How BigHand Workflow Management and BigHand Capacity Manager are helping the firm to foster a ‘Right Work to the Right Place’ approach

International law firm, Osborne Clarke is committed to helping its clients gain a competitive advantage by providing commercially-focused insights and big picture understanding. As a user of BigHand’s digital dictation platform for over 11 years, the firm is now extending this commercial insight and understanding to its own operations.

As part of an initiative to increase efficiency across the business, Osborne Clarke is implementing BigHand Workflow Management and BigHand Capacity Manager as a robust task management platform to help streamline processes and foster a ‘right work to the right place’ approach.

Encouraging natural change to workflow

In early 2016, Osborne Clarke undertook a review of its PA and secretarial support with the aim of identifying more efficient ways of working and developing a clear picture of the nature of the tasks being undertaken by the teams.

Debbie Baker, Business Support Manager at Osborne Clarke, comments:

As a firm, it’s very important that we are operating as effectively and efficiently as possible. We recognized that there were improvements we could make in how tasks were being assigned, managed and executed throughout the business.

"We also knew that with additional insight, we could make sure the right work gets done by the right people while also encouraging a natural change to our internal workflows. Not only will this have a positive impact on our business, it will drive efficiencies that will positively impact our client service provision."

Following a demonstration of BigHand’s latest solutions, Osborne Clarke chose to undertake a pilot project of BigHand Workflow Management and BigHand Capacity Manager within its Bristol-based Real Estate team. The project was carried out over a six-week period and was completed in November 2016.

Real-time Task Assignment and Task Management

BigHand Workflow Management allows firms to directly create tasks as fully auditable, digital workflow entries, and replaces the need for voice, email, electronic or paper-based requests. By completing a pre-configured digital form and attaching any accompanying files, Osborne Clarke’s attorneys, senior PAs and assigned members of the secretarial teams can create tasks quickly and easily. These can then be prioritized according to their urgency and importance, and assigned to a specific team or team member for processing and monitoring through to completion.

“To date, the Real Estate team would allocate and manage tasks through dictation,” Debbie explains. “By introducing BigHand Workflow Management, the digital forms are pre-configured with fields so that all the necessary information will be included. Tasks are also directed to the right team or individual at the point they are created. This is already saving a significant amount time for attorneys and secretarial staff alike.”

In addition, the analytics within BigHand Workflow Management, combined with the central visibility BigHand Capacity Manager provides, are enabling Osborne  Clarke to better understand the nature of the work being delegated and ensure this is matched correctly to the level of resource. Moreover, BigHand is helping the firm to predict future resource requirements.

“BigHand Workflow Management will underpin a natural evolution of the way in which the business operates,” Debbie concludes.

It will further improve our flexible workflow, enabling our team to collaborate and share resources even more, irrespective of office location. And ultimately, it will guide operational improvements that will help support staff satisfaction and efficiencies that will help us with timely communication and service delivery to our clients.

Business wide roll out

BigHand has been very well received amongst Osborne Clarke’s Bristol-based Real Estate practice area, which is comprised of 74 fee earners and PAs, five Senior PAs, the Head of PA Services, as well as a Business Support Manager. So much so, that attorneys are requesting new forms to be created on a regular basis and staff across the practice area are actively identifying new areas of deployment and application for the technology.

The firm is currently planning the wider roll out of BigHand Workflow Management and BigHand Capacity Manager across the business. When complete, the BigHand technology will be used by 838 staff - including over 474 attorneys - across its three UK offices of London, Bristol and Reading, facilitating efficient and effective business operations.