Supporting the merger of CMS, Nabarro, and Olswang – Modular Services case study
Overview:
On May 1st, 2017, Modular Services was entrusted with supporting one of the largest tripartite law firm mergers in the UK, involving CMS, Nabarro, and Olswang. This monumental undertaking presented numerous challenges, including the need to orchestrate transformation programs, migrate from legacy applications to a unified application stack, and consolidate data centers. Moreover, our support teams confronted the daunting task of accommodating an overnight doubling of the userbase, with over half of the users unfamiliar with the new IT systems and procedures.
Challenges Faced:
Transformation Programs and Application Migration: Managing the transition from disparate legacy applications to a unified application stack required meticulous planning and execution to ensure seamless integration and minimal disruption to operations. Our support teams assisted the business analysts and senior stakeholders in selecting the best options in terms of application choice for the various legal operations functions and were involved in the application design, deployment testing and implementation to the business, taking over support and coordinating vendor escalations for critical functionality issues.
Complex Data Transfers and Data Centre Consolidations: Consolidating data centers while ensuring the secure transfer of sensitive data posed significant logistical and technical challenges. Our infrastructure architects and senior engineers worked tirelessly to identify, map, and consolidate services in a converged data center approach, ensuring security, availability, and performance of critical business services.
Doubling of Userbase Overnight: Adapting to the sudden influx of new users, many of whom were unfamiliar with the merged IT infrastructure, demanded swift action and innovative solutions, such as implementing automated logging for known issues, introducing automated call back features, and redesigning the knowledge base to promote quick fixes for users calling and emailing the support desk.
Approach:
Modular Services adopted a proactive and innovative approach to overcome these challenges while maintaining pre-merger resolution times and ensuring uninterrupted service delivery.
Key strategies included:
Knowledge Base Redesign: Developing a comprehensive knowledge base of quick fixes to speed up issue resolution and reduce call handling times.
Self-Service Measures: Implementing self-service measures to empower advanced users to troubleshoot and resolve common issues within their departments, alleviating the burden on support teams.
Automated Call Back Features: Introducing automated call back features to promptly address user queries and concerns, enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Automated Logging for Common Issues: Streamlining issue logging processes by automating the logging of common issues, enabling support teams to focus on more complex challenges.
Effective Communication Framework: Setting up a robust communication framework to keep stakeholders informed, including a service status portal enabling users to monitor the status of services and planned maintenance activities.
Results:
Through our innovative approach and concerted efforts, Modular Services successfully navigated the complexities of the CMS, Nabarro, and Olswang merger, achieving the following outcomes:
Seamless IT service delivery throughout the merger process, with minimal disruption to operations, keeping resolution time SLAs within business target levels, despite the surge in user inquiries and support requests.
Empowered users with self-service tools and resources, enhancing overall efficiency and user satisfaction.
Established effective communication channels to keep stakeholders informed and engaged throughout the transition period.
Conclusion:
The successful support provided by Modular Services during the CMS, Nabarro, and Olswang merger shows our team’s commitment to delivering innovative and adaptive IT solutions, tailored to meet the unique challenges of our clients. By using our expertise and resources, we enabled a smooth transition and laid the foundation for a cohesive and efficient IT infrastructure to support the combined entity’s future growth and success.
