McInnes Cooper is a top 25 business and litigation law firm in Canada, with nearly 200 lawyers in six offices, serving clients across North America and internationally. The firm chose to upgrade its existing BigHand Workflow Management licenses to the full advanced workflow management solution as part of a larger project to optimize processes and drive efficiency gains in its support services.

Process Improvement Specialist, Amy Alderman explains, “Tasks were previously delegated via email or phone call, which often led to incomplete instructions and a lack of visibility over task progress and staff capacity. We knew there was an opportunity to increase efficiencies in this area, and after seeing BigHand’s legal-specific workflow solution, we knew it was exactly what we needed. Plus, some of our staff were already used to BigHand’s dictation technology which helped with training requirements.”

With BigHand Workflow Management, tasks are delegated by completing a form that captures all relevant information upfront, and are automatically routed to the right resource and monitored throughout the process. Output reports can be used by management for visibility of key metrics like work type, volume, capacity and utilization to allow firms to make data-driven decisions around staffing, training and performance.

Marybeth Gromack, Human Resources and Administration Manager at McInnes Cooper comments, “So far we have rolled out the technology to our support operations teams including our Document Centre, Word Processing Team and Office Support Assistants and have seen impressive efficiency gains. With the workflow technology in place, we can distribute work evenly to optimize turnaround times and utilize the reports to ensure we are making informed decisions.”

She adds, “The added visibility we now have gives us confidence to move to more flexible working practices in the future.”

Amy concludes, “The BigHand team have been extremely responsive right from the beginning of the project. They have taken the time to understand our objectives and we’ve been impressed with their level of insight as well as how adaptable the technology is.”

“As a firm we are committed to providing excellent service levels in a timely, responsive and cost-efficient manner. The visibility that BigHand Workflow Management provides will help us to optimize our support teams so we can continue to deliver first-class service to our lawyers, and to our clients.”