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Microsoft Dynamics 365 and legal360 for Legal Practice
Introduction
Law firms are increasingly adopting a more sales-oriented approach to enhance their client and business development operations. Leveraging technology to uncover client relationships, foster collaboration, streamline workflows, and deliver intelligent insights is becoming a priority to improve business development (BD) effectiveness.
Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Sales, a cloud-based CRM platform, paired with legal360 by HSO, offers a tailored solution for law firms. This platform encompasses Marketing and Communication, Business Development, Experience, and Relationship Intelligence, all supported by automated contact data management. Crucially, lawyers can engage fully with CRM, BD, and marketing without needing to manually add or update contacts, saving valuable time for them and their support teams.
What is Dynamics 365?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales is a robust, cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. As part of the broader Dynamics 365 platform, which spans areas like Finance and HR, it automates and streamlines business processes. It’s further enhanced by the Power Platform suite, enabling low-code/no-code development to easily automate tasks still handled manually or through spreadsheets. Additionally, firms can leverage Microsoft Azure AI services to build custom AI applications, extending CRM capabilities, enhancing client service, or even delivering legal work more efficiently.
A critical complement to Dynamics 365 Sales is Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, a data and analytics platform that enables organizations to unify and analyze enterprise-wide data from various sources - including non-Microsoft applications like Elite, Aderant, Intapp, custom apps, or even document content. By integrating these tools, firms can gain deeper operational and client service insights, empowering more targeted and effective engagement strategies.
With Dynamics 365, organizations can:
- Enhance customer engagement and drive growth: Use Customer Insights to build detailed customer profiles and personalize interactions, enabling BD teams and partners to deliver value-driven engagements.
- Foster collaboration across departments and practices: Connect BD, marketing, and partners through shared insights for a unified approach to client engagement.
- Centralize data from multiple sources: Consolidate information from CRM, ERP, third-party applications, social media, and other channels into a single view, enriching the data context for BD teams.
- Gain actionable insights: Leverage AI-driven analytics to evaluate new business opportunities (e.g., RFPs), predict client service needs, and forecast revenue with greater accuracy.
Why HSO and Legal360?
Microsoft’s industry-leading investment continues to extend Dynamics 365’s position as the most advanced CRM platform. However, it is the role of partners like HSO to adapt and enhance the core Dynamics 365 functionality to meet the unique needs of specific industries.
legal360 by HSO incorporates over 2,000 individual enhancements to the Dynamics 365 Sales platform, refined over a decade in collaboration with clients and Microsoft. We continuously innovate to tailor Microsoft’s latest advancements for law firms. For instance, our most recent development extends Copilot AI to automatically draft Experience narratives by extracting Matter content through integrations with Elite 3E and Aderant, further streamlining workflows.
Who Uses Dynamics 365 and Legal360 by HSO?
Legal360 by HSO, built on Dynamics 365, is tailored for larger commercial firms, particularly multi-site and international organizations. It is designed to support a wide range of roles within a firm:
Business Development
Manage long-term pursuits, create pitches and proposals with ready-to-use staff experience bios, and oversee business plans, referral tracking, and referral partner management.
Why Choose Dynamics 365 and legal360 by HSO?
Overcoming Challenges for Partners, Practice Leaders, Business Development, and Marketing.
Marketing Challenges:
- Maintaining an Accurate and Comprehensive Contact Database: Legal360 automates contact capture and updates directly from lawyers’ Outlook emails, ensuring an up-to-date, accurate contact database. This eliminates lawyer effort and significantly reduces or eliminates the need for Data Quality Management (DQM) intervention.
- Understanding Client Needs and Preferences: Marketing teams can leverage service history insights to target clients effectively. For example: “Invite HR directors at clients where we have not yet provided employment services.”
- Efficient Campaign Management: Simplify the management of complex events with repeatable campaign templates and workflows, streamlining operations and improving consistency.
- Executing Multi-Step Invitations: Utilize a fully integrated eMarketing platform to send multi-step email invitations and create tailored email journeys, complete with real-time response analytics.
- Accurate Campaign ROI Analytics: With Dynamics 365 and legal360, marketing professionals can measure campaign ROI precisely by tracking attendees, pipeline values, and business won, enabling data-driven decisions.
Business Development Challenges
- Identifying and Understanding Client Relationships: Legal360’s Relationship360 continuously monitors lawyer contact relationships, enabling effective client cross-selling and the identification of new client opportunities.
- Pipeline Visibility and Forecasting: Gain a clear view of new business opportunities by practice area or client. Leverage historical success data to assess risks and focus efforts where they’re most needed.
- Winning with Best Practices and Compliance: Legal360’s built-in, visual workflows—customized for the firm’s practices or work types—guide BD teams, partners, and contributors through pursuits and proposal production. This structured approach maximizes win potential while ensuring compliance with firm policies.
- Seamless Team Collaboration: With Dynamics 365 fully integrated into Microsoft Teams, the extended BD team can collaborate in real-time using a dedicated Teams workspace connected to live client or opportunity records.
IT Management:
- Unified Data Management: Dynamics 365 centralizes data, enabling IT to consolidate information into a single platform making it easier to manage firm-wide data securely.
Compliance and Security: Built on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure, both Dynamics 365 and legal360 provide enterprise-grade security features, ensuring client data protection and regulatory compliance.
Scalability and Maintenance: As a cloud-based solution, Dynamics 365 reduces infrastructure costs, offering scalability that grows with the firm’s needs.
Foley and Lardner a global leading law firm implemented legal360 engage on Microsoft Dynamics 365 as the firm’s new business development, marketing, and relationship intelligence platform. Foley used the InterAction CRM tool from LexisNexis for years, primarily for managing marketing lists. However, limited user adoption led to stale and inaccurate data, and the tool's business development capabilities fell short.
“legal360 behaves like a Microsoft product – it’s very intuitive to use and the amount of training required is quite low. If you are familiar with Microsoft products, you have already gotten over the first hurdle.”
Victoria Gregory, Director of Marketing Systems & Operations
Where and When to Use Dynamics 365 and legal360 by HSO
Dynamics 365 and legal360 by HSO are ideal for law firms looking to modernize and transition to a cloud-based platform that empowers:
- Remote Collaboration: Enables secure access from anywhere, supporting hybrid and remote work.
- Client Engagement: Keeps teams connected with clients through integrated relationship management and communication tools.
- Continuous Improvement: Allows firms to scale operations, add new capabilities, and adapt to evolving client needs without significant system overhauls.
Transform Your Legal Practice with Dynamics 365 and legal360 by HSO
Microsoft Dynamics 365, combined with the legal industry-specific features of legal360 by HSO, empowers law firms to modernize their technology, streamline business processes, and enhance client experiences. By adopting these solutions, firms gain a competitive edge, deliver exceptional value to clients, and foster sustainable growth and innovation.
Explore more on how you can leverage the latest cloud and AI solutions by Microsoft and HSO.