Briefing April 2021: Save the data, by Salesforce
The pandemic has served as an accelerant, supercharging a pivot to client-centricity and rethinking how you serve your employees. Law firms have the ability to reinvent themselves for the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world, says Vincent Perrin, regional vice president for professional services at Salesforce
Many law firms report managing very similar challenges and priorities over the last year, with much emphasis on adapting to change. One company sure to be keeping a close eye on the reality of that is the giant of client experience Salesforce, which recently saw a first magic-circle firm move to take advantage of its cloud-based platform.
However, Vincent Perrin, regional vice president for professional services, stresses that Salesforce isn’t going to market asking firms to replace any incumbent system right now – a daunting project for any transformation team at the best of times.
“Salesforce is the trusted digital adviser to businesses large and small, in the UK and Ireland, transforming both the client and employee experience across multiple industries.” These range from an abundance of experience in the professional services space already, to powering the fast-changing world of retail. Legal business competitor PwC, Bentley Motors and National Grid, for example, are all extremely well-known users of the platform. It achieves this scale of change for organisations, says Perrin, by sitting across other IT systems as an ‘engagement layer’ and helping them to leverage the masses of data they already have inside at their disposal.
“At some point a firm will ultimately replace a solution that is no longer needed,” he says. “But they don’t have to wait until a solution has reached end-of-life to begin transforming the client experience.”
He continues: “There is a common challenge among law firms, which is that their CRM solution is isolated.” Once the need for a new solution has been identified, it can become a process of adding yet another silo, rather than using it as an opportunity to connect information across the firm. “Leveraging relationships for a better experience cannot happen in silos.”
Often this is also connected to the organisational fabric of a law firm, he adds – where one group can be more invested in a change than others. “But in order to transform experience, you need everyone involved and appreciating the value.”
Alignment of values
This togetherness is also the most important factor feeding into how Salesforce is itself identifying potential law firm partners serious about transformation, says Perrin. “It’s mostly about the mindset. The desire for greater insight and a unified client view can’t be confined to pockets of a business – IT, business development and the partners all need to be aligned on the value.”
For him, this also chimes with Salesforce’s own core values of trust and customer success. “As a subscription model, when customers sign up, we have to invest. We want to achieve a joint goal because not only are we trusted cloud, but another one of our four core values is customer success. We guide our customers to deliver transformative outcomes and mutual success. We’ve built a company with the people, programmes and focus that our customers need.”
Related to this, he takes the common charge that platforms representing big change aren’t “legalspecific” enough head on. “There can be a nervousness about it,” he appreciates. “Salesforce has invested heavily in solutions that can help law firms to go live quicker.” There are aptly named ‘accelerators’ designed for different industries; the solution in this case is tailored to legal business processes such as billing and matter management ‘out of the box’. “Salesforce solutions are easily customisable. If a firm is asking to make changes to improve employee experiences, we have the
capabilities to do that.”
Changing opportunities
Firms already changing how they deal with data using Salesforce are seeing a number of positive outcomes, says Perrin. For example, partners have been able to visualise the success of client communication efforts and make decisions about next best actions to nurture relationships during the pandemic.
The key here, however, is ensuring that any client activity is always joined-up across practices and offices. “Research shows that if a relationship is embedded in three parts of a firm, it’s more likely to endure,” Perrin explains. “That genuinely drives share of wallet, but with a unified client view you don’t risk two partners overlapping in their efforts, or turning up to the same pitch unless required.”
In any remote or hybrid working arrangement, business data also needs to be easily accessible and understandable – for effective collaboration as much as instant consumption. “Videoconferencing alone isn’t collaboration,” Perrin says. In fact, if you’re not careful, it can become just one more complexity-adding silo. “It’s a mechanism for speaking to people, but what you need is what’s happening on that call combined with the relevant data in your systems.”
And as for increasing agility: one firm, Perrin heard, proved able to spin up a local community project as part of its corporate social responsibility programme in just five days.
Other legal technology suppliers are now also seeing opportunities to collaborate with Salesforce to help their users – but the law firms that choose to partner with it will always be able to recognise the benefits of client-centricity, non-siloed data and working from anywhere, he says. “Partners will see the value in the change, BD will see the value in the change and IT will see the value of a better experience being easier to deliver.”
This sponsor comment was taken from Briefing April 2021. To read the full report, click here.
