Legal Technology Journal

Law firm realises ROI of 210%, a return of £2.89 million, from CRM project; InterAction unveils ROI calculator for firms
 
London, 15 December 2008 - LexisNexis today announced the findings of an independent study commissioned by LexisNexis and conducted by Forrester Consulting, revealing that InterAction, its customer relationship management solution, delivers return on investment (ROI), reduces operational costs, improves business development processes, and reduces the level of effort that fee-earners need to make to identify business relationships.

A UK law firm has realised a ROI of 210% and a net present value return of £2.89 million on its investment in InterAction. Based on Forrester's highly regarded Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) methodology, these findings illustrate the positive financial impact of implementing a firm-wide CRM application for the law firm interviewed. The findings are based on a five year ROI model to calculate costs and benefits of investing in InterAction.

To enable firms to calculate their own ROI, LexisNexis has also unveiled a Microsoft Excel-based tool that firms can use independently to make their own business case for investment in a CRM solution. The tool was developed by Forrester Consulting and it is based on the result of the case study.

Daniel Von Weihe, Director at LexisNexis InterAction, commented, "Over the years, we have catalogued a wealth of anecdotal data from clients illustrating how InterAction has enabled firms to improve customer service, reduce the time and cost of marketing activity and mine relationship intelligence that was key to documented revenue-generating wins. However, we commissioned this study to gain independent insight regarding the financial impact our clients experience when implementing InterAction.  

"The research findings highlight that firms can realise business gains long before achieving near-100% adoption of InterAction. They also establish that InterAction not only pays for itself when implemented according to recommended best practices, but can also deliver significant returns. To the best of our knowledge, this ROI study along with the measurement tool, are the first of their kind in the professional services sector."  
                                                                  
For this study, Forrester interviewed a UK law firm operating across multiple locations in the country and employing 1200 staff including 550 partners and fee-earners.

For this firm, the primary driver of ROI has been reduction in administrative effort required by fee-earners to identify contacts and relationships. By consolidating, standardising, and centrally managing a single data source the firm has been able to reduce operational mailing costs and reduce duplicate business development initiatives. Over the five year period, the Present Value (PV) of risk-adjusted total benefits equals to £4.27 million, against a PV of total cost of £1.38 million to implement InterAction. At an adoption level of only 60% across the organisation during the period of study, the firm broke even on its total CRM-related investment in just 30 months.

LexisNexis is committed to helping clients derive maximum value from their investment in InterAction. In addition to the ROI calculator developed by Forrester Consulting, the company will soon launch a Key Success Indicator (KSI) tool. This will enable clients to benchmark CRM successes and challenges against their own past endeavors, as well as those of other firms using InterAction.