Baker McKenzie Gains Global Visibility Into Its Key-Client Relationships With Intapp CRM
Leading global law firm Baker McKenzie wanted to provide its lawyers and partners with access to global key-client information. Using Intapp CRM, the firm’s own client command center — Baker Client Intelligence — was born.
As the first truly international law firm, the 13,000 people at Baker McKenzie serve its global roster of clients, from 77 offices in 46 countries.
Seeking Global Client Insights
Firm leadership at Baker McKenzie wanted to change how its partners — based wherever they are located all over the world — could access critical information on the firm’s most important clients. Because the firm had been a global organization for many decades, each office had created its own solutions for managing client information. These separate systems were not integrated, which made it a challenge for its partners to access key-client intelligence that could reveal a holistic picture of growth and expansion opportunities.
“Baker McKenzie was global before the Internet,” explained Jason Marty, Global COO at Baker McKenzie. As a result, over the years the firm implemented separate systems to manage client relationships in more than 50 jurisdictions. Configured independently and with little integration, these disconnected systems often made it difficult for the firm’s lawyers to create a true 360-degree view of client relationships.
“Service delivery expectations have increased exponentially,” said Wendy Bernero, Global CMO at Baker McKenzie. “Clients expect their advisors to understand their businesses, sectors, and wider commercial issues. Transactional client relationships make it harder to deliver that extra value in terms of service. As a result, we have focused on building deeper and broader institutional relationships.”
“I’ve been trying to simplify CRM and other BD-based solutions within the firm for a long time because we had islands of information. But the existing CRMs weren’t really fit-for-purpose, like Intapp CRM is.”
DAN SUROWIEC, GLOBAL CIO, BAKER MCKENZIE
Focusing on Exceeding Client Expectations
Baker McKenzie looked to Intapp to help create global visibility into its client relationships and opportunities to deliver value. Implementing Intapp CRM as supporting technology, Baker created its own client command center, called Baker Client Intelligence. “We created Baker Client Intelligence to enable us to partner with key clients to deliver customized services,” said Bernero. “We believe this is fundamental as our clients operate, grow, and expand their businesses around the world.”
The firm’s leadership set a goal for Baker Client Intelligence to provide a single place for partners to access important client information, in an effort to enable deeper visibility into keyclient needs for focused delivery of value. This visibility can help identify opportunities for more targeted, account-based marketing, and improve the firm’s existing key-client program by establishing and easily measuring against KPIs — and ultimately, grow profitable firm revenue.
Getting the Big Picture View
By adopting Intapp CRM, Baker McKenzie is coming to realize its vision: a bigger-window view into each client through deeper insights. “We selected Intapp as a partner because of its deep knowledge and experience solving the difficult problems law firms face,” said Dan Surowiec, Global CIO at Baker McKenzie. “CRM was one of those problems. Solutions existed, but their value for a global firm was limited. After seeing Intapp CRM, and understanding the thinking behind the OnePlace Marketing & Business Development solution, I was convinced that an opportunity existed to finally solve this problem.”
The initial scope of the Intapp CRM implementation focused on views of an initial cohort of around 200 clients, using aggregated data from financial, risk management, human resources, Dun & Bradstreet corporate family tree databases, and many other systems. Along with delivery of the SaaS solution, the project scope included creating a blueprint for how the firm can leverage technology to support its work and engagement with key clients. The plan calls for the collation of data and systems for meaningful analysis and insights across the firm, and the creation of processes needed to establish the Baker Client Intelligence Center of Excellence.
“I’ve been trying to simplify CRM and other BDbased solutions within the firm for a long time because we had islands of information,” said Surowiec. “But existing CRMs weren’t really fitfor- purpose, like Intapp CRM is.”
“Intapp CRM enables us to prioritize investment activities for every key client, helping us deliver more value to each client.”
WENDY BERNERO, GLOBAL CMO, BAKER MCKENZIE
Unifying Client Insights
Baker CI represents a transformational step for the firm, bringing unparalleled visibility into every aspect of key-client relationships. Intapp CRM brings together data from across systems to enable unified client insights, and provides a single source of truth for understanding existing work with key clients as well as key influencer relationships within those companies. The overlay of support and services from the professional services team at Intapp ensured that in addition to standing up the technology, Baker McKenzie would be positioned to successfully rollout the platform and drive adoption and usage.
Baker McKenzie leaders are excited about the implementation of the system. “Intapp CRM enables us to prioritize investment activities for every key client, helping us deliver more value to each client,” says Bernero.
Executive Summary
Baker McKenzie is a leading global law firm with a roster of truly international clients from across the world. Wanting deeper visibility into those key-client relationships, the firm turned to Intapp CRM as the technology foundation to create its branded Baker Client Intelligence command center.
Challenges
- The firm wrestled with disconnected technology across its global offices, which hampered data accessibility.
- Team members contended with laborious manual processes to connect disparate data.
- Leaders and partners wanted deeper insights into key-client activities worldwide to enhance service delivery and target marketing and BD activities.
Results with Intapp CRM
- Unified global data: An aggregated data center enables partner access to critical client information across the globe.
- Visible client plans: Lawyers and staff can track associated tasks and activities and seize opportunities to deliver client value and expand engagements.
- Customized service delivery: An insight-driven shared platform, built on a CRM purpose-built for professional services firms, helps the firm better respond to client needs.