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“The Money Machine and Human Nature – What a trade show draw reveals about adoption theories”

By on March 16, 2011

For some time, we have used a “money machine” as a trade show booth draw and incentive.  It’s a little “used car sales-ish,” but it really works in getting people to the booth, and it draws a crowd. Plus, it ties into our marketing campaign of “See More Green”.  The booth is a rectangular cube with plexi-glass sides and a fan on the outside. The fan, obviously, blows the money around while the player stands inside trying to collect as much cash as they can in 15 seconds. Once the timer goes off, the money stops blowing and the player has to stop collecting.

 I have been observing this game for a few years now, and, by far, the most interesting thing to watch is “the approach”. The most timid people have surprised me by going hog-wild in the machine once locked in – shoving money down their shirts (against the rules, by the way) and grabbing at the green like a victim being attacked by killer bees. Then there are those who take a more strategic approach and come up with a strategy ahead of time, e.g., let the money get at arm’s height and grab it. They also watch others and judge what they are doing wrong/right. There are those who have a fair amount of trepidation about getting in an air blowing money trap, and then there are those who beg to get in. A lot of these observations can be applied to many people’s approaches to purchasing new software/hardware/technology in general. It reminds me of the “Adopter Curve” that has been around for some time now (applied in a variety of arenas):

  1. The early adopter/innovators, aka killer bee victim: This purchaser buys something new because, really, they have to be on the cutting edge, and it is cool. It is more of an emotional purchase. They also have a problem that may be wasting a lot of time/resources and want to solve it so they make a quick buy. Sometimes this may lead to a non-fiscally responsible purchase and sometimes it works for them.
  2. The conservative/early majority/late adopters, aka studier:  These people purchase something new because it solves the problem at a reasonable cost. They study all of the ins and outs of the product and then, when the time is right, make an informed purchase based on facts.
  3. The late adopter/laggards, aka anti-machine: Usually the late adopter waits for the deal or they take the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach. While they may have the same problems as others, they can live with it.

It is always a little difficult for me to understand why people have any reservations about winning free money. I guess they think there must be a catch or they just don’t want to put themselves in the spotlight. As the old adage goes, “it takes money to make money”. A lot of technology companies promise to make firms money if they purchase their wares. A lot of times they are right. Sometimes it’s just a waste of resources and other times it really will make your firm money. Make sure to do your research and you may inherit your own money machine.

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Categories: Going Green, Legal Marketing, The Legal Market

Rent vs. Buy – The SaaS Decision – part 2

By on March 13, 2011

Some people, me included, have always been “buy” type people, maybe it’s just old fashion. We buy, we just don’t like to rent or even borrow most things. Many businesses face the same decision as they review their options for implementing internal software. There are compelling reasons for both software models, in-house licensing and cloud based SaaS.

 In my previous blog posting I covered SaaS benefits; here are a few of my thoughts on traditional in-house software licensing.

 In-house traditional software.

