Colin Biggers & Paisley Lawyers, as part of the Australian legal practice’s three-year IT transformation project, is to invest in two of BigHand’s software solutions, BigHand Quantum and BigHand Evaluate, in order to gain a better understanding of the firm’s financial data and profitability drivers.
Established in 1900 Colin Biggers has evolved from a boutique practice in Sydney to a national legal practice with over 470 employees, offices in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
BigHand Quantum is a financial BI solution with self-service, role-based dashboards and BigHand Evaluate is a matter pricing, budgeting and tracking solution which focusses on maximising profitability. The solutions leverage the data from the Colin Biggers practice management system, Elite 3E.
“BigHand provided a solution that we could configure to the practice’s current needs and scale up for future development. A key driver was the local product support backed by the experience of BigHand’s global team,” chief financial officer Graeme Walsh said. “We wanted to ensure our lawyers had access to leading business intelligence, matter planning and profitability data, to make more informed, data-driven decisions. BigHand were consistent throughout the sales process and ensured they understood our aims for the practice, as well as the key objectives of the partners.”
The investment in technology was largely driven by the practice’s focus on future strategic planning. With BigHand Quantum, the practice will gain visibility of real-time financial metrics to expose operational costs and business capacity for future strategic planning.
BigHand Evaluate will provide the practice with a solution to develop a pricing strategy to help drive profitability and reduce cost-to-serve. The practice will be able to plan, manage and monitor all matters from both a financial and client perspective. The solution will help increase the practice’s financial recovery by building on its profitability, insight and thinking in regard to pricing. The software surfaces key financial information whilst the progress of matters can be tracked against the budget throughout the lifecycle of a matter.
Anthony Bleasdale, Asia Pacific managing director at BigHand said, “There is huge pressure for firms to improve their financial insight, but to also start putting that information into the hands of lawyers and management. With our BI and matter pricing solutions we can help firms understand their costs and capacity, drive profitability, make decisions based on real-time data and move from the practice of law to the business of law. It is fantastic to see an innovative firm like Colin Biggers & Paisley identify this value and is invest in BigHand solutions.”