How Taylor Wessing drives revenue growth with Intapp DealCloud

Global law firm Taylor Wessing has built a data-driven culture supporting revenue growth, collaboration and efficiency. The key to building this culture: Intapp DealCloud.

Taylor Wessing is a full-service law firm with 28 offices globally. The firm has more than 300 partners and more than 1,000 lawyers worldwide.

More than a CRM

After his appointment as Director of Business Development, Marketing and Communications at Taylor Wessing, Mike Beswick made it a priority to invest in technology to enhance client service and connectivity. He knew that Taylor Wessing’s current CRM wasn’t sufficiently meeting the firm’s needs, and that the firm would need advanced tools to help it increase profitable revenue and market share, target client opportunities and make stronger connections.

“Our original CRM didn’t integrate with all our systems, so we couldn’t easily access all the information we needed to efficiently collaborate,” explained Beswick. “And, although we had been very successful making decisions based on attitude and anecdote, I knew we could enhance our success by complementing our informed instinct with the analysis of data.”

Beswick continued: “We needed a business intelligence system where our lawyers could easily track their clients and prospects, access data and analysis and grow client opportunities.” But Beswick also knew that Taylor Wessing’s leaders might be hesitant to invest in new technology — especially considering the timing of the proposal.

“It was early 2020, during the height of the pandemic,” Beswick explained. “It wasn’t a great time to be asking businesses to sign big checks and purchase new tools. But I and my team felt investing in technology was critical to our firm’s growth.”

DealCloud’s features would help us better track activities, identify more opportunities, encourage collaboration and take efficiency to the next level via automation.

MIKE BESWICK, DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, TAYLOR WESSING

Improving growth, collaboration and efficiency with DealCloud

To illustrate how much of a difference the right technology would have on Taylor Wessing’s performance, Beswick and his team built a business case around three key priorities:

  • Revenue growth and insights Capturing data around activities, relationships and experience lets professionals better analyse relationship whitespace and drive revenue growth
  • Collaboration Increasing transparency into firm/client connections helps professionals better collaborate and strengthen relationships
  • Efficiency Integrating data from across the firm’s systems and automating workflows increases the speed, quality and consistency of business development processes

While researching CRM solutions that would meet its top three priorities, Taylor Wessing soon realised that Intapp DealCloud had the exact capabilities it was looking for, including:

  • A centralized collaboration and management hub with system and third-party data integrations.
  • Advanced relationship management capabilities, including relationship scoring and passive capture
  • Configurable and automated workflows, alerts, reports and analysis

We believed DealCloud’s features would help us better track activities, identify more opportunities, encourage collaboration and take efficiency to the next level via automation,” Beswick explained. “We successfully and quickly launched DealCloud in July 2021. We’ve since rolled out the solution to our offices in the U.K., U.S., Dublin and Dubai.

Successfully adopting DealCloud

When rolling out DealCloud to the U.K. office, Taylor Wessing leaders knew that the solution would only benefit the firm if everyone in the office fully embraced it. So, during the adoption process, they made it clear that they weren’t just encouraging officewide adoption — they were requiring it.

“Our managing partner sent a firmwide email saying that if your data isn’t in DealCloud, it doesn’t exist,” Beswick explained. “So, if you haven’t recorded your work in DealCloud, it won’t be reflected in your remuneration pack at the end of the year. When we signed off our business development plans for fiscal year 2025, we made sure everyone understood that they had to track performance, targets, objectives and tasks in DealCloud.”

The adoption process was a success, and Taylor Wessing’s professionals quickly recognized how much DealCloud would help them work more efficiently. Even now, Beswick says employees are excited to reap the benefits of DealCloud.   

“I spoke with a new lateral hire who said he wanted to identify shared connections so he could better collaborate,” Beswick shared. “And he wanted to identify whitespace opportunities so he could target introductions, cross-selling and referrals. Clearly, our lawyers want to use data and technology to create a competitive advantage.”

Beswick and his team also constantly use DealCloud’s data-driven insights to drive important conversations with other teams. For example, they send professionals weekly emails on wins, losses and other opportunities. They also meet with practice area leaders monthly to review performance statistics and to track business development activity against utilisation. This allows them to make better-informed decisions and readjust their strategies if needed.

Embracing the Activator mindset

To explore how the firm could further improve its employees’ performance, Taylor Wessing took part in the Rainmaker Genome Project — a survey of nearly 1,800 partners in accounting, consulting, legal and investment banking firms. The study revealed that Activators (i.e., professionals who build strong networks and take a proactive business development approach) perform better than any other business development professional types.

The Rainmaker Genome Project research report also reveals how technology like DealCloud can help promote Activator behaviors, especially when it comes to network building and driving revenue.

“As someone once told me, your network is your net worth,” Beswick said. “And DealCloud is a key tool in helping our people curate their contact book and bring more value to our firm.”

Professionals at Taylor Wessing can also better evaluate and improve their client interactions by using DealCloud to track and report on key metrics, including:

  • Relationship intelligence View which contacts are cooling and whether to reach out to them
  • New business opportunities Identify potential pitch opportunities and proactively leverage whitespace

Taylor Wessing is continually looking for new ways to leverage DealCloud and make the most of its investment. For example, the firm is currently deploying DealCloud for experience management.

“We want to get to a point where our CRM is part of our DNA,” Beswick said. “And we’re already making good progress on that journey.”

Executive Summary

Taylor Wessing is global law firm that has more than 1,000 lawyers, 28 offices and provides services in 40 languages. The firm implemented DealCloud to drive revenue growth, improve collaboration and increase efficiency. The solution also promotes Activator behaviors such as network building and proactively seeking business development opportunities.

Challenges

  • The firm lacked a single source of truth where teams could easily integrate and access data to make data-driven decisions.
  • Teams had little transparency into relationship intelligence, making it difficult to build and strengthen client relationships.
  • The firm was unable to automate processes, slowing down efficiency.

Results with Intapp

  • Growth Teams can better track and analyse business development activities, leading to more targeted and effective growth strategies.
  • Collaboration Professionals gain visibility into internal and external connections to foster teamwork and increase cross-selling opportunities.
  • Efficiency The firm can simplify business development processes through automation and integration, resulting in higher quality and consistency in teams’ work.