From Legal Futures’ Associate Tikit [1].
Travers Smith was founded more than two centuries ago and has practised law in the City of London ever since. It now has lawyers working out of offices in London and Paris, divided into 17 specialist practice areas.
The firm fosters a climate of shared knowledge and goals, supported by a friendly, engaging team spirit. Its lawyers are focused on conducting business in the most effective way for clients. As part of its continual endeavour to provide an incomparable client experience, Travers Smith implemented a new NetDocuments cloud-based document management system (DMS). The technology refresh was carried out over a weekend. It was vital that lawyers, PAs and all administrative staff were ready to hit the ground running and use the new system from day one, not only to prevent negative impact on clients but also to deliver the benefits of improved service levels as quickly as possible. Travers Smith selected Tikit to supply training on NetDocuments. Tikit develops its own applications, complemented by deep partner relationships with other best-of-breed providers, including NetDocuments.
The solution
Travers Smith had an aggressive timeline to design and implement its new document management system. The firm needed to supplement its streamlined in-house training capacity with external support. It was important that the training provider had staff available to provide highly responsive support in person, at a moment’s notice, at the firm’s City of London offices. It considered a number of potential suppliers, but Tikit was best placed to offer high levels of support tailored to the local requirements of the London law firm.
Travers Smith had a longstanding relationship with Tikit and knew it could rely on Tikit staff to handle the challenging timescale. Users at Travers Smith were familiar with Tikit and knew and trusted the Tikit name, helping drive acceptance of training on the new solution. Additionally, as Tikit and NetDocuments work hand-in-hand in the UK, Travers Smith could rely on Tikit having an in-depth knowledge of the NetDocuments platform.
Together, Travers Smith and Tikit developed a training approach that would work for time-pressed lawyers within a demanding timescale. Tikit, in partnership with the Travers Smith IT Training team, created a training script. Tikit worked with Travers Smith to compress training for fee earners on the NetDocuments solution into hour-long demonstrations, delivered by Tikit staff to 50 or 60 lawyers at a time. to fit their busy schedules. PAs, business services, HR and accounts received 2.5 hours of training or shorter demos in dedicated training rooms hosted by Travers Smith trainers.
Tikit and Travers Smith faced the challenge that they were developing a training script and supporting materials before the design of the new system was completed. It was vital that Tikit was flexible enough to be able to change the training script right up to the last minute to reflect the evolving design of the system that the firm’s employees would be using.
Effective communications were key to this project. The legacy system was creaking and no longer fit for purpose, so the firm was able to build on user enthusiasm for a new and more effective solution. A dedicated web page communicated the progress of the project. Travers Smith hosted design workshops; departmental demos and demos in the café area to communicate with employees and get their feedback on the solution during the development process. These were updated and combined into a final compulsory training delivery just ahead of the big bang switchover to the new system. Travers Smith’s managing partner also helped promote this final
training push as key to continued high levels of client service.
The benefits
Travers Smith’s transition strategy was that everyone should be able to do the same things on Monday, with the new document management system, as they could on Friday with the old system. Only once people were happily working with client matters on the new DMS as comfortably as they were previously, would the firm roll out incremental enhancements, once employees were used to the system. Around 500 staff arrived on Monday morning to work on an entirely new document management system. By lunchtime the solution was working well for everyone.
Tikit sent in eleven consultants to “floor walk” for the first three days of the roll out to support staff using the new system in person. Seven consultants then delivered a further four days of floor walking. Tikit’s experienced consultants helped with all questions, not just those on NetDocuments, to deliver a great customer service to the firm. The high level of support from well-prepared Tikit consultants took the pressure off the firm’s own service desk, enabling internal service staff to continue to concentrate on routine enquiries. Tikit staff also took a proactive approach, handling enquiries directly where appropriate and flagging up enquiries that might mean small tweaks to the system would be required.
Tikit consultants combined high levels of interpersonal skills with technical knowledge, so that Travers Smith employees navigating anew system on Monday morning felt they were able to get immediate support from someone they trusted and who was on their side. During the training process ahead of the implementation, Travers Smith and Tikit had promoted the new platform’s customisation features. It was rewarding to see that, on day one, fee earners and support staff were already beginning to take the opportunity to customise the solution to work best for them.
The high level of training support that Tikit delivered has enabled Travers Smith to realise its ambitions of future proofing its document management and enhancing matter management for lawyers and PAs – with the ultimate aim of delivering the best possible client service. For more information about Tikit’s training services visit www.tikit.com/training-and-consultancy