  1. In most cases today, full enterprise level software, especially utilizing database management like financial management systems are best kept in-house. Primarily because there are not any viable SaaS options for mid-large size firms. In addition, firms need tight integrations among many other software systems that are already in-house.
  2.  There is a big difference in processor and memory requirements for enterprise financial management systems vs. other applications like document management. Hosting a DM system off-site is more about file storage sizing and access. In general, lower transactional processing applications not involving complex data structures are fine in a SaaS environment. The economies of SaaS disappear quickly when a large amount of computing power is needed for multiple users.
  3. I’m always concerned about the ease and control of data retrieval. In some SaaS applications it is quite easy to export out all of your data, in case, for example, you’d like to move to a different arrangement. However, with more complex applications where large amounts of data are stored in equally complex databases, extracting it from a “multi-tenant system is a real issue.
  4. The SaaS world is built, for the most part around a “multi-tenant” software model. Your data is actually mixed in with everyone else’s data and the application knows how to get it out. But you can’t. If you had an in-house financial management system and wanted to change vendors, you could conceivable extract the data yourself (or hire a consultant) and move to a new system without notifying your existing vendor until you thought it was proper. However, in a SaaS system, you don’t have a lot of choice. You are at the mercy of your SaaS provider. I’m always concerned about the uncertainty and costs of asking a SaaS provider for help converting to another system.
  5. I have a little bit of experience with the above issue of moving data from a SaaS vendor. In 2010 we decided to leave our long time, big name, on-line CRM system for an in-house Microsoft Dynamics CRM system. So we just called up the big name SaaS provider, explained our intentions and asked for help extracting millions of entries from the last 10 years or so from their system. It was amazing how little help they were and how crude their extraction tools were, if you wanted to leave their system. Of course, we had to licenses some SaaS type extraction tools just to do the all the work ourselves.
  6. Many times, the costs for SaaS only look attractive in the short-term. I recently saw some pricing for a legal market SaaS offering for a “practice management” system. On the surface it looked attractive, then I calculated the total cost of ownership over say, a 8-10 year lifecycle with 100 users and I was astounded. It no longer looked like a bargain at all. Some analysis indicates that SaaS pricing is based on a 28 – 36 month amortization of what an in-house enterprise software license would likely cost. If you keep it for 10 years you may end up paying 3-4 times as much money.
  7. The sales pitch for SaaS often includes the; you don’t need hardware, you don’t need to manage the system, and other similar claims to help justify the pricing model. The fact is that, most mid-large size law firms need to maintain a full IT infrastructure of networks, servers and desktops anyhow. The extra burden and costs of adding one or more virtual servers to this infrastructure may not be a big deal.

 At the end of the day there are all business decisions and for each decision the buyer needs to ask, am I a “renter or a buyer”?

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Categories: Best Practices, Financial Management, Law firm billing, Practice Management, Technology

Rent vs. Buy – The SaaS Decision – part 1

By on March 6, 2011

Some people, me included, have always been “buy” type people, maybe it’s just old fashion. We buy things, we just don’t like to rent or even borrow. Many businesses face the same decision as they review their options for implementing internal software. There are compelling reasons for both software models, in-house licensing and cloud based SaaS. Here are a few of my thoughts.

In the SaaS Camp:

  1. Cloud based SaaS applications look particularly attractive when they are “specialty” type products that are not “enterprise” level of usage. For example, we use such products as ExactTarget for email marketing and SurveyMonkey™ for client surveys. These are highly specialized services, used infrequently, and not worth the costs to bring in-house and manage. SaaS is the obvious choice.
  2.  In the example above, the amount of data and confidentially of that data is not of utmost concern. Confidentiality is important in this case but not to the extent that we don’t want the information outside our facilities.
  3. Another issue is getting data back, if we needed it. I’m not too concerned that the data we store on these sites within their applications is so crucial to our business that we would be damaged if we couldn’t easily retrieve it.
  4. Costs may be a major benefit in the SaaS camp, depending on the type of application needed. The convenience and small cost of a monthly fee on a credit card is a definite convenience.
  5. We use Chrome River for on-line expense reporting. The justification in this case is that, it is a “best of breed” specialty product, attractively priced, used somewhat infrequently and other than manual spreadsheets we didn’t have a better way of managing this process. An easy decision.

 As you can see there are some real benefits to having the right SaaS tools. In my next blog posting I’ll cover why I think in-house enterprise software looks good.

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Categories: Best Practices, Financial Management, Law firm billing, Practice Management, Productivity, Technology

Finally, Solving the Excel Data Insertion Problem

By on January 23, 2011

This is my fourth blog posting examining the problem facing law firm CFO’s who need to get critical data from their financial management system into Excel spreadsheets

 1st posting – Challenges faced by CFO’s

2nd  posting – Current choices and new requirements

3rd posting - Expose queries

We have already examined the challenges, looked at the requirements, and discussed the concept of using SQL queries to make it simple for CFO’s to get financial system data into simple or complex spreadsheets.

 Microsoft .Net technology allows a vendor to build an Excel Add-in utilizing Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to expose queries that already exist thus allowing users to retrieve data with a simple point and click.

