For today’s professional services firms, an effective business development strategy goes beyond client dinners and arbitrary marketing efforts. Firms must be armed with the tools and information they need to identify upcoming opportunities, anticipate client needs, and recognize client interests. Equipped with this information, firms can offer clients new and additional services and launch more targeted marketing, resulting in more leads and an increased ROI.
But where does this information come from that makes business development more effective and improves the firm’s marketing ROI? It comes from implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. If you’re concerned about the cost or effort of integrating new software, keep reading—we have some ROI stats that you’ll be interested in knowing.
Most marketers and business development professionals know that a CRM solution houses standard client contact data. But CRM is much more powerful than just a contact database. And when adopted by users, CRM can make a huge impact throughout the entire firm, reducing the time it takes for everyday marketing tasks, improving pipeline transparency and management, boosting work efficiency for lawyers and professionals, and increasing the bottom line.
To illustrate just how impactful having a professional services firm-specific CRM is, Forrester Consulting conducted a study showing the Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) of implementing LexisNexis® InterAction® CRM software. Forrester interviewed five firms that implemented InterAction, aggregated their experiences, and combined the results to reveal the overall TEI.
Before using InterAction, these firms used manual processes or a legacy CRM that wasn’t specifically created to handle the needs of a professional services firm. This meant using spreadsheets to sporadically capture and update client data, being challenged by outdated data, putting compliance at risk, and spending a lot of unnecessary time on inefficient tasks. Plus, with limited visibility into client engagement, firms were not able to turn data into usable client insights.
All of that changed once InterAction was implemented into the firms, and users integrated InterAction’s CRM capabilities into their marketing and business development processes. After interviewing the firms, Forrester quantified several results, highlighting the significant impact of InterAction.
InterAction Improved Marketing and Business Development Staff Efficiencies by 62%, and:
- Saved 50% or more time on marketing and business development workstreams
- Reduced 97% of time spent on list generation and management
- Cut 50% from the time spent on practice group reporting
- Decreased time needed for pipeline tracking 40%
InterAction Improved Lawyers’ and Professionals’ Efficiencies by 34%, and:
- Reduced 67% the amount of time spent on analyzing potential new business
- Saved $120,000 annually by not responding to unnecessary business development team email requests
InterAction Increased Revenue 2%, and:
- Boosted revenue as much as 18% when used with targeted business development processes
- Using InterAction alone increased revenue by $1.3 million
InterAction Increased Marketing Effectiveness and Improved Compliance
While the results were not quantified, firms shared that having a professional services-specific CRM automate processes helped with data tracking and contact management. This freed professionals to focus more on marketing strategy and respond more efficiently to changes in the business environment. Automated contact tracking also helped remove clients who opted out of communications, simplifying compliance with privacy regulations such as GDPR.
These numbers were impressive. But with the adoption of any new software, there were also costs incurred. Implementation, training, subscription, and ongoing management fees helped ensure processes ran smoothly, the firms had a team of professionals to rely on, and the software was always up to date.
So, was the cost and effort worth the investment? The Forrester TEI study proved a composite ROI of 220% ($1.64 million) after investing in InterAction with firms recouping their costs in just 14 months.
Download the Full Study
Get a copy of the commissioned study delivered by Forrester Consulting, The Total Economic Impact™ of LexisNexis InterAction: Cost Savings and Business Benefits Enabled by InterAction here.
About LexisNexis InterAction
LexisNexis® InterAction® is a CRM solution built for legal and professional services industries that improves client engagement, automates contact information capture and updates, and provides analytics on client engagement and client business. Firms utilize InterAction to gain a better understanding of their businesses and turn these insights into cost savings and additional revenue.
About Forrester Consulting
Forrester Consulting provides independent and objective research-based consulting to help leaders succeed in their organizations. For more information, visit forrester.com/consulting.
