Originally published on March 15, 2011 in our free BigLaw newsletter. Instead of reading BigLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.
Think of a vehicle's instrument panel. With a car, the data points you need most are your current speed, engine revolutions per minute, engine temperature, and gasoline level. Other data exists, especially nowadays, but these are the essentials you really need to watch to stay out of trouble.
On the instrument panel of an airplane, however, you have a lot more going on — and more opportunities for getting yourself in big trouble fast. In addition to the same data points found on a car's dashboard, you also need to track attitude, altitude, rate of acceleration, compass bearing, rate of climb, etc.
Carry this analogy to its logical conclusion and you'll find yourself contemplating whether running a law firm without instant access to key metrics — in one location — is like trying to fly a plane with a collection of printed reports.
Houston, Our Dashboard Indicates That We Have a Problem
Okay, you get it. And because dashboards group related data collections together on the same Web page, trends and interrelationships become easier to discover. Consider this common example.
Looking at WIP (rolled up to the client and sorted by total unbilled time, fees, and costs), Aged AR (sorted by Total AR > 30/60/90/120+ days by client), and Client Funds Available in a single dashboard can give you a sense of just how much trouble that one big client could cause you.
Nothing in retainer? $1,250,000 of AR beyond 120 days? And $750,000 in unbilled time and costs? You'd better get that unbilled time and cost invoiced pronto. And you'd better light a fire under that billing attorney to get on the phone with the client.
What Dashboards Does Your Firm Need?
Let's start with three:
1. Billing Attorney/Collections Dashboard
Start with the scenario described above: AR aged, rolled up to the client level. Billers will only see their own time. But the Treasurer/Practice Group Chair/Collections Team/Executive Management will see everything rolled up across all timekeepers for a given client. WIP next, also aged. Finally, Client Funds Available.
2. Profitability Dashboard
Start with billing efficiency by Practice Group, client, client size, and attorney — then add leverage.
3. Performance Dashboard
Start with timekeeper calendars, both billable and non-billable, by working timekeeper and Practice Group.
Variations on these three themes will probably keep you busy developing, in all seriousness, for the next two years. For what it's worth, they'll also keep you on the Christmas list of the CFO, Collections Team, and Executive Management!
What Technology Should You Use to Create These Dashboards?
Any Web-based architecture in which your firm has already invested is probably a fine choice. But I propose SharePoint as an affordable framework easy for consumers to use and relatively easy for administrators to implement and maintain. That is a big reason why so many large law firms have already implemented SharePoint. But technology platform-wise, SharePoint alone is not quite enough to get started.
Several facilitating technologies can provide your firm with significant savings in development time and costs over creating your own Web parts from scratch (e.g., Visual Studio). Many law firms have implemented toolkit/connector technology solutions "on top of" SharePoint such as those offered by Handshake Software, XMLAW, and Bamboo Solutions. Using one of these toolkits will get you the fastest results.
What Steps Are Entailed in Creating a Dashboard?
Well, it depends upon how much existing content you can leverage (e.g., any stored procedures, views, or data warehouse tables that you have already created for more traditional reporting purposes). But for the most part you can break down the process into four steps (with some variation in the jargon used by the different solutions companies):
Step 1. Identify and Assemble the Data
Have a favorite collections or profitability report? Find the SQL stored procedure that it uses on the back-end. Don't have exactly the data warehouse tables you want? Create a view, or create a new table and schedule a SQL Agent job to automatically populate it with just the joined and/or calculated fields you want.
Step 2. Build a Class
It sounds very developer-ish. But really you just need to define a connection to a particular database (e.g., Elite, Aderant, or Rainmaker) within your toolkit/connector platform of choice.
Step 3. Build a Schema
A schema, in this usage, is a dataset within a particular Class wherein you define the data fields or columns in which you are interested. You'll need to know SQL, or enlist the aid of folks who do, and use the queries you developed in Step 1, above. But beyond a working knowledge of SQL, the process is pretty straightforward. In fact, many of these solutions will actually build the entire schema for you if you paste a known query into their schema-building function.
Step 4. Pick or Build a "Skin" to Present the Schema You Just Created
This step involves the "presentation layer" of the process. Essentially, you decide how to display the information (data grid, bar chart, line graph, pie chart, etc.). Another advantage of the toolkit technology solutions over developing something from scratch is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel when attempting to display your data. These solutions provide the mechanism for creating attractive charts and graphs, and will also enable all of the additional "must have" functions you will want (sorting, filtering, exporting to Word and Excel, etc.).
Conclusion
Dashboards don't have to cost your firm hundreds of thousands of dollars from Business Intelligence vendors. With SharePoint and one of a handful of solutions that you can implement essentially "off the shelf," you can build your own instrument panels to help your firm navigate its way to a more efficient and profitable future.
Written by Matthew Berg, Director of IT at Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C..
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