1. Where within the CRM4Legal interface could you see number of past and present matters for client, fees paid, etc., without going into another application? 
2. Talk about the main differences between CRM4Legal and its competitors.
3. How is the synchronization handled between Outlook and CRM4Legal?
4. Many attorneys have secretaries manage their contacts. Can secretaries with access to an attorney contact folder interact with CRM4Legal?
5. Where would records be kept/seen within CRM4Legal – for example, brochures sent to each client, firm marketing functions attended, etc.?
6. Is there a simple way for a user to quickly enter a "call report" type of record -- lunch with client; discussed patent work?
7. Does CRM4Legal allow a secretary, for example, to "proxy" enter data for an attorney who is a licensed user?
8. Does CRM4Legal have web access like Outlook webmail?
9. Can CRM4Legal be ported into a SharePoint intranet?
10. How does CRM4Legal handle subsidiaries and family trees?
11. Can you link activity entries to documents in a Document Management system like Hummingbird -- for example, view within a record a link to a marketing letter sent to the client six months ago, click on that link, and open that document?
12. Can you explain a bit further CRM4Legal’s data change management tools?
13. Do you support mass-mailing subscription management?
14. How do you handle global updates? For example, if you have 100 people working for a company and the address changes, can you update all 100 people in one shot?
15. With my existing investment in a CRM system, why do I want to change? I understand CRM4Legal gets good adoption rates but what are my benefits?
16. Do you "connect" with OneSource and/or Dunn & Bradstreet to import company information?
1. Where within the CRM4Legal interface could you see number of past and present matters for client, fees paid, etc., without going into another application?
CRM4Legal users can view matter information directly from within the standard user interface within Outlook at both the company and contact levels. In addition, Client and Matters views can be further segmented to meet the needs of individual users, practice groups, or the entire law firm (i.e. ‘My matters’ or ‘All matters’ views).
A core component of a successful CRM implementation is the ability to integrate with other core applications to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and further the “enter once, use many times” philosophy. The CRM4Legal team has developed an external data integration module (Data Pump) designed to integrate with other core applications such as Accounting, HR and external third-party data sources, which warehouse data elements critical to segmenting and targeting the CRM contact database for marketing and prospecting business development efforts.
The development of the CRM4Legal Data Pump tool was focused on integrating data elements directly into the CRM4Legal application to facilitate information retrieval. Information requests which would normally require several calls to Accounting, Recruiting or HR to comply with simple internal requests, or to address more complex needs from clients or prospects in the formal request for information or proposal process, can now be satisfied using a simple advanced find query within CRM4Legal. Typical data elements integrated include, but are not limited to the following:
From Accounting/Practice Management Applications:
- Historical Billing/Collections;
- Originating/Billing/Responsible Attorney;
- Working Attorney;
- Practice Area;
- Area of Law;
- Matter Level Information;
- Related Party data; and
- Passive Relationship Intelligence (Other “Knows” relationships)
From HR/Experience Databases
- Expertise;
- Matter Level Experience;
- Bar Admission; and
- Other HR related information (languages, educational background, etc.)
From Proposal Automation Applications
- Historical Proposal Activity;
- Connection to the Final Proposal; and
- Integration with tracking Proposal wins/losses to effectively capture ROI
From Third-Party Information Warehouses
- Company and Contact Profiles;
- Industry Segmentation; and
- Other Key Contact data elements.
Essentially, if the data exists in a useable, structured format, Data Pump technology provides the capability to integrate this information seamlessly within the Microsoft CRM4Legal database.
We have successfully established scheduled integration with Elite, Aderant, Juris, Client Profiles, and Rippe & Kingston financial systems. The Data Pump Technology has also been developed to support asynchronous and bi-synchronous data exchange, facilitating the ability to provide CRM data access as a core component of the new file client/matter opening process.
Access to any CRM4Legal database views can be controlled according to user security profiles, and administrators can control what actions particular users or groups of users may take (i.e. create, print, delete, etc.).
In addition, the CRM4Legal Data Pump simplifies data loading into CRM4Legal by utilizing the power of our proprietary data migration tools with Microsoft web services API. Key features include: assignment of primary ID and default field values, validation of input data, automatic population of summary and join tables, and support for custom entities, attributes, and relationships.
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2. Talk about the main differences between CRM4Legal and its competitors.
