McGuireWoods uses Intapp to overhaul its CRM for business development

Managing a complete data overhaul in 5 months

Persuaded by the email signature scraping and relationship-tracking technologies offered by Intapp Relationships, Mann convinced McGuireWoods leaders to implement an 18-month study, with an eye toward cleansing and replenishing the incomplete database and rebuilding lawyer trust in the CRM. Intapp Relationships became a central selling point for the CRM redeployment.

With limited human resources and a brief timeline, Mann wasted little time in adding lawyers whose email accounts would be harvested for contacts’ signatures. He opted for partial automation, with Intapp Relationships sending newly discovered contacts directly to the CRM; he reserved human review for updates to lawyers’ contact information in the data quality management (DQM) console. Using this method, the firm required just two to four employee-hours per day.

Turning skeptics into believers

Six months following the CRM relaunch, Intapp Relationships had helped McGuireWoods create or update 63,500 contacts. A year later, the CRM had grown from 110,000 to 284,000 contacts, with 75% of all contacts now including a trackable business development relationship. And because the right people now were receiving the firm’s invitations and marketing emails, bounce rate decreased from 16% to 2.7%.

Building a complete picture with Intapp Relationships

According to Mann, Intapp Relationships also gave the firm’s marketing and business development departments a better way to work with lawyers.

“We can now slice and dice relationship data for prospecting or ROI tracking,” said Mann. “We can dig into our top clients, and track where relationships are lacking — where we need to try to do more. We can ask the question, ‘Does this client’s rank within the firm match the amount of email traffic?’ We’ve begun building a complete picture for the marketing knowledge base.”

Mann reports that firm management is very pleased with the initiative, and especially appreciate the insights into event ROI. “Following an event, we can see new relationships when they begin, then follow up with lawyers,” said Mann. “From introduction to pitch to conversion, we are able to see the pipeline develop around a relationship.”