Case Study: Adecco Legal Services
Streamlining processes and enhancing business continuity with the help of Iken software solutions
Since it became the first recruitment agency to be formed in the UK nearly a century ago, Adecco has grown to become one of the largest and most highly regarded recruitment solutions providers, with over 150 branches and 6 distinct brands in the UK and Ireland alone. It’s no surprise, then, that the seventeen members of staff in Adecco’s Legal Services team are responsible for a large and varied body of work - and it’s growing all the time.
“The ability to provide a continuous and responsive service regardless of which team members are in the office is one of our biggest challenges, especially with a growing workload. We need to be able to deal with issues there and then.” explains Robin Fisher, Senior Legal Adviser at Adecco.
When the legal team realised that they were spending as much time on tracking work and carrying out administrative duties as they were on the work itself, they decided to seek a technological solution.
“We had a clear idea of what we wanted the system to achieve. It needed to enable us to report reliably on our Key Performance Indicators, organise work in such a way that it was centralised and the relevant documents were easy to find, and cut down on the time spent on administrative tasks”.
After examining several different systems in detail, Adecco Legal Services chose Iken Matter Management software as their preferred solution. The system was implemented in April 2009; here, Robin Fisher explains how Iken has supported the Legal Services function over recent months.
“Iken centralises our work and supports business continuity”
Iken stores documents, letters and emails in one place only, so that all the information concerning a matter is available to the appropriate managers and professionals, with no need to hunt through individual inboxes, shared and private drives and filing cabinets. Each document stored in Iken is indexed by multiple criteria at the point of production, making it easy to find the necessary information even if the colleague who has been working on it is absent.
“The majority of work for the team comes in via email, so it’s very important for us to keep track of these. With Iken, it’s so straightforward to file and access emails, you hardly have to think about it.”
“It helps us track our work, and see trends developing"
“Before we had Iken, we had 22 separate Excel spreadsheets to track work! Not only was this time-consuming, it was also inaccurate, because it relied on people remembering to manually enter information. But with Iken, we can see trends developing - for example, how much time we are devoting to work for each of the different client departments. It also gives the Director of Legal Services visibility of what is going on.”
“Iken has helped formalise working practices across the department”
“One advantage of Iken that we hadn’t anticipated is the way in which it’s enabled us to make the team’s working practices more consistent. There is more discipline in the way matters are created and set up, and a lot of documentation has now been standardised.”
Iken is a matter-centric system, with each matter being assigned a unique reference at the time of creation. When combined with a customised library of precedents and templates which are automatically pre-populated with frequently used information such as names, addresses and contact details, the result is a greater level of consistency, with the added benefit of significant time savings.
“Our customised workflows have streamlined processes and reduced risk”
Iken is available with a range of legal workflows for an appropriate level of automation. A corporate recovery workflow has been implemented for the use of litigation staff, and it is already making its mark.
“As well as assisting with our KPIs and streamlining processes, the workflows help to mitigate risk. Before Iken, if a member of staff was away there was always a chance that we’d be unaware that a hearing was coming up or that a payment should have been made. The workflows ensure that what needs to be done is done.”
“Iken facilitates flexible working”
Although the members of the Legal Services team are based at Adecco UK’s head office in Borehamwood for the majority of the time, occasionally people will need to work at another office or from home.
"Another benefit of the Iken system that we didn't expect is concerned with business continuity in the event of a disaster preventing us from accessing the office. We know that with Iken we could carry on working from a remote location."
The Iken Business experience
When asked whether he would recommend Iken to other organisations, Robin responds: “Definitely. I’d advise teams considering implementing Iken to get a clear picture of how their department works, to help them get the most from the system. But right from our first meeting, working with Iken has genuinely been nothing other than a pleasure.”
For more information on Iken Solutions for Corporate Legal teams, click here, or call us on: 44 (0) 117 373 0790, or on 0845 450 9201 from the UK.