Freeing your IT department

Implementing PMS technology to increase practice efficiency

Exeter-based Bevan Ashford decided it was time to ring the changes. IT manager Mike West outlines the firm’s technology investment in a new thin-client desktop computing platform, and explains the reasoning behind its move towards an integrated practice and case management solution.

Bevan Ashford in its present form was established in 1988 by the amalgamation of two long-established practices. Since that time the firm has grown organically and consolidated its commercial reputation to become the largest solicitor’s practice in the south-west with a network of seven offices serving clients locally, nationally and internationally. Bevan Ashford has 78 partners and over 600 staff. Our lawyers work in a departmental structure across the network, offering all clients access to many specialisations and increased expertise.

We have offices in London, Bristol and Birmingham that can be used for meetings if required. Our clients range from multi-national corporations and public sector bodies, to small businesses, partnerships and individuals. Bevan Ashford founded ADVOC, a network of similar independent commercial legal firms that now extends across cities in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, which enables Bevan Ashford to service the requirements of its clients internationally.

Upon joining Bevan Ashford in 1998, and having gained familiarity with the IT setup, it was clear to me that improvements could be made in a number of areas: the use of PCs for everyday work for example, was in the classic mould with software loaded onto networked PCs and documents being stored on a central file server. The main tool of work (MS Word) could be found in any one of three different versions depending upon which PC you checked, leading to internal compatibility problems. IT staff were constantly engaged in the seemingly perpetual task of fixing problems with Windows or re-installing applications, leaving little or no time to devote to actually developing systems that could generate revenue for the firm.

I was aware of the work that Citrix had carried out in modifying Windows NT under license to provide what was essentially a multi-user PC operating System (Citrix WinFrame – ‘Thin Client’), accessed through standard PCs with Citrix’s own client software, or through Windows Terminal Devices produced by the likes of Wyse. The theory was that the workstations actually sitting on users’ desks required little or no configuration, with all the hard work being carried out and locked down on a small group of multi-user PCs, or terminal servers. While there was nothing new in this, as it merely revisited the ground previously covered with mainframes/green-screen terminals, it did provide the potential to deliver Windows applications with low maintenance overheads and could also be a boon when rolling out new software or upgrades. The only problem was that at the time, the Citrix product was based upon Windows NT 3.51, which was relatively old technology.

When Microsoft released Windows Terminal Server, which was based upon Windows NT 4.0, it was decided that we would run small-scale trials to roll out MS Office 97 among other things, initially without Citrix’s new MetaFrame add-on. While this proved that Thin-Client technology had the potential to deliver savings, both in terms of ongoing maintenance and future capital investment, the base Microsoft product was fairly weak in terms of performance, flexibility and fault tolerance, and it was only the addition of the Citrix product and a second terminal server (to test fault tolerance and load-balancing), that led to the recommendation for full adoption of the system throughout. MS office 2000 had also been under test during this time, and this was selected as our new standard package for office productivity systems.

As the firm had a rolling three-year replacement programme for PCs, much of the existing stock was too new to simply throw away and replace with

Thin-Client devices. Therefore, it was decided that existing equipment would be utilised wherever possible, and the bulk of the new investment would be concentrated on servers and system software. The PCs were to be configured to give the ‘thinnest’ possible ‘client’, and were simply to be reconfigured to run MS-DOS and the Citrix DOS Client Software, which gave ample performance and a set-up time of around ten minutes per PC. Furthermore, it was decided that in order for the system to be truly

successful, it was essential that the internal IT support staff get their hands dirty. As such, the decision was taken to implement the entire project without the aid of any external consultancy, and live and learn from our own mistakes.

In parallel, key systems were subjected to scrutiny and it was clear that the existing practice management system was not delivering the functionality that the firm required in order to progress. Fee-earners and secretaries had little more than the ability to carry out routine account enquiries and draft bills, with the rendering of the actual bills themselves and the posting of time being very much in the domain of the cashiers department.

The server was plagued by performance problems, and we could not reach agreement with our supplier as to the source. In their opinion, the server was under-powered, despite the fact that it adhered to their specification. This meant that the introduction of online time recording was not practical without first investing something in the region of £50K on a new server.