Key differences between CRM4Legal and its competitors include:
Multi-tiered License model
We have two license types which fit the needs of a law firm perfectly. An Advanced User License for Marketing, Business Development and Power Users (roughly 10 % – 25% of users depending upon the firm); and a Standard User License, designed specifically to meet the needs of lawyer and secretary teams. This licensing allows the firm to carefully manage their investment in license costs and makes the CRM4Legal application very cost effective.
In addition, CRM4Legal is an “All-Inclusive Application.” All demonstrated functionality and integration tools are included in the base price of the software. There are no additional modules required to evolve the functionality to manage opportunities, integrate matter level financial data, or perform contact validation.
User Interface
CRM4Legal is Outlook. Our clients report high user-adoption rates due to the fact that users don’t have to leave the application they use predominately throughout the course of their normal work day. The application simply works the way they work, integrated with the applications they use daily without the need to go to a complete different look and feel web interface.
Ease of use
Without giving up functionality, the Microsoft base product is very easy to use. Maximizing the core foundation of Microsoft Office product integration, (such as drop down menus, right click functionality, etc.) the user experience is already known. With the deep legal experience of the CRM4Legal team we have tailored the application to make it very simple to contribute contacts and access the value of a consolidated CRM database with a single mouse click within Outlook.
Database Schema
The CRM4Legal database supports one-to-many, many–to-one and many-to-many relationship types, meaning that Contacts and Companies can be related to an unlimited number of other database objects such as other Companies, Opportunities, other Contacts, Matters, Users, etc. to more effectively portray the multiple relationships which may exist without the need to create duplicates within the system. This schema allows great flexibility in identifying and displaying critical relationship information in our “Relationship Intelligence Tree”.
Relationship Intelligence
CRM4Legal presents users with a graphical view of “who knows whom” and other relationships which exist among users and contacts in a very simple and intuitive hierarchical “tree” view. We have developed the concept of a “crawler” technology which automates the creation of relationship information well beyond the capabilities of other products in the market. Our technology searches the CRM database and “connects the dots” to show potential introduction points between users and contacts and also strength of relationship, which is critical. Users can quickly identify relationships between contacts and other contacts, companies, professional organizations, matters, and other users at the law firm.
Microsoft Focus & Technology Integration
Law Firms are “Microsoft Shops”. Microsoft based products dominate the Professional Services and Law Firm technology platforms. The Microsoft Dynamics business unit represents a major focus area for Microsoft and its customers world-wide. Although relatively new to the Professional Services Vertical and Legal in particular, Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been installed at more than 16,500 installations for more than 700,000 users.
Microsoft CRM is the single-fastest growing business application with which they have ever been involved, and the first they have developed from the ground up. Because there has been a convergence of the development teams for CRM and the Office Suite of products, firms can be confident their investment today is virtually future-proofed.
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3. How is the synchronization handled between Outlook and CRM4Legal?
Contacts that have been tracked into CRM are synchronized between CRM and Outlook on an ongoing scheduled basis, which can be configured to meet your firm’s requirements.
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4. Many attorneys have secretaries manage their contacts. Can secretaries with access to an attorney contact folder interact with CRM4Legal?
Secretaries can access & manage data on behalf of the attorneys. Microsoft CRM4Legal supports named user licensing structure, so all users that will manipulate data require a Standard User License.
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5. Where would records be kept/seen within CRM4Legal – for example, brochures sent to each client, firm marketing functions attended, etc.?
There is a history view within each company and contact record showing historical and future planned activities involving that contact. Activities can include mailings, meetings, phone calls, tasks, e-mails, event registrations, mailings and alerts, essentially any activities involving the contact can be tracked and displayed within the application. Most importantly, these functions are automatically tracked to each contact’s history view upon taking the specific action by simply tracking the action in CRM4Legal.
This history view is one click away from any CRM company or contact record. There are also reports which capture a consolidated view of all the historical activities associated with a company, or contact. All firm activities are captured and consolidated and can be filtered by date and type.
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6. Is there a simple way for a user to quickly enter a "call report" type of record -- lunch with client; discussed patent work?
Yes, users will capture this data as they normally do within Outlook by creating an activity and simply tracking that activity to the CRM contact. For instance, a user can create the meeting in Outlook as they normally would, and associate that meeting with the appropriate CRM4Legal record. After the meeting, the user can enter notes from the meeting.
