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Saturno Case Study
The Miller Nash Referral Search and Organizer
Portland, Seattle, Vancouver
www.MillerNash.com
How Miller Nash uses Saturno WebBack to create a custom marketing systems
Miller Nash is one of the Pacific Northwest's largest multi-service law firms, and serves clients locally and throughout the world from its offices in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle and Vancouver, Washington. www.MillerNash.com
Like most large firms, Miller Nash maintains relationships with attorneys at firms around the world. The firm regularly refers business to other law firms when appropriate, and receives referrals from those firms in turn. For the Miller Nash marketing department, managing these relationships requires diligence, and measuring the value of a specific partner relationship is often difficult.
Miller Nash chose to create a custom application to address 3 key referral concerns:
1. When employees need to refer a client to legal professionals outside of the firm, how can they quickly and easily find the best outside resource?
2. How will the marketing department keep track of outgoing and incoming referrals, both quantity and quality?
3. How can the marketing department easily view information and reports regarding referrals and attorney or partner relationships?
Saturno worked with Miller Nash to achieve these goals by reworking existing firm technology. A custom application was built using the WebBack content management system, already installed at the firm. Because existing technology was reused, the new application was built quickly and inexpensively.
Miller Nash needed a way for employees to easily and quickly locate an attorney or law firm to fulfill special client requests. The employee would also need to be able to view detailed information about the attorney or firm, as well as the history of their relationship with Miller Nash.
To accommodate this need, Saturno reused WebBack's powerful search components in Miller Nash's new referral organizer. When a client asks for a referral to an attorney in another state, or in a specialty practice, Miller Nash employees can search a database of possibilities, using only their Web browser.
To search for a firm or attorney, the employee simply selects a few search options (such as State, Practice Area, etc.) and types in a keyword or phrase to find relevant matches. Search results are presented in a list, in Web page form, along with links to relevant information about the attorneys or firms, such as biographies or firm profiles.
Once the employee finds the appropriate attorney/client match, the attorney information can be sent to the client directly from the browser, in the form of a personalized email. If the client prefers a phone call, the Miller Nash employee can print or save the contact information on their screen.
Measuring the value of relationships and alliances requires good record-keeping. But, convincing attorneys and others at the firm to record every referral going out the door is difficult, at best.
To address this problem, record-keeping activities were built into the process of referring itself. Miller Nash is assured that each search/referral is automatically recorded, because the record-keeping behavior is required. While employees are free to search the partner records and view resumes and profiles, the actual contact information for each partner-attorney is withheld until the employee decides to make the referral. At this point, the referral application records the incident so that marketing can follow up later on, and serves the relevant contact information to the employee.
But quantity is not the only measure of a relationship's value - quality must also be measured. To address this need, the referral organizer uses WebBack's browser-based word processing editor, which allows attorneys and marketers to record notes about each attorney or firm in their system. This note information is available to other Miller Nash employees and is helpful in making appropriate selections or in judging the value of a specific relationship.
Good record-keeping enables the marketer to measure value when they aggregate and analyze data. However, with a busy schedule, aggregating and organizing this information is a task often left aside. Miller Nash needed a fast and simple way to view referral reports and statistics, on demand.
To address this issue, WebBack's reporting modules were reused. Because referral incidents are recorded automatically, the referral organizer can fetch information and create reports at any moment. Miller Nash marketers can view outgoing referrals, the employees who offered the referrals, the clients receiving the referrals, and the status of acceptance. Additional reporting can easily be achieved using information stored in the system, and records can be exported to Excel spreadsheets on demand.
Miller Nash increases efficiency by locating problems, defining needs, and using technology to automate repetitive business processes. Built on the foundation of the WebBack content management system, the referral organizer is just one example of a custom application that was developed quickly, and at low cost. This modular approach to development enables firms to respond to needs rapidly by molding their software systems to fit unique business processes.
John Naramore
Client Services Advocate
Saturno Design LLC
John@SaturnoDesign.com
Toll free 1-877-850-1830
Saturno WebBack product page
Download the WebBack product brochure (PDF)
Schedule an online WebBack demonstration
MillerNash.com Q & A
Interview with Aaron Douglas, Client Services Director of Miller Nash LLP
Press Release
MillerNash.com Receives LMA 'First Place' Award and High Praise for Web Site
MillerNash.com is #1 in the "Nifty Fifty"
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