Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP

Law Firm Expedites Report Creation for Better Budgeting and Decision Making

Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP, which employs more than 800 lawyers and professionals in 15 offices worldwide, had outgrown the labor-intensive ways in which it created budgets and monitored the firm’s performance. To help ensure continued growth and profitability, the firm turned to The Glenture Group, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, to help it create budget-planning and key performance indicator (KPI) systems based on Microsoft Business Intelligence. Now, budget reports are created 10 times faster than before, and KPI data is displayed in real time rather than monthly, with instant drill-down capability to explore details. With this greater speed and analysis capability, management is spending less time administering data, and more time analyzing information to make better decisions for the firm and its clients—at a time when law firms are facing increased pressure on profits.

Situation

Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP, like other successful law firms, runs itself like a business. The firm has grown to include more than 800 lawyers and other professionals in 15 offices in the United States and Europe, and it has a global reach throughout the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East. Sonnen-schein serves the legal and public interest needs of many of the world's best-known and most admired businesses, nonprofits, and individuals.

Serving the needs of those organizations has become increasingly challenging in recent years. The legal field is increasingly competitive, requiring Sonnenschein to make sure it charges rates that will enable it to maintain its client base as well as its profitability. Client needs are growing and changing more quickly than ever before, requiring the firm to be prepared with the right attorneys in the right offices and right practice areas—which may require growing or closing offices or practice areas to parallel those changing client needs. Nowadays, supporting the firm’s future requires not just “organic” growth from within, but also the acquisition of other law firms, which can be concluded only after addressing a range of business and financial considerations.

We have better budget numbers, and we have them earlier in the process. That enables us to work more productively to make the best decisions for the firm, and to make them when they can do the most good. Andrew Jurczyk CIO, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP

Sonnenschein senior management wanted to be sure it was making the best business and financial decisions possible, based on current data that is crucial to its business, and that the firm’s annual budget—its financial blueprint for the year—supported its business goals. “Financial analysis isn’t just another business function,” says Andrew Jurczyk, Chief Information Officer, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP. “It’s a strategic tool that we need in order to be as strategic in our decision-making process as our clients are in theirs.” That meant updating a financial planning and analysis process that had served the firm well when Sonnenschein was smaller, but that the firm had now outgrown.

The firm’s budgeting tool was Hyperion, which it had used for 10 years. To develop budget submissions, each manager had to have a copy of the Hyperion software on his or her computer. Budget submissions from each practice area, department, or office were stored as stand-alone files. Because the software lacked automated tracking capability, the senior managers responsible for the overall budget had to track the submissions from each practice or office manager on their own, and create their own follow-up messages in e-mail to keep the process moving. The budget process would start each summer, and the back-and-forth volley of submissions and revisions would continue until a final budget was confirmed the following January. All budget submissions had to be consolidated into the overall budget by hand. The software allowed for 20 budget submissions, but Sonnenschein had 30 budget areas, so some users were required to share their budget files.

The annual budget is far from being the only financial documentation on which Sonnenschein relies. The firm’s management continually reviews key performance indicators (KPIs) such as net income, profits per capital partner, exports (bringing in additional practice areas to support a client), and billings. These KPIs were generated monthly from a Thomson Elite system. The process was time consuming—involving about 20 personnel hours per month to enter data and generate reports—and was subject to error because it required the rekeying of data.

The monthly KPI reports were printed and distributed to the firm’s management. Beyond the time-consuming nature of distributing paper reports—and redistributing misplaced copies—the finance department also had to field questions from managers. Why were income numbers up? What was contributing to a decline in a particular office or practice? Finance department members then had to go back and dig through the data to provide these answers.

Solution

To address these concerns, Sonnenschein first developed a list of business goals for a new finance and analysis solution. The solution would need to provide the information that the firm needed to plan and manage its business efficiently and effectively, on demand, and in an easily understood format. Consistent with this goal, the firm also sought a solution that would relieve the finance department of the burden of responding to requests for additional data, while ensuring that senior management, as well as office and practice area management, received all the data they needed, whenever they needed it. “We wanted to shift our efforts from administering the solution to interpreting and acting on the data from the solution,” says Jim Dauer, Manager of Treasury and Financial Planning for Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP.

To do so, the firm considered a range of solutions, including off-the-shelf packages from Oracle and others, as well as a custom solution. The off-the-shelf solutions failed to meet all of the firm’s needs, while a custom solution would cost too much and take too long to develop to warrant the investment, according to Dauer.

Sonnenschein then turned to The Glenture Group, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, to help it determine the technology platform for its new solution, and to develop the key elements, including a data warehouse, analysis and reporting tools, and an intranet portal through which the firm’s managers could access and work with financial and business KPI information.

Financial analysis isn’t just another business function. It’s a strategic tool that we need. Andrew Jurczyk CIO, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP

The solution that Glenture helped Sonnenschein to create includes two systems: a new budget-planning system, and a KPI display and analysis system. The solution makes broad use of Microsoft Business Intelligence technologies, including Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 data management software, Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, and the Microsoft Office Excel® 2003 spreadsheet program.

The budget-planning system is an Office Business Application; that is, an application that is accessed and used through familiar Microsoft Office programs. Managers who are responsible for submitting budget requests, or for reviewing and evaluating those requests, use the solution by opening the Microsoft Office Excel program from the Sonnenschein intranet. The Excel menu bar includes a SharePoint menu item. Clicking that menu item gives the user access to the range of budget-planning functions associated with the system, such as launching a budget assignment; accessing templates to complete a budget assignment; or viewing budget reports by month, office, or practice group.

