general manager at LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions, added: “Because we can easily deliver new updates, LexisOne becomes a highly responsive platform – meaning that Fieldfisher will always have access to the latest features and innovations from both LexisNexis and Microsoft. In the current business environment, the business flexibility and agility this will give the firm cannot be underestimated.”
LexisOne earlier in the year appeared to be making no headway in winning deals, after a U-turn from Wedlake Bell that saw it return to the better known devil Thomson Reuters Elite and 3E. However, as we revealed last month, Gateley has selected LexisOne, albeit that the listed firm has yet to publicly confirm it. In other good news for LexisOne, Lindsay Barthram, who led the roll out of LexisOne at Fieldfisher, has joined Wilson Solutions to advise others on the transition and is understood to be working with Gateley.