Within CRM4Legal, we have the concept of distinct entities. Notes, activities and history are all captured at the entity level for viewing and reporting.
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7. Does CRM4Legal allow a secretary, for example, to "proxy" enter data for an attorney who is a licensed user?
Microsoft CRM4Legal is available in two types of Client Access Licenses and supports delegate usage. The licenses are either device or named user licenses:
Standard User
The Standard User License is used by most Attorneys, Secretaries, and other staff. This license enables users to contribute contacts and profile contacts to the CRM database, add & remove contacts from marketing lists, view relationship intelligence information, run pre-defined reports create and execute queries and view all functional data within the CRM4Legal system. The Standard User CAL meets the needs of typically 90% of the firm users.
Advanced User
The Advanced User CAL includes all of the features mentioned in the Standard User CAL, plus additional capabilities including advanced searching & reporting, campaign creation and management, creation and execution of workflows, and administrative functions (governed by user profile). This type of license is typically used by the Marketing, IT and Administrative users.
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8. Does CRM4Legal have web access like Outlook webmail?
Yes, CRM4Legal can be accessed via a secure web browser (either on a workstation or a mobile device) as well as through a secure application delivery program such as a Virtual Private Network, Citrix or Microsoft Terminal Services.
The unique aspect of the web based CRM4Legal client is that it is identical in look, feel and operation as the Outlook client. We find that Marketing department personnel perform their daily CRM tasks via the web client to “disconnect” from ongoing normal e-mail activity allowing them to work undisturbed in CRM.
The fact that the user interface for advanced Marketing Department users and the typical end-users experience is identical allows Marketing department personnel to provide better end-user support as they are supporting the same application. This paradigm is very different from our competitors, which require completely different user interfaces by user level. It also makes training and ongoing help desk support more streamlined.
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9. Can CRM4Legal be ported into a SharePoint intranet?
Yes, a key point of differentiation for Microsoft Dynamics CRM & CRM4Legal is the native integration with the Microsoft core technology infrastructure, or ‘stack’, that essentially all core legal applications are based upon. It is very easy to integrate CRM4Legal data with a SharePoint intranet portal.
There are web parts available for customization “out-of-the-box” with Microsoft CRM and we strictly adhere to the entity based development structure within the Microsoft CRM development platform. Integration with SharePoint Portal Services is simply an attribute customization task rather than core development.
In addition, There is the unique ability to create complex queries, export to excel and publish the results to a SharePoint Portal. No other product can support this functionality.
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10. How does CRM4Legal handle subsidiaries and family trees?
Subsidiaries Company records can easily be related to parent company records, with the parent-subsidiary relationship shown. Also, the CRM4Legal relational database model supports one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships between database entities. An example of this would be a Contact who is President of a subsidiary company and a Vice President at the parent company level. Business-development related activities such as mailings and events could be associated with the contact at either the parent or subsidiary account record level.
No other competing product supports this relational functionality.
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11. Can you link activity entries to documents in a Document Management system like Hummingbird -- for example, view within a record a link to a marketing letter sent to the client six months ago, click on that link, and open that document?
It is very easy to include the activity record as a secure hyperlink in other documents, Emails, SharePoint portals, etc. Each activity record generated creates a unique URL that links back to the CRM system.
As we maximize iFrame technology within CRM4Legal, there are multiple ways to integrate with web based document management systems. There is also the ability to integrate a com add-in as well.
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12. Can you explain a bit further CRM4Legal’s data change management tools?
There are several data management utilities in CRM4Legal that both lower the barriers for end-user contribution and maximize data accuracy:
- Configurable Duplicate Detection and Merge functionality;
- Audit; and
- Field Level Security.
The fully-configurable audit utility allows for tracking of all data changes on an entity by entity basis, as well as field by field basis.
Also, on both an entity by entity basis and field by field basis when a data field is changed, a user can be prompted to provide details about why the change was made.
Finally, Windows Workflow Foundation can be utilized to distribute email notifications on specific contacts or companies when information is changed.
It is important to note that all of these utilities are completely configurable to meet your firm’s needs. Client Profiles’ CRM Implementation team will work with each client to incorporate our best practices and your unique needs.
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13. Do you support mass-mailing subscription management?
