The PWC Law firms’ Survey 2018 identified that 63% are concerned with speed of technological changes and its threat to growth. This is one of the four areas, as a result of the survey, that PWC has flagged for law firms to think about to move forward and remain robust in changing times. Of course, this also applies to the accounting sector.
With up to 85% of UK businesses said to be looking to invest in AI by 2020*, can professional services firms afford not to be in the mix?
As of July 4, 2019, Symphony acquired the exclusive global rights to market, develop, deploy and support Practice Portal in the Accounting and Legal professions.
For professional services firms, to fully reap the benefits of CRM (client relationship management) for the entire client-facing organisation, those who use the system every day must actually want to use it. No matter how grand your plans are for the CRM tools you use, they will fall short unless every user is committed.
Senior figures from top UK and International accounting firms took part in our first AI and the Future of Accountancy report. There’s a lot of hype surrounding AI and we wanted to cut through the noise to get a real sense of what is happening in the industry. So, we embarked on this journey to gain a deeper understanding of the future requirements of AI within leading accountancy firms.
Through working with leading professional service firms, we’ve found that accounting and legal firms deal with numerous processes and application platforms which operate independently of each other with little or no integration. This leads to inefficient operations and higher costs.
The latest LPM (Legal Practice Management) report - ‘Legal IT Landscapes 2019’ – revealed the majority of respondents see risk and compliance alongside operations and administration were the support services that could benefit most from more automation. While the benefits of automating marketing and business development fell lower down in importance with only 11%.
Sarah Trude, our Business Development Director, has an article featured in the April issue of Legal Practice Management where she talks about the ‘puck mindset’. What’s that do we hear you say? Well, it’s in relation to Wayne Gretzky, who is a Canadian former ice-hockey player, where he talks about “skating to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
For a professional services firm to be effective, its business development, marketing and divisions responsible for client service delivery need to be linked. But, so often, we hear about the challenges of the team not being connected with relevant content that will allow them to benefit from opportune conversations.
It’s widely accepted that you should encompass all departments when you implement Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) including all sources of static and dynamic data, marketing processes, and value-added services in to a unified decision supporting platform.
Symphony will be hosting a Roundtable at this year’s LPM (Legal Practice Management) South conference on 7th February 2019.
To further strengthen our position as a leading software partner to professional service firms, Symphony have appointed Sarah Trude as Business Development Director.
Here, we’ve rounded up some of the key CRM insights and trends for professional services firms to take note of in 2019.
Xerocon London is one of the key dates in the calendar. We read with interest that Chris Hoy, world champion and six-time Olympic gold winner was a true inspiration at the conference this year, just as much as he is on his bike.