CTS Case study: Bott and Co
Bott and Co handles thousands of cases to protect consumers and victims. With such a high volume of work, the firm turned to technology solutions to ensure they could handle demand and deliver justice for their clients.
Managing partner Paul Hinchliffe says this reliance on technology meant the decision to use Converge Technology Specialists wasn’t taken lightly. Working alongside the firm’s IT team, Converge TS provides guidance on IT strategy, day-to-day specialist support and managed disaster recovery.
Hinchliffe says: “Our purpose is to help consumers get justice against big organisations. We take on insurance providers, airlines, travel operators, and anywhere people can’t get justice for themselves. We have a clear stance of acting for the little guy against the big guy.
“We only do consumer law. At the moment, we’ve got departments that do personal injury work along with thousands of flight delay claims, holiday sickness cases, and a few hundred tuition fee claims as well.
Silicon central“Our client capture team is available from 8am to 8pm to secure clients, but our flight delay clients are where the volume is. We’re taking those in through an online calculator. Clients enter their flight number and date and we run these through a gigantic database. We interrogate hundreds of millions of rows of data and the calculator decides whether we can take a case. If we can, we’ll be prepared to offer our services on a no-win no-fee basis, and we’ll tell that client what a likely outcome will be.”
Hinchliffe says: “Keeping all of our clients happy is a big challenge, particularly when we only generate a few pounds of revenue for each case. As we’re not on the high street, we don’t have a physical public face. Our website really is the be-all and end-all of the business. It’s important that everything runs smoothly, and like everyone else we also see the future of consumer law becoming ever more digitised. In fact, the firm has more software developers than solicitors, and we spend a lot of time and effort getting the most that we can from each software product.”
Handling so many claims each year means continuity of service and maintaining our good reputation is especially critical. Therefore, the firm has really prioritised its resilience – which is where Converge TS comes into play. “The stability that they’ve helped us attain is vital,” says Hinchliffe.
Know-it allsLuckily, the decision to use Converge TS was a straightforward one. “Converge really is the technical expert within the legal sector,” he says. “It always helps when you meet with them because they’re familiar with legal language. You save a lot of time and wasted effort by having somebody who’s knowledgeable about the sector.
“They’ve also gained a lot of experience from working with other legal businesses, that knowledge gets passed to us and we benefit from it. They’re familiar with things like SRA rules, so you know you’re covered and won’t have to waste time trying to explain legal concepts.
“Data security is absolutely critical. We’re dealing with so many clients, we need to take how their data is captured, stored and handled extremely seriously. We have just been accredited for ISO27001 across the whole of our business and Converge were helpful in us achieving that. Protecting our clients’ data also means we’re protecting our business and the jobs of everybody in it.”
Maintain moreBott and Co has also been able to maintain its focus on security at the same time as expanding its range of services. “Converge has been helpful in integrating with other IT products,” Hinchliffe says. “It helps with integration between our website and back-end databases, including our calculator, which play a crucial part in bringing in business to the firm.”
Hinchliffe says the firm is also better able to keep track of IT infrastructure, improving cost control. “In terms of quantifying results, Converge actively monitors our services, including server networks, storage and cloud services. We’ve also got a technical relationship manager personally assigned to us, who is on hand to help with any queries or issues. This means the overhead of IT engineer time onsite is greatly reduced.”Bott and Co has just renewed its contract with Converge TS for another three years, and Hinchcliffe seems to be confident in this decision.
“After three years, we have a really strong relationship,” he explains. “Our direct account manager at Converge helps to resolve or escalate any queries we have. They cover everything from support and licensing to possible outages and technical failures. It all means our main focus can be on our end users and further enhancing their experience of our systems.”