CRM4Legal supports mail-merge capabilities that enable your staff to customize customer communications using Word and Microsoft Publisher and other HTML editing tools. Use data from CRM4Legal to target customers for marketing and business development campaigns using Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Publisher. It's easy to select clients for a letter or marketing initiative, and personalized messages take only minutes.
Additional campaign analysis capabilities can be achieved by integrating CRM4Legal with services such as ExactTarget, Concep Global, Constant Contact, and others. These additional services offer the ability to track users who read/open/click/forward, etc. As CRM4Legal iFrame technology integrates tightly with web services, this information can be passed back to CRM4Legal. Law firms can also use this information to track user subscription preferences and to ensure CAN-SPAM compliance.
This combination of CRM4Legal and subscription management services adds value in the following ways:
- Contact and list information can be maintained in CRM4Legal
- Hosted services remove the burden of delivering mass-email publications from a firm’s Exchange server environment
- Hosted services have strong relationships with Internet Service Providers and can ensure optimal practices for email delivery
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14. How do you handle global updates? For example, if you have 100 people working for a company and the address changes, can you update all 100 people in one shot?
It is very easy to make group edits by finding and highlighting all 100 contact records and making the edit to all contact records at once. This can be done from the Company Record, by selecting the appropriate contacts and making 1 update apply to all selected records.
CRM4Legal also supports the automation of workflows using the Microsoft Windows Workflow Management. Using the above update scenario, CRM4Legal has the functionality to prompt the end user when the change is made at the company level whether this change should be applied to all sharing that address. This functionality can be limited to administrative users as well.
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15. With my existing investment in a CRM system, why do I want to change? I understand CRM4Legal gets good adoption rates but what are my benefits?
The are many major benefits associated with moving to CRM4Legal from other competing products. High adoption rates among lawyers is likely the most compelling factor, but the technology foundation is equally important. When you review the benefits it is important to review your “constituents” relative to CRM: Primary constituents are:
- End Users;
- Marketing; and
- IT Departments.
For End Users
In competitors’ applications, the primary users are members of the Marketing team due to the very different user interface made available for users when they want to see CRM data. Attorneys simply do not use these web clients. They may promote users to lists or folders within Outlook, but they rarely access the true CRM data. With CRM4Legal, access to CRM is a click away in Outlook and looks like the interface they are accustomed to using every day. With the growing need to be more connected with clients and share knowledge among the legal delivery units, this access to knowing your clients is the basis for our end user adoption rates.
For Marketing
CRM4Legal is a full-featured application. There is no need to purchase additional modules to generate sales pipelines and manage opportunities, to integrate with financial systems to access matter level data and search for experience/expertise in responding to RFP’s/RFI’s. A firm has the ability to evolve the sophistication of their CRM processes without the need to continually invest in additional functionality. As firms Business Development processes grow and evolve, so can your use of the application.
From a user case perspective, CRM4Legal is extremely intuitive and the training/adoption rate by members of the marketing team is also extremely high.
For IT
Microsoft products make up the desktop and back office technical infrastructure in well over 90% of today’s law firms. With CRM4Legal and Microsoft CRM, firms are investing in an extension of the products they already own and support on a daily basis. With an investment in CRM4Legal, firms are future-proofing their investment in this technology knowing that as Microsoft products continue to be enhanced, their investment will continue to be enhanced as well.
Today, most firms are either implementing or reviewing how SharePoint Portal Services will add-value to their end-users. This technology seamlessly integrates with CRM4Legal without the need to invest in third party web tools.
Today, most firms have either implemented or are reviewing IP phones and Unified Messaging platforms. Integration with the Microsoft Stack is seamless and tightly integrated with CRM to provide presence, auto dialing and call center like understanding and integration with IP Phone systems.
Today, firms understand the need to support Knowledge Management initiatives through tight integration of existing systems, fostering the concept of “enter once, use many times.” As all of the core applications in a law firm share the same SQL database structure, extending this core capability around people and companies with the core Microsoft framework, simplifies this integration measurably.
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16. Do you "connect" with OneSource and/or Dunn & Bradstreet to import company information?
Yes, external integration with any source is possible, with the caveat that a unique ID is established and the data source is structured on a field level basis. This integration can also be established as an ongoing feed depending upon the subscription a firm has with the external data provider.
There is also the ability to link to these information providers directly from CRM4Legal via hyperlink URL, or iFrame integration.
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