16 February 2022 · 4 min read
Empower Client Transparency Through Efficient & Accurate Matter Reporting
The post-pandemic world has significantly emphasized internal and external collaboration for organizations. Having transitioned to virtual collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams, firms can work together across physical barriers to deliver matters to clients.
It makes sense that the modern legal client also seeks to be a part of this collaborative process. In fact, 80% of today’s legal clients say that transparency and flexibility in the matter pricing process are key factors in where they take their business.
To enable that, it’s vital for firms to stay on top of matters and deliver frequent reports to clients to show that a matter remains on budget. And if it isn’t on budget, have all the proper information ready to show clients why that may be the case.
Not only does this ensure an efficient and effective process for your firm, but it also fosters client satisfaction and trust.
Read on and discover how your firm can empower partners to have better financial conversations with clients through efficient and accurate matter reporting.
How Will Matter Reporting Benefit Your Firm?
Clients are pursuing a new way of doing business. Part of this is ensuring that the firm they’re working with values their input, time, and concerns. Enabling clients to have visibility into the matter process and be informed at all times is vital in nurturing a transparent client relationship.
Firms can address these expectations by delivering efficient and accurate reports to their clients.
These reports give firms the flexibility to quickly understand matter progress through a general or granular view. They also help demonstrate to clients where the matter process is incurring new costs (if any).
Firms and clients also have different preferences on the KPIs they want to see. That’s why it is important to have rich dashboards and reporting capabilities with customizable KPIs. It helps ensure client satisfaction, all while being more efficient in calculations, comparisons, and report development.
Moreover, firms many times need different information for internal and external purposes. That’s why a proper matter planning solution reduces the time spent on collecting information for these two categories, all while improving accuracy and enhancing effectiveness.
The reality is that many firms face challenges when it comes to detailed and accurate reporting. It comes primarily due to limited access to matter data and insight into legal spending. Firms can eliminate the timely task of extracting the necessary data into the client’s preferred format by automating the reporting process.
This way, pricing, LPM teams, and partners don’t have to spend inefficient time generating reports manually (increasing the number of billable hours) or ensuring that the data entered is accurate. Ultimately enhancing efficiency, eliminating human error, and reducing costs.
Developing a strategy that allows firms to track and report on their data effectively is the first step. Firms need to have all their data points in a centralized location to do this. It is estimated that a centralized location will save firms 1.5% per year in external legal spending.
Once data is in a single location, it can be used to create a matter budget – whether broken down into phases for the matter lifecycle or just for monitoring and reporting purposes. Either way, compiling data points in a central location enables partners to accurately communicate to clients how much a matter will cost them, monitor the budget through email alerts & notifications, and quickly report on matter progress.
Customization is key.
Firms can’t treat these reports as one-size-fits-all. Because every client will have different needs or KPIs for a matter, the reporting process needs to be flexible and responsive enough to handle the specific concerns of various clients.
To meet these needs, 92% of firms report that they are taking different approaches, including implementing different financial matter management solutions that automate their reporting process and enable them to generate detailed, flexible, and visually appealing reports within minutes.
How are they getting these efficient and accurate matter reports?
By using a financial matter management platform like Prosperoware Umbria.
How Prosperoware Umbria Helps
Prosperoware Umbria is the financial matter management platform for law firms. It enables partners, legal project management, and pricing departments to plan, alert, monitor, and report on matters, helping firms deliver matters within the scope and expected budget.
Umbria’s data-driven approach ensures that firms plan and deliver matters profitably, all while improving client value, transparency, and predictability.
Firms can create tailored, widget-based dashboards with custom KPIs to quickly report on matters, both internally and externally. Umbria enables firms to monitor internal and client-facing plans, so you can always report on the KPIs that matter most to your firm and client.
Not only that, but Umbria also allows firms to structure data the way it works best for them and their clients. This can be either by phase, office, department, period and more.
Umbria has more than 300 KPIs out of the box for reporting, with the capability to create additional custom indicators. These reports are structured to be visually appealing and intuitive, with widget-based dashboards that can be rearranged as the firm sees fit and according to client requests. These reports can be exported easily, so partners can forward or present them to clients.
The Umbria solution allows firms to keep partners on the front lines of client communication while still equipped with all the necessary matter budget information to quickly assure clients that their matter is being handled efficiently and with cost-effectiveness in mind.
Here are more ways of how Umbria can benefit your firm:
Flexible Planning: Plan matters accurately and in any way you want. Whether it’s hourly, by alternative fee arrangements, top-level budgeting, or break down by phase, task, activity, location/cost center, periodic, recurring amounts, and user named phases, to name a few. Utilize out-of-the-box templates and historical matters to create new plans. Plan ahead for multi-year matters with rate and cost increases and test different scenarios with What-If Analysis.
Monitoring & Alerting: Ensure matter stays within budget and time by setting up email alerts and notifications on anything from WIP, Billed, Billable, Collected, and Write-Offs. Schedule Threshold, Escalation, and Recurring Alerts with configurable templates.
Reporting & Dashboards: Tailor reports the way they best work for you through custom Widget-Dashboards. Mix and match widgets and visualizations such as grid, pie chart, stacked chart, etc. Choose from 300+ KPIs to report on or create your own. Export dashboards and reports via Excel, PDF, or PNG.
Decision Support Tools: Enable partners and pricing departments to make the best planning decisions by understanding multiple scenarios with What-If Analysis and Customizable KPIs. Forward forecast with simple discounts and alternative fee arrangements. View the impact of adjustments during the matter lifecycle with Write-Down and Burn Analysis.