 Let’s look at a full set of capabilities users will have:

  1. Easily insert data into either a new or existing spreadsheet, by clicking on a description of the data from a pop-up Excel Task Pane.
  2. Allow the user to insert different data pieces in multiple sections of a single or multi-workbook spreadsheet.
  3. Validate the users level of security to access the data requested.
  4. Upon saving the spreadsheet containing the links to the data, save the links and all other formatting.
  5. Allow the user to specify what data will be automatically refreshed from the database when the Excel spreadsheet is opened and what data can be refreshed by manual selection.
  6. All the Excel spreadsheet to me moved around the firm’s network while always knowing how to reconnect to the databases involved.
  7. Allow users to store their personally used queries in a separate area for both convenience and security.
  8. Allow for the ability for anyone to add new or custom queries without programmer involvement. For example, copy and paste from an email sent by a vendor.
  9. Provide all of the above capabilities for PivotTables, charts and graphs without necessarily building spreadsheets firms.

 By providing the above capabilities CFO’s and other law firm members will be able to finally analyze information in the way they choose. Getting critical data into Excel and keeping it fresh will never be a problem again.



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Categories: Best Practices, Financial Management, Technology

Expose them – Your Queries

By on January 16, 2011

This is my third blog posting examining the problem facing law firm CFO’s who need to get critical data from their financial management system into Excel spreadsheets

 1st posting – Challenges faced by CFO’s

2nd  posting – Current choices and new requirements

 In this posting we’ll discuss what turns out to be a relatively simple solution to inserting data directly into Excel spreadsheets from a financial management system utilizing a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database. Using Service Oriented Architecture and Microsoft Communication Foundation vendors can expose hundreds or thousands of queries that already exist in their systems but are not currently visible to an end user.

 All financial management systems use SQL queries to retrieve information that is displayed on screens, included in reports and used to process transactions. Queries are the underpinning of data retrieval. A query describes the data to be retrieved, what is to be included or excluded, where the data is located, and all other criteria. Programmers build, then use these queries satisfy the inquiry or output desired by the end user.

 If vendors just expose these queries with easy to understand descriptions, the user would just click on a query and insert the data from the database directly into various spreadsheet locations. With a little more work the vendor could write an Excel “Add-in” that would help perform even more advanced capabilities.

 I’ll spell all this out in my 4th blog posting on this topic.



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Categories: Best Practices, Financial Management, Technology

More Insight into the Dilemma of getting Data into Excel

By on January 9, 2011

In an earlier blog posting I explained the issues with using Excel to try and analyze data from a firm’s financial management system. The problem is getting the data from the system to the spreadsheet.

 There are few choices:

  • Connect Excel directly to the tables and download from the database. This is difficult since joining the right tables and using the right indexes probably requires a programmer for everything other than simple lists. For example, a client list with addresses can be done by a mid-level Excel user with a little help establishing an ODBC connection to a SQL database. Try analyzing a 5 year revenue trend by billing attorney, it’s more difficult.
  • Most standard reports can be run with an Excel spreadsheet as the output. This is fine, however, if you want to further manipulate the data, add calculations etc. all of these are lost next time you want to run or update the same report.

 So, what is the answer?  We need vendors to provide an entirely new approach to getting financial information into an Excel spreadsheet, PivotTables, charts and graphs.

 Here are the new requirements:

  • Existing spreadsheet models. Allow a user to take an existing spreadsheet(s) and insert data directly into specified rows and columns. Allow for multiple insertion points in one or s series of workbooks. CFO’s already have dozens of important spreadsheets that get manually updated each month with information from the financial management system.
  • Choose data refresh sequence. Allow a user to specify the sequence of refreshing the data that comes from the financial database. Don’t just refresh all the data automatically when opening the spreadsheet.
  • Select data components from a list. Allow a user to build a new spreadsheet, PivotTable or graph by just clicking on a choice of data elements from a list (described in English). The user
  • Automatic database attachment. The requirements above should all be available from an Excel Ribbon Bar or Task Pane with a direct connection to the all the firms databases including the data warehouse.

 In other words, make all this real simple so we don’t have to be programmers to get information into our spreadsheets.

 In my next blog post I’ll describe how new technology such as Service Oriented Architecture and Microsoft Communication Foundation can meet these requirements by exposing valuable queries from existing databases.


