As part of its innovation strategy, the firm needed to present its key financial data in a way that provided actionable insight for end users.
Steve Ferhad, Chief Technology Officer at Holman Webb explains, “We wanted to modernise our traditional financial reporting processes that involve pulling data from various systems, and move to a mature business intelligence strategy to drive faster, more informed decision making in the firm, and more efficient service to our clients.”
Magdalena Kosior-Molloy, Chief Operating and Financial Officer at Holman Webb comments, “Our previous processes meant that the finance team would spend most of their time producing financial reports. When COVID-19 hit, we needed a way to speed up the reporting and gain instant access to reliable financial data to react to financial trends in an agile way.”
“Even though we are in the beginning stages of rolling out, BigHand Business Intelligence has already helped us improve our forecasting by serving up the insight we need in real-time. It is a great tool to have in the current climate.”
Intuitive dashboards are core to the financial B.I. solution, giving users access to coherent information tailored to their specific needs. It works with any legal PMS system and provides users with visibility of key metrics such as time entry, work in progress, debtors and individual client and matter profitability to make smarter, profit-driven decisions.
Steve continues, “The most difficult part of any data project is being able to serve up the data in a consumable and meaningful way to different users. We reviewed the market and were impressed with the level of actionable data that the Business Intelligence dashboards could provide us given the complexity of our database, including our PMS solution from Aderant. The BigHand team really understood our needs and could work with our underlying dataset to achieve them.”
The innovative firm also looks to use BigHand Business Intelligence to drive cultural change. As Magda explains, “For the lawyers, it means they will have visibility of how they are performing, which will drive commercial acumen. They will be able to easily access budgeting information, see which clients might need their attention, or how they, or their practice group is performing at any time.”
“For the finance team, this will take their role in the firm from a reporting entity to a trusted business advisor. With access to the data and their newly freed-up time, they will be able to make recommendations to the board on how to drive improvements and profitability.”
Magda concludes, “As a firm we pride ourselves on delivering exceptional commercial results for our clients. With BigHand Business Intelligence we can drive continuous improvement with real-time access to the key financial data we need to make immediate, informed business decisions that are crucial to the future-proofing of the firm at this time.”
