The Connected Professional: Arm Your Teams with Actionable Insights by Aligning Tools and Incentives
During the pandemic, the stark disruption of our ways of working has reinforced our collective awareness of the ways that staying connected to clients and colleagues helps us navigate through challenging times — both from a personal and business perspective.
As a connected firm, the existential focus for your professionals has been stripped back to the essentials:
- Sustaining strong client relationships, even if they don’t currently require your individual legal expertise
- Collaborating with your colleagues to identify new ways to stay relevant to clients
- Identifying win-win opportunities to bring the best of your firm to your clients
To set yourself and your firm up for success, it helps to understand the incentives for enabling these types of connected firm behaviors, and the need for thoughtful choice architecture when driving technology adoption.
Making Insights Actionable
Extensive research in the field of nudge theory — the area of study for which Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 2017 — pinpoints incentives as the primary drivers of behavioral change. Choice architecture, another foundation of nudge theory, emphasizes how specific design elements can help users to lean toward a certain decision when given a selection of choices.
Connecting the Right People Using the Right Tools
Even within the most integrated teams, the various roles are incentivized differently; as a result, they require nuanced tools. For instance, client lifecycle management typically involves a lead relationship partner partnered with a client relationship manager. In the scenario below, we explore the tools available to these roles to find additional ways to meaningfully and strategically engage with a particular client — Microsoft, in this instance.
Juliet
As Lead Relationship Partner, she needs …
- Commercial insights to drive her financial management incentives and support profitable revenue growth
- Planning goals and ownership visibility to support the progression of her key account plans
- An overview of where and how the firm is engaging with client stakeholders to support her client satisfaction objectives
David
As Client Relationship Manager, he needs …
- A client overview and newsfeed to enhance awareness and drive his client experience incentives
- Campaign and event analytics to provide insights into areas of opportunity and drive increased engagement
- Relationship insights to understand client engagement and support his objectives around enriching the firm’s relationship map breadth and depth
Providing Access to Insights Enables Smarter, More Agile Decision-Making
Few firms can afford the large business development teams required to swiftly generate the level of insights shown in the persona charts. Leveraging the right technology can facilitate access to tools and insights that will enable quicker and more agile decision-making at a time when firms need to be smarter about how they build and maintain their existing relationships.
To put it plainly, the tools you provide your professionals must enable them to successfully execute the activities for which they have been incentivized to perform. Designing and implementing tailored, KPI-driven dashboards that will enable your firm to better connect with its clients is the first step to achieving this.
Learn more about how Intapp Strategic Consulting connects design-thinking approaches, legal sector knowledge and leading technologies for marketing and business development leaders at preeminent firms.
For more details on putting the power of nudge theory to work for your firm, please get in touch.