Breaking Through the Roadblocks of a New ELM Implementation eBook

8
ROADBLOCKS
TO A NEW ELM
IMPLEMENTATION
(AND HOW TO BREAK THROUGH THEM)

Selecting and implementing
enterprise software can be a stressful experience
for non-technical business users. This is as true
for Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) software
as for any other business productivity platform.
Lawyers, paralegals and administrators may
be drafted into an initiative to adopt a new or
replacement matter management and billing
system — not because they are technologists, but
because they are the best sources to articulate the
business requirements of the law department.
The stakes may seem high, especially if the project’s
sponsor is the General Counsel, or someone close
to the GC. This will be daunting for project team
members, especially if the department has had
experience with failed software adoption. Adoption
failures rarely are attributed to the software itself;
they tend to happen because design choices made
early on align poorly with the users’ functional
and usability requirements, or because the project
team fails to grasp the end-users’ needs and “pain
points.” Thus, user excitement about the new
solution never materializes, leading to low adoption
rates and a failure to achieve return on investment.
Each of the following eight sections describes
a common adoption roadblock. Our intent
is to enable you to anticipate, recognize
and head off these pitfalls before they
become issues in your ELM adoption.

PUTTING THE CART
BEFORE THE HORSE.
1

BEST PRACTICE:
NEVER ALLOW
A RANDOM
GO-LIVE DATE
TO DRIVE YOUR
PROJECT.
One project variable that has the
earliest, strongest potential to derail adoption
is the targeted delivery date. For many projects,
this date is arbitrary… and graven in stone.
Sit down and understand what the project is and
what your requirements for the system are, come
up with a project plan, and let reality drive your
go-live date. If this project must synchronize with
an executive cost-cutting exercise, it is essential
to understand the expectations for Legal, and
how they affect the design of the project.
You may go into a project and learn that you
only have X dollars to spend in the current fiscal
year — so the go-live date has to be 12/31.
Maybe there is a divestiture going on, and the
companies need to be split by a certain date.
Your implementation partner is in a position to
advise you as to why a particular go-live date
may or may not be beneficial to the project.

Consider a phased approach,
where the first phase is implementation of e-billing,
or some other specific functionality, allowing you to
shut down that segment of the previous solution.
You may have an opportunity to negotiate with
the legacy vendor to hang on for a month or
two past the date of maintenance expiration.
Your implementation partner can help define
requirements, but much is going to depend on
the initial discovery phase. The project team will
talk to management, end-users, and any other
stakeholders, to get an understanding of how they
do their work day-to-day. Ultimately, you want to
understand what each type of user wants to get
out of the system. There are some standardized
requirements the vendor can provide in advance.
One thing that would drive a
particular date would be
avoidance of the cost of the old
system — the annual maintenance
fee — for another year.
That is a legitimate issue. While
there may be a cost saving in
not paying two sets of maintenance
fees, if you ignore the fact that it
is going to take you six months to
develop your requirements and
implement the system, you may
have a much higher cost two years
down the road when you need to
replace the new system because
it doesn’t meet the requirements
or isn’t generally accepted.
A
Q

What about requirements for
use in selecting the vendor in
the first place?
Before you go to vendor
selection, you need to have a
list of high-level requirements — not
the detailed requirements that you
would use to define and configure
system, but you do need to know, for
example, that you are going to need
to do international invoices, be able to
track contracts in the system, and so
on. You need to have your high-level
requirements before sitting down to talk
to each vendor about how their product
would handle your needs. Sometimes,
your implementation partner can help to
gather those high-level requirements.
BEST PRACTICE:
UNDERSTAND
AND PLAN FOR
ALL INPUTS —
INTERNAL AND
EXTERNAL.:
A
Q

WHO’S STEERING
THE BOAT?
2

Developing a communication plan and
carrying that through from the beginning to
the end is key to the success of the project.
A crucial
consideration
is leadership.
An obvious red flag for the project is that its
executive champion — the GC, the AGC or another
executive stakeholder — is not articulating the
strategy for the implementation, or its goals.
Every project should have a steering committee.
One of its most important controls is a monthly
check-in with each of the senior stakeholders
in the project. The committee should update
them and cross-reference with the goals that
the project leadership originally set out, and
ensure that the notes from these updates
are disseminated to the entire team.
Often, the role of the project sponsor is that of a
tiebreaker. When individuals in the group disagree
with one another, the leadership has an important
opportunity to nudge the project in the direction
that best aligns with the objectives. A timely
executive intervention can ensure that you don’t
have an alienated user base before you go live.

Users need to express original thinking about
the functionality of the system and not be
bound by the features they are used to. It’s an
old cliché… but prepare your team to think
outside the box. Also, prepare them for a
certain amount of Process Reengineering.
Get the message out early that processes are
expected to change, and that change is the
rationale for the project — not a consequence of it.
Plan to talk about what you’re doing and
what you want to stop doing; how your industry
peers are doing the same sorts of things; what the
best practices are; and what system functionality is
available. Remember, the goal is to get out of the
new system what was missing from the legacy tool.
Consider your pain points. They don’t have to
come from the system. Your most obvious concern
today could be the need to cut costs, or the fact
that you have no idea what you are spending
to maintain your current process — or the fact
that it’s taking 120 days to process an invoice.
A good question to start with is:
“What is wrong or missing from our current
process, and what is right today?”
Keep an open mind
and accept change.

