No man is an island, the old adage says. And the same is true for almost any corporate, commercial or legal IT system you can think of. With technology, acquiring and installing the best available tools for the job is, at best, only half the battle. Many law firms have bought a comprehensive range of back-office and front-office systems that are genuinely ‘best of breed’ – that is, the most effective kit on the market – but have failed to make these systems deliver any value.
It is easy for a firm to blame its IT suppliers for creating products that do not perfectly ‘fit’ with their business processes and corporate culture. But all too often, the uncomfortable truth is that these systems were never given a cat in hell’s chance of delivering on the promises made during the initial sales pitch. Poorly integrated with the rest of the firm’s data infrastructure, or in some cases kept at arm’s length from it, even the best client relation-ship management (CRM) system in the world will remain an empty silo.