Managers, for example, can enter proposed expense budgets into an Office Excel worksheet, and then senior management can tap Office SharePoint Server to analyze the various budget submissions based on custom algorithms and create an overall proposed budget for the firm, which can be viewed in detailed reports. When revisions are requested, managers can revise and resubmit their budget proposals in Office Excel to be reprocessed by Office SharePoint Server. When the budget is approved, it is integrated into the firm’s broader financial database.

The KPI display and analysis system takes advantage of the same Office SharePoint Server technology, but is accessed through the firm’s intranet portal, rather than through Office Excel. Available KPIs include data on net profit, profit per capital partner, billings by originating attorney, and exports. The KPI data is displayed through online dashboards and scorecards, and users can click them to reveal libraries of reports containing the data from which the dashboards and scorecards are derived.

The firm’s leadership determines which portions of the data each attorney is able to access, based on an attorney’s role in the firm as defined by the attorney’s Active Directory® services profile. The Chairman, Policy and Planning Committee members, and Practice Group Leaders have full access to the KPIs and the drill-down data behind them, while Office Managing Partners may have access only to data on their own offices.

Benefits

The firm’s new budget-planning and KPI systems, which take advantage of Microsoft Business Intelligence, were faster and easier to deploy than alternatives, and have increased the firm’s return on investment (ROI) in its existing technology. The solution delivers more accurate and detailed information, more quickly, to those who need it, and enables better decision making and greater client satisfaction.

Easier Deployment, Management Increase Return on Investment

In addition to doing a better job of meeting the firm’s business intelligence requirements, the Microsoft Business Intelligence technology was also easier and more cost effective to deploy and manage, according to Jurczyk.

We wanted to shift our efforts from administering the solution to interpreting and acting on the data from the solution. Jim Dauer Manager of Treasury and Financial Planning, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP

“We developed the business intelligence solution based on the technology that was already the foundation for our firm’s infrastructure, which brought us tremendous benefits,” Jurczyk says. “By choosing Microsoft, we extended the return on our existing infrastructure investment by making greater use of technologies such as SQL Server and Office SharePoint Server that we already have in place. We didn’t have to train developers or users on the technologies with which they were already familiar.”

The attorneys and managers, for example, already used Office Excel every day, making it an ideal interface for the business intelligence solution, and only minimal training was needed on complementing technologies such as Office SharePoint Server. The firm also gains the financial and operational benefits of having only one solution to maintain, rather than having to staff for and maintain multiple platforms.

Jurczyk also credits The Glenture Group, as well as the collaboration among Glenture, Sonnenschein, and Microsoft, for contributing to the effective design and deployment of the solution. “In Glenture, we have a provider with real knowledge of business intelligence solutions and our industry,” he says. “And Glenture’s close working relationship with Microsoft ensured that when we had highly unusual needs—for example, in the areas of communications and security—we were able to get the right answers we needed right away. Glenture was also instrumental in helping to ensure that our Kerberos authentication would work with Office SharePoint Server business intelligence capabilities in our thin-client environment.”

Budget Reports Created Faster, for Better Decision Making

Because the firm’s new budget-planning process makes it easier for office and practice managers to complete their budget submission tasks and for budget managers to track the status of submissions, the entire budget-creation process is faster and more effective, says Dauer. He estimates that budget reports are created in just 10 percent of the time that it took a year before, shaving days off the time it takes to run each proposed budget revision. The firm produces 20 percent more budget reports and revisions, enabling it to consider a broader range of budget options, and does so in less time than the previous process took. The firm can also view budget details and “what if” scenarios not previously available.

The firm just completed its first budget development cycle using the Microsoft Business Intelligence technology. It still ran the process from its traditional summer-to-January cycle, but this time, with a difference: Because the process was easier, more automated, and more efficient, everyone involved in the process could spend less time on the administration of the budget system and more time analyzing and optimizing the proposed budget. For example, they could take more time to consider the impact of increasing billing rates, decreasing billable hours, or adding or reducing the number of attorneys in a given office or practice area.

“We have better budget numbers, and we have them earlier in the process,” says Jurczyk. “That enables us to work more productively to make the best decisions for the firm, and to make them when they can do the most good.”

For example, Dauer points to the ability to propose and set billable rates far more quickly than before. “We need to generate this information more quickly because our key clients need it more quickly,” he says. “By sharing billable rates with clients months earlier than we could before, we enable those clients to expedite their own planning processes. Our clients are very pleased with this enhanced service—and our attorneys and managers, of course, are pleased by the increased client satisfaction.”

KPI Information Delivered in Real Time, Saving 20 Hours Per Month

By choosing Microsoft, we extended the return on our existing infrastructure investment by making greater use of technologies such as SQL Server and Office SharePoint Server that we already have in place. Andy Jurczyk CIO, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP

The KPI reporting and analysis system similarly delivers more information to the firm’s managers, and does so more quickly than the old, manual, paper-based system. While the former system delivered monthly information that was often provided too late to be the basis for constructive decision making, the new solution provides real-time information, making it possible for management to respond to changing conditions as they occur. For example, if a given practice area is running over its projected budget or under projected revenues, management now can address the situation weeks earlier than it could before.

The new solution is also more effective for the finance department. It saves up to 20 personnel hours per month that were previously devoted to creating KPI report information, according to Bob Weigel, Director of Financial Reporting and Analysis, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. “Instead of taking the time to create each of 30 KPI reports for our users, those users can just go to the dashboards to get the information they want,” he says.

“And, when they have questions about their performance, they can drill down on the data to understand the numbers immediately, rather than asking us to run a custom report, which might take a day or more to reach them,” Weigel adds. “We used to be asked for custom reports all the time. Now, we can focus on more value-added activity, and our users get their detailed information more quickly. It’s a win-win situation.”

Microsoft Business Intelligence
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