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Categories: Best Practices, Financial Management, Technology

The Challenges CFO’s Face in Using Excel for Analysis

By on January 4, 2011

Financial Management system vendors typically provide hundreds of standard reports, both in their core systems and in Business Intelligence data warehouses. Most of these reports can be modified by the end user and saved under a different name. These reports can usually be scheduled run, bursted  and electronically delivered to users via SharePoint or email.

 Law firms CFO’s, like their counterparts in corporate America have long ago chosen Microsoft Excel as their tool of choice for all forms of financial analysis.

 So what is the problem? The problem is that there are an infinite number of possible, special analyses of financial details and trends that “canned” reports can just never cover. Unfortunately it’s not easy for the typical CFO to get the data they want directly into an Excel spreadsheet. Executives can run a canned report and choose Excel as the output file type, but inevitably the user will make massive changes before the final analysis is saved.

 In theory, it should be easy to just hook-up Excel directly to a standard SQL compliant database and access all the data. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.

The CFO just isn’t prepared to deal with:

  • Complex table structures
  • Understanding how to use primary and foreign keys
  • Choosing inner or outer joins for the logic that provides the right data
  • Setting up the data source, ODBC driver or writing queries

 So what’s the problem, it’s just TOO HARD for the average CFO.

 What can vendors do, expose your queries. I’ll discuss this in another blog posting.

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Categories: Best Practices, Financial Management, Practice Management, Technology

Streamline Your Way to Bigger Margins – #1 – Foreign Exchange (FX)

By on September 14, 2010

This ongoing series will visit small overlooked ways firms can save money that can add up to big dividends.

 In many law practices and businesses, for that matter, much time is dedicated to finding ways to streamline processes and save cash. Often times, though, the seemingly “small” things are overlooked. Take the practice of paying foreign associates and vendors, for example. For the most part, firms will utilize the current relationship they have with their bank to process foreign invoices, etc. Although this seems like a no-brainer, really, there are some major and minor things that may come as a result of using a dedicated foreign exchange processing company that ties in with a firm’s financial management system.

 For starters, in a typical law firm, the workflow process can be somewhat disparate, leading to multiple keying of information and lost information, especially when it comes to processing international payments. Most firms start at invoicing; which includes translating, loads of paperwork, sorting, approval, etc., then on to billing; which includes AR, closing, reconciliation, etc., then payment , e.g., duplicate payment checking, beneficiary management, reporting, etc. where the FX company/bank usually comes into play. This process is obviously taxing on AP staff and, if through a typical bank, requires a contractual agreement and minimum account requirements. Although the bank relationship is secure, the rates are often not promised (over a length of time) and the financial information does not tie directly into the time and billing system, equaling many hours of entering information and wasted time.

 As with any technology and/or best practice, streamlining the workflow into one step is the ideal. Firms should invest the time to find a secure foreign exchange provider that will take the process from invoice to payment and provide quality reporting, to boot.  It is also important to find a solution that ties into a firm’s current time and billing system – this, obviously, saves countless hours and headaches as information is accurately recorded, in real time.

 I’ve written many pieces about how “cash flow is king” in a law firm – the rule applies in this case as well.  As with pretty much everything in the financial world, exchange rates are extremely transient – they change on a daily basis. Many dedicated international payment providers have the ability to lock-in exchange rates for firms, even if they are not receiving payment for 30 days.  Again, this saves time and money as firms can avoid re-billing, and they can avoid losses and additional time spent on altering a bill, etc.  In addition, international payment providers can extend a line of credit to, in effect, “cover” the payment in US dollars until it is received from the foreign payer.

 Interested in making the switch? Here are some things to look for in an international payment processing provider:

  •  Make sure they are secure and reliable. Federal regulation is key, and, if your firm can find a provider who does not require minimum deposits, like most banks, this is the way to go.
  • Try to find a provider who links in with your current time and billing system. As aforementioned, this will save hours and errors.
  • Find a provider who offers a wide variety of services that can easily be customized to meet your firm’s needs and one that can help your bottom line (locked-in exchange rates, no minimum requirements, and line of credit).
  • Look into transition time – make sure it’s quick and painless and you will be provided with ongoing support.



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Categories: Best Practices, Financial Management, Technology
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