DON’T BITE OFF MORE
THAN YOU CAN CHEW.
4

The biggest favor
you can do your team and the end-users
for whom you are designing your matter
management solution is to keep it simple.
Overcomplicating the design by building in
fields or data that you don’t report on and
use in your process will drive end-users, and
acceptance, away. Brainstorming is great,
but when it comes down to actually defining
requirements, you need to apply filters.
Often, in managing a complex implementation
project, the best approach is a phased approach.
ELM products are engineered for long life. You
will be able to add functionality as your Legal
department grows and changes, or if you
merge or divest. Tailoring the system requires
a calm, forward thinking approach, anticipating
the addition of functionality in the future.
The goals you have for the system today
may not be the same as the goals you have
three years from now. Our experience is that
this is a 10 year decision. Legal department
processes are dynamic and should follow the
development of law department operations as
they change through the years. Your business
processes are going to be adapted over the
years — so why shouldn’t your system?
We have a saying:
“Not perfectly, but improvingly.”

One of my concerns is that the
implementation process will take
longer because you are “keeping it simple”
and updating the design continuously.
Ironically, the opposite may
be true. When programmers develop
new software, you might imagine them
starting with an elaborate, end to end plan
for building the program, testing it, and
packaging it for deployment to users, over
many months. But most software today is
built up gradually, one piece of functionality
at a time. Each element of the application
is built, tested, and deployed to users who
incorporate it into their work processes in
small, frequent iterations. Very complex
applications can be built much more quickly
and with fewer errors through this “agile”
approach than through the more traditional
methodology. So, continuous updating
turns out to be a very efficient strategy.
Build the functionality that you
need today, right away.
It’s a little bit more difficult to phase the project
when you’re moving from an existing system,
and the baseline functionality that you are
looking for is extensive because you are not
starting from scratch. On the other hand, it
probably makes sense at the beginning to get
rid of functionality that isn’t being used in your
legacy system. That’s a win — people hate
extraneous fields and forms that they don’t use.
It is different when you’re moving from a
manual process, and automating things
you have done by hand. It is very easy to
overcomplicate and overwhelm people
by tackling too much functionality in the
first iteration. Remember: This isn’t
your last chance to get it right!
Q
A

We are going from one electronic
system to another, but billing
has been a paper process. So we have
intentionally delayed implementation of
an e-billing module. What is a reasonable
amount of time to delay that phase?
Once you get beyond six months,
entering into a new phase is almost
like beginning an entirely new project.
You want to give people enough time to
breathe and to get used to using the new
system. The matter management and
e-billing systems are intertwined, and the
3 to 6 months you spend using the matter
management system will actually help in
the design of the e-billing component.
So 3 to 6 months is a good interval.
“There are best
practices that
apply broadly
across industries,
but there will be
elements that
apply uniquely
to your legal
team. Expect a
certain amount of
trial and error.”
Q
A

TALK.TALK.TALK.
LISTEN.LISTEN.LISTEN.
5

INTERNALLY...
Ensure that the leadership roles
on the project team are held
by individuals who genuinely
influence their peers. Select
subject matter experts with the
knowledge and authority to give
input into design. They need
to be trusted advisors with the
authority to make decisions.
EXTERNALLY…
Find a partner, whether it’s a
vendor or a consultant, that you
trust — that has led this type of
project multiple times before and
will bring lessons learned to the
table. Make sure that the partner
is listening also. Sometimes the
vendor comes in to implement
a project, and there are multiple
voices influencing the design.
As leaders, you need to be sure
that your vendor is listening
and taking direction from
authoritative sources and not
being distracted by side chatter.
Constant, effective
communication is
never more important
than in a software
adoption project. It is
not simply a matter of
using the right words,
or the right media
for collaboration.
The communication
must flow from
trusted sources.

If this project is going to be a success
(and reflect well on you), you need to pick the
right product and the right team to implement
it. No one ELM package is perfect for every law
department. One of the intangibles is finding
a partner that you trust. It matters a great
deal, because you are going to have to be
comfortable with this vendor for 10 years. That’s
the hope — that this is a 10-year partnership.
Your vendor selection process should begin with
lots of thoughtful questions, going well beyond
the features of the software or its price tag.
Among the things you will want to evaluate are:
• The vendor’s credentials, its bona fides
as a business, and its client list;
• Its history of success at your scale of operations;
• Its fee structure (beyond the software
license and maintenance);
• Performance indicators and
service level agreements;
• The training the vendor will commit to; and
• Its policy on future upgrades.
You will be contacting vendor references. Think
about the questions you want to ask them, and
dig deep. At least, you need to find out what their
experience has been with customer support.
The best metric for the success of
your project may be that the product
and the vendor were a good fit for
your culture, and that the people
who participated in it saw it as a
fun and rewarding experience.

