How Exizent helped a medium-sized Scottish law firm cope with a heavy executry workload
Established in 1880, Macnabs Solicitors (Macnabs) has been serving clients in Perthshire, Tayside and beyond for over 140 years. With a team of 44+ across offices in Perth, Blairgowrie, Pitlochry and Bridge of Allan, their expertise covers many areas of law including Wills and Executries, providing practical legal advice on a whole range of matters.
Sarah Mitchell who joined as a trainee solicitor in 2013 is now a Partner in their Private Client Team, working at both Perth and Pitlochry offices. She specialises in Wills, Powers of Attorney, Estate and Succession Planning and Executry Administration.
Sarah is a proud member of the Society of Trusts and Estates Practitioners (STEP) and has received a STEP Worldwide Excellence Award, a recognition that holds special significance for achieving the top scoring mark in Scotland for the challenging Wills and Executries: Law and Practice examination, as well as achieving distinction in all four examinations.
Sarah, with a background in property law, also assists clients with residential property matters related to estate planning and executry administration. Her expertise ensures seamless integrations with broader estate plans.
Challenges
Before implementing the Exizent software, Macnabs Solicitors faced a significant challenge. The firm was in the process of changing provider for their Case Management System (CMS), resulting in the loss of vital functionalities such as Confirmation (Probate) and Inheritance Tax management. They were therefore looking for new, specialist estate administration software to work alongside their new generic practice CMS.
The core problems that Sarah and her team wanted their new executry software to tackle were:
- Manual completion of Confirmation and Inheritance Tax forms, resulting in repetitive tasks and siloed information leading to inefficiency in time, resources and suboptimal productivity.
- The time required to prepare Estate Accounts due to reliance on complicated spreadsheets and PDF editing tools within a manual system.
- Coping with a heavy workload and the need for collaboration on cases during the transition between CMS systems.
- Quality, consistency, compliance and security risks of existing tools and practices.
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The Exizent Solution
With an average of 10 new cases per month, it was essential for Macnabs Solicitors to find a good solution that would cope with current volumes and future business needs. Recognising the complexity of challenges, Sarah and her team sought out a centralised platform that could manage executry (probate) cases from start to finish with little implementation effort. They wanted easy access to cases for the entire team across all the different office locations and help with auto-population and consistency of C1 (Scottish Court) forms. They also looked for probate software that could seamlessly integrate with their new Case Management System and was easy to use.
Exizent’s software met these requirements. The platform promised seamless integration with the new CMS, minimisation of administrative effort, maximising efficiency and helping to build a complete case view. It would allow Macnabs to have all cases and users on a single platform, accessible from anywhere. As a Software-as-a-Service platform, Macnabs would also benefit from frequent seamless functionality updates and cloud-based security/resilience.
Macnabs decision to select Exizent’s software was also influenced by their positive experience during the free trial period, which allowed the team to get ‘hands on’ the real live product instantly and demonstrated the platform’s ability to streamline the company’s processes. This marked the beginning of the successful software adoption journey. Sarah commented:
“During the demonstration, we were particularly taken by the look and user-friendly design of Exizent. Further, its integration with our new Case Management System was a plus.”
Exizent provided Macnabs with a seamless onboarding process, with effective communication, project management and collaboration. Sarah added:
“Throughout the software implementation, the Exizent team delivered greatly beneficial training sessions. All users, including new hires adapted to the platform very well. Although minor issues arose, Exizent promptly acknowledged and addressed them.”
Sarah and her team adopted Exizent’s software well, expressing appreciation for the dashboard that allows them to easily view cases and assets in a single location. Moreover, adopting Exizent allowed new employees to add value quickly.
“It has been particularly useful to see all ongoing Executry files easily on one screen. Exizent’s simple layout is very user-friendly and the platform has been particularly helpful for new employees, as its user-friendly functionality has enabled less experienced staff to add value to the executry process earlier than typically expected”, Sarah said.
Exizent’s Court and IHT forms feature an automatic population and update of case data, saving Sarah and her team significant time for every case. The data entered in the case is captured and mapped to the appropriate fields in the forms. This reduces the risk of delays and the need to resubmit forms due to mis-keying errors in completion as Exizent takes care of calculations and the correct population of forms based on the case data input by users once. Anytime changes are made to the case data, this automatically applies updates in the forms. Sarah noted:
“Exizent handles the preparation of IHT400 forms and supplementary schedules more efficiently than our previous provider.”
The Benefits: Making Sense of it All
Exizent is driven by the purpose of improving the bereavement experience for everyone involved. This is reflected in the product, software that leverages the efforts of its users. Macnabs have become more efficient in time, resources and productivity since adopting Exizent software, allowing them to allocate more time towards delivering exceptional service to their clients. Sarah emphasised:
“If we had not decided to adopt Exizent software, more “man-hours” would have been needed to ensure the smooth working of a manual system.”
Exizent’s Knowledge Base is available 24/7 and serves as a valuable resource for Sarah and her team, providing them with the necessary guidance to onboard, utilise the platform effectively and manage their company account. Additionally, Exizent’s Customer Success team, based in the UK, is consistently available to assist with any queries, for example on less commonly used features.
Staff members at Macnabs Solicitors who are using the platform, have consistently provided positive feedback, especially praising its user friendly and intuitive design. Sarah remarked:
“The process of onboarding was simple and hassle-free, and the Knowledge Base is a useful and thorough resource.”
The Future
The partnership with Exizent has helped Macnabs address the challenges they had identified. The team now saves a significant amount of time per case, is able to collaborate on cases, work from anywhere and sees key system outputs like Court forms, Tax forms and Estate Accounts updated instantly after the case data has been updated.
By adopting the Exizent platform, the team further enhances operational efficiencies, benefiting both their workforce and client service.
Download the full case study to read later here.
