Law Firm Business Intelligence Problems, Meet Orion Visual Analytics

Common Business Intelligence Problems Law Firms Face 

Getting the insights you need, when you need them, is a perennial challenge for law firm leaders. Common law firm financial reporting challenges include:

• Disconnected systems. If you are just starting to analyze your data consistently, you may be struggling to get the information you need in a useful format. Or you may have a reporting system that grew organically, creating a tangle of data storage and pathways. In either case, your systems are unable to “talk” to one another, so getting the insights you need is slow and resource-intensive. 

• Static reports. Law firms run on spreadsheets, and static reports are an important part of any business intelligence system. But they are limited. By the time a static report is generated, it may already be out of date. Static reports, especially when printed out, also don’t allow you to click on a piece of information to dig deeper or check out a theory.

• Complex workflows. Often, when a leader needs information, the request is routed through multiple business professionals and departments. Firms can address that problem by scheduling report generation in advance… but the system breaks down whenever you need something new.
• Delayed insights. The three problems described above add up to a bigger law firm financial reporting challenge: delayed insights. When you can only access out-of-date information, it’s difficult to be flexible. When all your business intelligence is backward-looking, it’s hard to course-correct quickly.

Why Spreadsheets and Standard Reports Fall Short 

Static, backward-looking data reports have their place in law firm business intelligence. But they aren’t enough to keep law firms competitive anymore. Shortcomings include: 

• No real-time data. For some use cases, last month’s data will work. But often, you need to know what’s happening right now. There’s no way to meet that need with standard reports. They are out of date as soon as they are generated. 

• Lost opportunities to course-correct. It’s common to run static timekeeper performance reports monthly. But those reports come too late: attorneys and paralegals can’t go back in time to bill more work. If they had access to real-time data, they could take action before targets are missed.
• Can’t drill down. The numbers in standard reports typically aren’t interlinked with more detailed data. It’s not always obvious how a number was calculated, and often there’s no way to find out quickly.
• Too many steps. Interdepartmental coordination isn’t the only slow-down. Business professionals still have to generate and distribute reports manually — and re-distribute as the data ages. Leadership is stuck paging through voluminous reports by hand or searching among Microsoft Excel files. These extra steps keep timekeepers away from billable work.