In a hugely significant win for Foundation Software Group, global law firm Hogan Lovells has selected its experience management platform to capture, search, and leverage its global experience data, in the first half of a two-stage CRM review process.
The Foundation Firm Intelligence platform aggregates data from across business systems including time and billing, HR; and generic CRM systems to enable marketing and business development functions to compete more effectively and expand existing client relationships. It is replacing a bespoke experience management system.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Foundation’s executive vice president Barry Solomon said: “I was so impressed with how knowledgeable Hogan Lovells are. What they are trying to do is approach CRM as a strategy. They initially thought they might be able to go with a single CRM solution to do both traditional CRM and experience management, so they used a two-phase process: the first step to determine whether one solution can do it all. They started with what their needs are, not just what technology they need, and in the end, decided to use the Foundation Firm Intelligence Platform for phase one and wait to select a generic CRM solution for phase two.”
A key factor in its selection was that Foundation is able to integrate with other CRM systems as Hogan continues to “execute their CRM strategy.” The transatlantic firm currently uses CRM systems LexisNexis InterAction and OnePlace (now part of Intapp).
“For us it bodes well because often people look at this in silos and Hogan Lovells was the exact opposite: they had the right people from across many different departments and geographies and are really taking an agile approach,” Solomon said. “It’s unusual in that they are training the implementation team on agile methodology – the idea is to do things iteratively and course-correct along the way, and that helped in the selection process because Foundation is a platform that is really configurable. They don’t have to come back to us to make tweaks and changes: the team will be able to iterate needs as they arise.”
The Foundation implementation process kicks off towards the end of the month with simultaneous meetings in London and New York, involving all key stakeholders.
Solomon told us: “Hogan Lovells’ strategic goal is to differentiate their services across the whole platform.”
This is echoed in a press release by global CIO and chief administration officer for the Americas, Ash Banerjee, who said: “The goal of the Foundation project is to provide Hogan Lovells the ability to promote the full extent of our services, significantly improving our opportunities to grow our business and cross-sell our services.
“Foundation will improve our ability to capture, store, track, and search our global experience via a single system, helping to support our 2019 goal of raising awareness of the firm’s capabilities among our clients’ key decision makers.”
He adds: “The platform can be easily configured to match specific matter type, practice group, and client segmentation requirements, and keep pace with evolving firm needs with no IT intervention required. AI-enhanced matter profiling, triggered surveys, and defined approval processes continuously enrich a firm’s data so that it is comprehensive, complete, and up-to-date.”
A top 20 global law firm, Hogan Lovells has 2,800+ lawyers and operates from over 47 offices across six continents.
Foundation now counts among its client base around 25% of the Am Law top 100 law firms.