We had long since recognised the potential benefits of a case management system that was integrated with practice management, namely the free-flow of information between the two, in terms of creating and modifying matters and financial postings. The disadvantages of not implementing an integrated system were also clear to see. Where tightly controlled administrative procedures would have to be employed to ensure consistency between the two, and in addition to perpetuating the need for these changes to take place centrally (as opposed to being made by fee-earners/secretaries), there was also the added expense of employing staff to do so.

Our existing practice management system supplier offered an integrated case management system, but this had previously been considered too unwieldy (in terms of being able to tailor case plans) and the apparent benefits of a single database were lost on us, as this simply brought us back to the need to invest in a new server.

As the needs of clients changed, so the requirement to implement case management gained impetus. The increasing prominence of the internet as a vehicle for business added a new dimension to what the firm would be expected to provide to some larger clients, in particular real-time access to their files and any documentation associated with them.

The practice management system was starting to fail on a frequent basis, and this, coupled with the renewed urgency to implement case management, triggered a full scale systems review, with the objective being to select a fully-integrated system with the capability to provide clients with internet access to their matters. As a part of the review, we also decided that the selected products should also incorporate the functionality required by the marketing department, who were at that time operating a ‘standalone’ database, which was subject to frequent cross-checking with the practice management system to ensure consistency.

To that end, an evaluation team was assembled consisting of the chief executive, accounts manager, cashiers and IT staff (including some with experience as fee-earners) and a specification was drawn-up to reflect desirable and required functionality. A detailed technical specification was also put together to take into account that the firm had largely become a Windows NT ‘shop’, and used Thin-Client technology extensively.

An evaluation process for case management had been completed some months before, with the result that SolCase was selected as our system of choice, but as our existing practice management supplier had made some improvements to their case management offering, it was decided that we would at least take another look. For practice management we had, among others, selected SOS practice manager as a potential companion product.

SOS were really a late contender in our evaluation process, being considered by some to be a supplier to the small practice market, and thus perceived to be incapable of servicing the needs of larger firms. The results of our evaluation surprised us, with their ‘practice manager’ product leading the way both in terms of the range of functionality available and ease-of-use from the cashiers’ and fee-earners’ perspectives. The level of integration with SolCase was also considered to be at least on a par with that of our existing supplier’s ‘single database’ offering.

We had agreed with SOS that practice manager would be installed as a matter of urgency due to the increasing frailty of our existing system, with the target date being set at two months from the signing of contracts. The IT department’s own trainers delivered an intensive course of training to over 250 fee-earners, secretaries and support staff in the Exeter, Plymouth, Taunton and Tiverton offices, augmented where necessary by SOS’s own trainers.

By this time, we had been running under a pure Windows Terminal Server/Citrix MetaFrame environment for over nine months, and this meant that the installation of the ‘client’ elements for both systems (that would normally be loaded onto a PC), was relatively pain-free. After a brief but thorough period of testing, the software was rolled out to all users in a single morning. All laptop users were given thin-client access to both SOS and SolCase via Citrix program neighbourhood, thus alleviating the need to maintain a number of standalone installations in addition to those already installed on the server farm.

The firm’s investment in thin-client technology has certainly paid off in terms of cutting maintenance overheads, with the number of technical support calls being reduced by something in the region of 75 per cent. The team responsible for the implementation completed the task on schedule and now has a level of expertise that is at least comparable to that of many external consultants, thus giving us a high degree of independence. The specification of PCs for new staff is no longer of concern to us, and so we are able to buy end-of-line equipment at extremely low prices to accommodate our needs. And of course, we have now removed ourselves from the PC-replacement tread-mill (to keep pace with technology), simply adding servers to the server farm if a performance boost is required.

The replacement of the practice management system has provided fee-earners and secretaries with unprecedented facilities at their disposal, and it is starting to have a major impact upon the throughput capacity of those departments where it is being used.

Electronic data conversion from our previous practice management system was well executed, and at the time of writing, SOS has now been running for over eight months and SolCase for four months. Despite the inevitable teething problems, both products have delivered what they promised.

Mike West is the IT manager at Bevan Ashford and can be contacted on 01823 285053, or m.west@bevan-ashford.com.