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16 February 2022 · 4 min read
Empower Client Transparency Through Efficient & Accurate Matter Reporting
The post-pandemic world has significantly emphasized internal and external collaboration for organizations. Having transitioned to virtual collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams, firms can work together across physical barriers to deliver matters to clients.
It makes sense that the modern legal client also seeks to be a part of this collaborative process. In fact, 80% of today’s legal clients say that transparency and flexibility in the matter pricing process are key factors in where they take their business.
To enable that, it’s vital for firms to stay on top of matters and deliver frequent reports to clients to show that a matter remains on budget. And if it isn’t on budget, have all the proper information ready to show clients why that may be the case.
Not only does this ensure an efficient and effective process for your firm, but it also fosters client satisfaction and trust.
Read on and discover how your firm can empower partners to have better financial conversations with clients through efficient and accurate matter reporting.
How Will Matter Reporting Benefit Your Firm?
Clients are pursuing a new way of doing business. Part of this is ensuring that the firm they’re working with values their input, time, and concerns. Enabling clients to have visibility into the matter process and be informed at all times is vital in nurturing a transparent client relationship.
Firms can address these expectations by delivering efficient and accurate reports to their clients.
These reports give firms the flexibility to quickly understand matter progress through a general or granular view. They also help demonstrate to clients where the matter process is incurring new costs (if any).
Firms and clients also have different preferences on the KPIs they want to see. That’s why it is important to have rich dashboards and reporting capabilities with customizable KPIs. It helps ensure client satisfaction, all while being more efficient in calculations, comparisons, and report development.
Moreover, firms many times need different information for internal and external purposes. That’s why a proper matter planning solution reduces the time spent on collecting information for these two categories, all while improving accuracy and enhancing effectiveness.
The reality is that many firms face challenges when it comes to detailed and accurate reporting. It comes primarily due to limited access to matter data and insight into legal spending. Firms can eliminate the timely task of extracting the necessary data into the client’s preferred format by automating the reporting process.
This way, pricing, LPM teams, and partners don’t have to spend inefficient time generating reports manually (increasing the number of billable hours) or ensuring that the data entered is accurate. Ultimately enhancing efficiency, eliminating human error, and reducing costs.
Developing a strategy that allows firms to track and report on their data effectively is the first step. Firms need to have all their data points in a centralized location to do this. It is estimated that a centralized location will save firms 1.5% per year in external legal spending.
Once data is in a single location, it can be used to create a matter budget – whether broken down into phases for the matter lifecycle or just for monitoring and reporting purposes. Either way, compiling data points in a central location enables partners to accurately communicate to clients how much a matter will cost them, monitor the budget through email alerts & notifications, and quickly report on matter progress.
Customization is key.
Firms can’t treat these reports as one-size-fits-all. Because every client will have different needs or KPIs for a matter, the reporting process needs to be flexible and responsive enough to handle the specific concerns of various clients.
To meet these needs, 92% of firms report that they are taking different approaches, including implementing different financial matter management solutions that automate their reporting process and enable them to generate detailed, flexible, and visually appealing reports within minutes.
How are they getting these efficient and accurate matter reports?
By using a financial matter management platform like Prosperoware Umbria.
How Prosperoware Umbria Helps
Prosperoware Umbria is the financial matter management platform for law firms. It enables partners, legal project management, and pricing departments to plan, alert, monitor, and report on matters, helping firms deliver matters within the scope and expected budget.
Umbria’s data-driven approach ensures that firms plan and deliver matters profitably, all while improving client value, transparency, and predictability.
Firms can create tailored, widget-based dashboards with custom KPIs to quickly report on matters, both internally and externally. Umbria enables firms to monitor internal and client-facing plans, so you can always report on the KPIs that matter most to your firm and client.
Not only that, but Umbria also allows firms to structure data the way it works best for them and their clients. This can be either by phase, office, department, period and more.
Umbria has more than 300 KPIs out of the box for reporting, with the capability to create additional custom indicators. These reports are structured to be visually appealing and intuitive, with widget-based dashboards that can be rearranged as the firm sees fit and according to client requests. These reports can be exported easily, so partners can forward or present them to clients.
The Umbria solution allows firms to keep partners on the front lines of client communication while still equipped with all the necessary matter budget information to quickly assure clients that their matter is being handled efficiently and with cost-effectiveness in mind.
Here are more ways of how Umbria can benefit your firm:
Flexible Planning: Plan matters accurately and in any way you want. Whether it’s hourly, by alternative fee arrangements, top-level budgeting, or break down by phase, task, activity, location/cost center, periodic, recurring amounts, and user named phases, to name a few. Utilize out-of-the-box templates and historical matters to create new plans. Plan ahead for multi-year matters with rate and cost increases and test different scenarios with What-If Analysis.
Monitoring & Alerting: Ensure matter stays within budget and time by setting up email alerts and notifications on anything from WIP, Billed, Billable, Collected, and Write-Offs. Schedule Threshold, Escalation, and Recurring Alerts with configurable templates.
Reporting & Dashboards: Tailor reports the way they best work for you through custom Widget-Dashboards. Mix and match widgets and visualizations such as grid, pie chart, stacked chart, etc. Choose from 300+ KPIs to report on or create your own. Export dashboards and reports via Excel, PDF, or PNG.
Decision Support Tools: Enable partners and pricing departments to make the best planning decisions by understanding multiple scenarios with What-If Analysis and Customizable KPIs. Forward forecast with simple discounts and alternative fee arrangements. View the impact of adjustments during the matter lifecycle with Write-Down and Burn Analysis.
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