Since first opening its doors in 2017, Phi Finney McDonald (PFM) has rapidly expanded to include fifty-five employees across offices in Melbourne (the firm’s headquarters), Sydney, and London, UK.
PFM specializes in complex and large-scale litigation with a focus on class action and group litigation lawsuits. The complexities of these matters create intricate billing requirements with the potential to monopolize firm resources.
The Frustrating Limitations of Existing Financial Technology
While firms count on technology to manage complex financial and billing management requirements, PFM found its own tech stack to be unreliable. For some time, the firm had been using a regional document and financial management system in addition to relying on another system for general ledger work.
Unfortunately for the firm, PFM’s finance staff were consistently finding their bills too lengthy for the regional system to accommodate. Additionally, the document and financial management system was unequipped to provide valuable data that PFM could use to create custom reports for insight into their billing performance. PFM’s finance staff were also unable to bill clients directly from the regional system, causing major bottlenecks; another source of frustration was the system’s ineffective technical and customer support. Due to these overwhelming concerns, PFM’s billing administrator often turned to Excel to manually create financial reports, a time-consuming task that their document and financial system would have ideally managed.
Because neither the regional system nor the other existing system provided an accounting solution, PFM sought one fully-equipped with the features necessary for a streamlined end-to-end accounting workflow, removing the need for the firm to cobble accounts together from disparate systems.
Seeking a Better Solution
As the problems with their existing technology persisted, PFM resolved to find a financial and practice management solution better equipped to handle the firm’s needs. An integrated, cloud-based solution that would fit within their current cloud-based business was at the top of PFM’s list. The firm’s ideal new technology system would also include other features, such as 1) effective and flexible time recording options; 2) robust billing, with the ability to bill thousands of time entries and discount in multiple ways; and 3) the ability to budget and track costs for various stages within matters. PFM sought easy access to the firm’s data and the ability to design and write their own reports; the right solution would ultimately provide true flexibility while still giving them a solid infrastructure.
Evaluating Expert Sierra
Many of the staff members at PFM had previous knowledge of Aderant’s Expert financial and practice management system as an on-premise solution and appreciated its broad list of capabilities, including time entry, billing, reporting, accounting, and more. The availability of Expert Sierra, a cloud-hosted and fully managed software-as-a-service deployment of Expert, was a perfect fit for the firm’s size and capability requirements.
In reviewing Expert Sierra, PFM’s administrative staff appreciated the full access to firm data along with the ability to build their own reports, especially within a cloud-based solution. Impressed by the entirety of the solution’s features, the firm purchased and implemented the Aderant offering firm-wide with a guided, seamless rollout process.
Improved Productivity and Access to Data
Since implementing Expert Sierra, PFM reports significant improvements to a broad range of functions, including their ability to access data and measure productivity. With their new solution, the firm’s billing administrator can run key financial reports with the click of a button rather than spending hours manually assembling them in Excel.
PFM is now using intuitive features such as On-the-Go Time, Timers, and Calendar view to provide timekeepers with instant productivity calculations. Expert’s Billing module has also been essential in reducing the time the firm spends generating bills.
Additionally, PFM’s timekeeping is now always up to date. Lawyers no longer fall behind due to a lack of visibility and are not rushing to complete their time at the end of each month. Armed with better access to data and custom reporting, administrative staff can write their reports in half of the time they had previously spent processing monthly financials. The firm’s billing is far less time-consuming and much more robust than before. PFM now has full visibility into all write-downs, as well as changes to time and fee entries as soon as they are billed.
A New Day for Billing
Expert Sierra has equipped PFM with significantly improved access to data and in turn, visibility, positively affecting the firm across the board. Now, the firm can be proactive in their budgeting and planning, not only dealing with current billing issues but also preparing for the future. If financial performance begins to trend in the wrong direction, PFM’s billing team is instantly aware and is equipped with the proper tools to right the ship.
In a short period of time, the Aderant solution has helped PFM transform its lagging time, billing, and accounting into best-in-class operations. By deploying the new technology, the firm was able to attain effective and flexible time recording options, robust billing, the ability to budget and track costs, and flexible custom reporting. Sierra’s cloud-based software allows lawyers and staff to access the system anywhere, anytime, from a secure and highly optimized interface. With Expert Sierra, PFM looks ahead to the future with the confidence that they will be prepared to thrive in an ever-changing legal environment.