YOU OWN IT.
SO OWN IT.
7

The relationship you establish
with the vendor doesn’t end with the software
installation. ELM implementation will involve an
extensive design and configuration process, ending
with User Acceptance Testing. UAT is not just a
contract formality. You and the vendor need to
recognize it as make-or-break for the project.
There is a risk that UAT may be compressed if the
project has a tight go-live deadline. But UAT is one
area where you cannot afford to cut corners. If you
go live with a system that has bad data, non-working
business rules or workflows that break down, the end-
users immediately conclude that you have a defective
product, and the project is off to a troubled start.
The vendor will provide test cases designed
to prove that the system is meeting the
requirements that you defined, and your team
probably will have defined its own test cases.
When you assign individuals to a team to evaluate
and adopt new software, you are taking them away
from their original jobs. It is difficult to secure the
commitment of their time, especially during design
BEST PRACTICE
SELECT A
SYSTEM
ADMINISTRATOR
FOR THE ELM
SYSTEM, FROM
THE START OF
THE PROJECT.

How long do you anticipate
it takes to train an individual
on the ELM system so he or she
can be an effective user?
Each vendor may have a different
take on this. Bridgeway will
provide different types of training.
There is Developer Training, intended
for the individuals who will maintain
the system and make changes to it at
the front end of the project. That is
distinct from Administrator Training
for the individual who will be making
ongoing modifications, administering
users and so on. In addition, we provide
power user and end-user training, as
close to the go live date as possible.
For the core team, we offer two one-
day training sessions, and then there is
a three day session for the developers.
meetings, because the individuals with the best
perspective on the problem you are trying to
solve and the authority to make design decisions
are among your department’s busiest people.
You will need them to lend their time and
perspective to future upgrades and extensions
of functionality. It is imperative that you commit
the right resources to the project in the first place
– people who will pull their weight, ask the right
questions and take their role in UAT seriously.
It is critical that the system have an individual owner
and custodian when the vendor leaves —
an individual who knows what decisions were made
and why they were made and how to help the team
grow the product to address your future needs.
Even if everything else about the project goes well, if
you don’t have the appropriate person administering
the system, this can be your final roadblock. It needs
to be someone who can step into the vendor’s shoes
when the vendor team leaves, who knows what
to do when issues come up post-implementation,
and who is well-positioned to nurture the
system through all the successive changes your
department will want to make in the future.
Q
A

8
HELP! I’M YOUR DATA
AND I CAN’T GET OUT.

During the very first meeting, expect to
bring along copies of your current reports
— the reports your General Counsel expects;
and the reports you expect to run on a
daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis.
Really thinking about what will drive decision-
making in your business will help in the
system’s design, and getting to that data is
really what having a matter management
system is all about. Clearly, any data that is
now on paper in file cabinets or in boxes in
an attorney’s office will have to be digitized
and find its way into the system to enable
your organization to get value from it.
It is crucial to understand your reporting
before you even begin to discuss what
the ELM system will look like, because if
the system cannot produce those reports,
it is a failure as soon as you go live.
One of our problems is that
our current system is so restricted
that it has limited our ability to develop
our reporting, and we’re in a position
of not knowing what we don’t know.
Your vendor can provide a list of typical
reports. In fact, one of the first things
we will offer as implementation partners is
feedback on the reporting you show us, and
if we don’t see data we would expect to
see, it is part of our job to push back and
ask for those kinds of reports. The system
will come with a standard set of reports, and
we will advise based on the industry you
are in what is typical for that industry – for
example, if you are in automotive, you
will need tread reports, or if you have
personal injury cases you will have Medicare
or Medicaid reporting, or you may have
reporting for the Patent and Trademark
Office if you are an IP-heavy operation.
The system is only as
good as the data that
comes out of it.
Q
A

Ensure that those articulating the
project’s objectives are trusted
and influential people.
Vet your vendor carefully —
remember that the ultimate goal
is a 10-year partnership.
Whatever compromises you must make
to meet your deadline, do not cut
corners on User Acceptance Testing.
Remember that the success of your
project depends on the system’s ability
to meet your reporting needs.
Plan effectively and understand the
rationale behind the go-live date
you impose on your project.
Keep the project’s executive champion
actively engaged and communicating
regularly with the team.
Reinforce original thinking among the
project team about both the system design
and the business process going forward.
Keep the system design simple
and roll out functionality in phases.
Selecting and implementing ELM software for your law department is a
challenge. But it does not have to overwhelm your project team if you
address these eight potential stumbling blocks early and proactively:
1 5
6
7
8
2
3
4

Known throughout the corporate and government
legal management market space as the most
highly recommended provider of enterprise legal
management solutions for high-performing legal
departments, Bridgeway Software continues its
25-year journey with one primary focus—the
success of our clients. This recognition comes
not from us but from our clients, and is the
most credible, objective and relevant measure
of performance based on actual results.
www.bridge-way.com
Download the complimentary
whitepaper for an expanded
read on this topic.

Breaking Through the Roadblocks of a New ELM Implementation eBook

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