Small tech can have a very big impact in a firm where a single task is repeated hundreds of times each week. At Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, one such task is parcel shipping. We are an international firm with 1,200 attorneys in 18 offices serving financial institutions and Fortune 500 companies. It is imperative that our in-house operations perform at peak capacity — and that includes the shipping of overnight packages.
In 2004, we were shipping about 6,000 parcels a month on behalf of our clients, without an automated process. We also used handwritten air bills and vouchers, with information that was then re-keyed into the vendor’s systems. The process, although effective, was decentralized, unorganized, varied from office to office and had no focal point in terms of process management or cost control.
