Case StudyProperly Vetting Salesforce with a Global Law Firm
A global Am Law 100 firm (700 attorneys) tasked their Chief Marketing Officer with finding a replacement to their incumbent CRM system, which the firm had in place for over ten years. The CMO had come into their role with a mandate from firm leadership to make this change; there was simmering discontent for some time with this system among the partnership, and several suggestions had already landed in the CMO’s lap. Most of these suggestions pointed to the same platform: CRM behemoth Salesforce.
The Challenge
The CMO understood that they could not just jump feet first into a new tool without understanding what the firm needed. The team responsible for the marketing technology stack was underwater with requests for information from a system that was deemed bloated and unreliable.
How could the team ensure they were identifying all the firm use cases for a modern CRM as well as evaluate the market for a new solution – all while navigating growing calls to just pick Salesforce and “make it work?”
The Solution
Our tested approach for evaluating new marketing technology platforms provided enough cover for the CMO to open an eight-week window for interviewing user groups, documenting their needs, scanning the market, provision vendor demos, gather pricing and present objective feedback and insights on each participant. This work led to the review of four viable candidates – including both Salesforce and a smaller company that was building out a legal-specific configuration of Salesforce as an authorized Partner.
The Benefit
The project was completed within the eight-week period. Among the wins for the CMO and their team:
The firm ultimately chose the Salesforce Partner. The CMO could appease the members of the partnership clamoring for Salesforce, while also implementing a tool that is already configured with law firms in mind – not a small task when it comes to a complex platform such as Salesforce.
Six figure savings in Years Two and Three. Special license pricing provided by the Salesforce Partner ultimately saved the firm well into the six figures in both Years Two and Three, compared with licensing from Salesforce directly – an observation the CMO highlighted in all discussions with firm leadership regarding this initiative.
The team gets a head start on implementation. With a list of stakeholder groups and business requirements already in-hand, the firm’s CRM project team was able to get a running start with both their internal IT resources as well as the Salesforce Partner’s implementation team.
An additional filter between the sales reps and the CMO. Bringing in a consultant in this phase allowed the CMO to focus on internal stakeholders, while the consultant could handle the continuous calls, emails and update requests from each vendor’s sales team throughout the sales cycle.