Redwood Analytics

In a speech at Computerworld's Business Intelligence Perspectives conference in September, Dan Vessett, an analyst at IDC (global provider of market intelligence) spoke about "pervasive Business Intelligence."  He theorized that corporate cultures, not inferior tools, were preventing BI from becoming widespread. 

Dave Schrader of Teradata Marketing agrees:

We've found that companies who use BI most effectively build a culture and expectation around data analytics, often led by strong leaders like Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com, or Gary Loveman at Harrah's.

This leads me to wonder which law firms are building a culture around BI?  Two firms that we know of are Best Best & Krieger and Miller Nash.  It must be challenging given the economy and the struggles firms have had over the past year to build a culture around anything.  But Redwood's research has proven over and over again that firms willing to embrace BI can improve profitability by implementing changes and making decisions based on analytics.

Best Best & Krieger earned the The Business Intelligence Vanguard Award at the Redwood User Conference as recognition for the significant strides they have taken in managing the business of law through the use of business intelligence.  Best Best & Krieger's deployment has included many of the best practices associated with BI success: partner involvement, gradual rollout, use of information as a management tool at the practice group level, and constant analysis provided by a Redwood-certified analyst.

Erica Daley, Executive Director and CFO of Miller Nash, was awarded The Redwood Ambassador Award for advancing the deployment of Redwood Analytics' BI solutions.  Erica was successful in rolling out 2 modules and deploying Redwood's dashboard to over 70 partners in her firm's first year as a Redwood client. Her success is a great example of what can be accomplished in a relatively short time with clear goals and careful planning.  Erica Daley serves as a role model to inspire others to embrace BI, lead business change, and achieve measurable results.

In addition to the Redwood best practices for BI success, in an IDC study of 1,100 organizations in 11 countries measuring how pervasive BI is within companies, these factors in descending order had the most impact:

• The Degree of training, not in the BI tools -- "the vendors do a pretty good job" -- but in the meaning of the data, what the key performance indicators mean, etc.
• Design quality, or the extent to which IT-deployed performance dashboards are able to satisfy user needs. Satisfied users will talk up the BI software, creating "BI envy" in other employees and thus helping spread the software's use. Dissatisfied users will go around IT and use Excel or some software-as-a-service applications.
• Prominence of the data governance group.
• Involvement of nonexecutive employees.
• Prominence of a performance management methodology

At Redwood we have always felt that it's not just our responsibility to educate the end user on our tools, but to provide education on the metrics and measurements, and to help the end users educate the eventual recipients of the BI output, like the law firm partners and practice group leaders that will use the information to make decisions.  

Our consultants go even a step further, helping firms make decisions and revise business practices to improve KPIs and other metrics.  At the same time, we would love to create "BI envy" at all of the firms using Redwood tools, like Erica Daley has at Miller Nash.

The remaining steps are in your hands, law firms.  Are Data Stewards an afterthought or a key element in your strategy?  How do you involve non-executive employees?  Do you even have a performance management methodology?  (We've spoken on this blog a lot recently about the rising importance of project management in law firm financial management.)

The economy is forcing law firms to change and adapt, and those who can adopt some best practices from corporate America, and from their peers, relating to the adoption and use of BI will likely come out ahead in the future.