Succession Planning
The imminent departure of a prominent or well connected staff member brings forward a lot of risk to a firm. Upcoming retirement, maternity leave or secondments, mean the relationships held by a departing individual can easily dissolve if they are not successfully transitioned across to others within the firm.
Client Sense provides the ability to both identify the key relationships which may be impacted and then to measure the transition of those relationships to other chosen individuals within the firm.
With Client Sense you can be sure that the key relationships the firm needs to maintain are being managed with real-time and active monitoring.
Key Staff Departures
The only constant is change. It is inevitable that at some stage key staff members will need to move on, but that should not mean the relationships that person has formed need to move with them.
Client Sense is able to instantly provide information to assist the firm in retaining client, contact and referrer relationships.
Fixed Fee or Retained Clients
There are many measures a firm may use to assess the effort or investment it is making in fixed fee / retained client arrangements. The challenge is that usually the effort to assess the time spent per client on a regular basis negates the benefits.
Client Sense allows management to quickly and easily understand the volume of communication, the number of meetings and even the time of day (within or outside of business hours) that the firm is expending in communicating with a given client.
Staff Reviews and Lateral Hires
When looking to promote key staff members into more senior roles, financial contribution and Business Development efforts are key considerations. Client Sense assists Management and HR to identify Business Development activities as compared to others seeking a similar appointment.
There is a significant cultural and commercial risk to the firm when bringing in a senior role laterally from another firm. Client Sense allows Management and HR to identify where there may already be held relationships with internal staff. Knowledge of these relationships can be used to gain early insights ahead of formal discussions.
Mergers and Acquisitions
A firm's value is directly linked to the value of the relationships that it holds.
Client Sense assists in easily identifying and capturing the new contacts associated with the acquisition of a firm or group. This not only allows the firm to quickly and easily identify the acquired relationships, the firm can then act on those new opportunities much sooner than otherwise possible, maximising the value of the purchase.
In the event that not all staff remain with the firm post acquisition or merge, having understood and captured the new relationships and where they may overlap with existing staff, provides the firm with the best possible chance of retaining many of those introduced relationships.
Client Sense has been simply amazing! Not only did it take less than a day to implement, but the benefits for our Management, Marketing and IT teams were realised in just days.
Client Sense provides us with the visibility to easily manage our key client and referrer relationships, through a clean and simple interface.
Client Sense gives our Marketing and Business Development team visibility that was not readily available before, enabling us to support our lawyers with real-time information and in-depth insights.
The Client Sense solution has truly contributed to us being more informed and proactive around our BD and CX programs.
As soon as we installed Client Sense, we were able to unlock clear and succinct insights into our key client groups. This has provided our entire firm (especially Partners) with intel that strengthens relationships, and informs our business strategy. It’s also a game-changer for business development planning.
The firm has utilised Client Sense as an integral part of its Client Lifecycle Management platform for about 12 months. Whilst Client Sense has proved a useful business development tool, its real benefit comes in the visibility it provides across our entire client base. By providing us with a means of tracking and measuring the strength and depth of our client relationships, it allows us to be on the front foot when it comes to managing and improving client engagement – even highlighting opportunities for cross selling we may have otherwise missed.
Furthermore its ability to capture relationships not reflected in our database means our data remains current, is not reliant on manual entry and our teams can focus their time and energy on growth opportunities for the firm.
Our commercial teams receive the majority of their instructions through our referrer network. Staying in front of referrers and remaining front of mind is essential. This has highlighted for us the need to have a more structured and traceable process for managing key relationships. Client Sense has provided us with the necessary tools to manage and track those relationships.
Good relationship management is key to a firm’s success. With Client Sense we can monitor the strength of these relationships in real time, identifying growth trends and any elements of concern. This allows us to capitalise on opportunities and identify any threats quickly and easily. As well as developing our client and referrer relationships, we’ve also used Client Sense to develop out internal relationships, identifying common relationships across practice groups and create a real team approach to cross selling and relationship management. Using real time data gives us confidence we have the visibility of how these relationships are really going, and allows us to provide reports that give true insight into the strength of our relationships and opportunities available, as well as tracking the success of our targeting projects. And the best bit is, it is so easy to use!
The key to growth within a professional services firm is building long term productive relationships and ensuring you have the right tools to keep you on track with staying in contact; either through a CRM, your own calendar or using a tool like Client Sense. Remembering that people will buy from the people they trust and like, these tools will assist to stay front of mind and build and grow the relationships, when used properly an integrated into your daily activity.
One of the biggest hurdles with relationship mapping is the quality and frequency of data entry, but because Client Sense is automatically generated the reporting is up to date and accurate. It also doesn’t require any additional BD or lawyer support resource-wise.
With multiple partners and practice groups, it is impossible to always know exactly who knows who. Client Sense allows us to find information quickly and easily about the strength of relationships with have with clients and contacts of our firm, and pursue opportunities accordingly.
BDO are delighted to be clients of Client Sense. As BDO is a relationship-focused business, it is amazing to see the insights we can gain from our relationships in real-time. This happens magically, without manual administration, so the insights are accurate and instant. Most impressively, Client Sense provides more than just a historical view – by connecting our Relationship Partners with our key contacts, the system offers pro-active alerts into which relationship are changing, or need to be re-ignited.
Steve Tyndall, the CEO is hands-on, actively involved in client on boarding and training and always very open to new ideas so Client Sense can keep innovating.
