Why it’s the perfect time to implement a platform solution

The strategic approach pays off

One of the few good things about lockdown is the way it’s encouraged us to tackle overdue domestic chores. Hey, even if that just meant tidying our sock drawer, we feel better as a result.

So why not take this opportunity to do something similar in your legal practise? I don’t mean the urgent steps needed to enable secure remote working – all good teams will have done this already – but establishing a proper infrastructure for developing and implementing new ways of working into the future. Any lull in your usual workload as clients postpone decisions gives you the bandwidth to take the kind of strategic decision that tends to get shoved aside in normal times.

One opportunity is to take a long-term approach to developing technology solutions: specifically, to move from a point-to-point strategy to a platform.

Let me explain. In the legal profession over the last few years we have implemented a lot of new technology. But generally, we’ve done this solution-by-solution, procuring on an ad-hoc basis to tackle discrete problems: automating the NDA process, for example.

For legal departments under constant pressure, this may be the only way. But point-to-point comes with costs. Procuring a solution to tackle a specific need invariably solves only a small piece of a very complex puzzle. And there is no guarantee that your solution will work with other parts of the puzzle. You’ve applied a band-aid: you’re OK until the next problem shows up.

In the old analogy, you are giving your users a fish (in reality often four or five expensive fish) rather than teaching them to fish.

With a platform approach, by contrast you don’t procure the specific solution but rather a toolkit for developing solutions for use-cases into the future.

The main advantages are:

1: Flexibility. The ability to customize and tailor to your professional requirements, rather than the other way around. With point-to-point, you are often locked into a “one size fits all” solution, unable to get the exact fit for your business and settling for something that is close enough. With platform, you have the flexibility to get the solution exactly as you need it and how your business works, with the ability to change as needed.

2: Scalability. The ability to grow. Platform solutions grow and scale with you seamlessly. This drives a much higher return on investment and value over point solutions as enterprises grow.

3: Inter-departmental functionality. The platform will work across the enterprise, ensuring solutions procured by legal, HR, finance will integrate reliably into the future. You know everything’s going to play nice.

And last but not least…

4: The total costs will be lower than buying separate product licenses.

As I said at the outset, now is the perfect time to get the house in order. If your employee workload is down, now is the time to implement new solutions and train staff. To make the process even easier, Neota Logic is offering a free 30-day trial of Canvas so you can be ready for when normal business resumes – no doubt with an additional workload of resulting from the backlog of matters placed on hold.

The payback will be a lot greater than tidying that sock drawer.