by Jeffrey
D. Zbar
An attorney's office in Tennessee reduces its paperwork and makes
it easier for clients to get the information they need. A Georgia
accounting firm keeps traveling employees in touch. A Florida
property-management comany saves itself time and legal trouble by
improving its human-resources processes.
And they're all using the web to do it.
Most service-based businesses don't expect much from the Web and
don't bother to do much with it. While catalogers and retailers
hoping to sell on line have e-tailing, professional service
providers like doctors, real estate developers, or lawyers --
essentially anyone without a tangible widget that can be dropped
into an online "shopping cart" -- are left wondering how to make the
Web work for them.
A few have found ways. Like e-mail servers and cell phones, the
Web is just one more technology that can help simplify business
processes. Service professionals can now find services to help
manage clients and bolster office functions like human resources or
accounting. "Web-based solutions can make business professionals
more effective," says Wally Bock, a technology consultant based in
Wilmington, N.C. "Technology lets you do the stuff that you do best
and more of it. It lets you spend more time on billable hours, and
lets you reduce the staff necessary for quality service."
But there's no magic bullet out there for service businesses. In
order to use the Web well, they need more sweat than does a retailer
who can sign up for a canned storefront. Knowing tools exist to
improve the operation only helps if someone within the shop realizes
that something needs improvement, adds Ellen Caravello, managing
director with e-techStrategies LLP, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based Web
consultancy. The goal should be to tap available tools to improve
the sales organization, reduce overhead, make the operation more
efficient, and connect with customers.
To identify weaknesses in the organization, Caravello suggests
tracking the sales, marketing, and administrative processes within
the company to see where efficiencies may be lacking. Bring in
managers from given areas to discuss their problems or concerns, and
tap their ideas for improvement. Identify what tangible results will
justify the potentially considerable costs.
Client Services
One day last year, Greg Siskind saw a
news story about how the Social Security Administration was allowing
U.S. taxpayers to log on to monitor their payments into the system.
Then Siskind thought about online banking, which was allowing
customers to safely call up very specific, confidential information.
All this led up to an insight about the problems with his own firm's
processes.
The 50-person law firm of Siskind, Susser, Haas & Devine in
Memphis, Tenn., found itself needlessly burning hours on rote tasks.
The clerical staff spent hours each week inputting information from
client forms into the firm's database. Forms often were faxed to the
firm after being filled out by hand and faxed back by clients. Error
rates were high, and additional work was needed to correct the
mistakes, Siskind says.
What's more, when staff members weren't busy inputting data, they
were often fielding calls from clients checking the status of their
cases or requesting copies or summaries of their current bills. In
all, Siskind suspects hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of hours
were wasted each year on these efforts. The firm works on a fee
basis and not by the billable hour, and Siskind knew that
streamlining and automating any process to make the practice more
efficient would also make it more profitable.
"This is very much a paperwork-driven type of practice," Siskind
says. "We get rewarded when we can figure out how to do things
faster and more effectively for the client."
Clients benefit from companies that use the Web, according to
Wally Bock, because they can access information automatically and
send information they need to communicate electronically. "The tools
can move data entry to the person who owns the data or provide basic
information in a self-service search tool," he says.
In this case, Siskind's law firm enlisted its clients to
eliminate their data-entry logjam. "It just occurred to me that
people were always driving us crazy calling us to look up
information that's just sitting on our system and that we were
spending hours typing in information that they could be inputting
themselves," Siskind says.
Acting as the firm's Webmaster, Siskind posted a variety of the
most common immigration forms used by the firm's clients, including
families seeking residency or corporations in need of visas for
foreign workers. The client now fills out and submits the
appropriate form. The document is automatically directed to a staff
member, who then directs the form or application to the right path:
either for review, into the client's file, or for submission to the
appropriate government service. Clients also have password protected
access to the company's Web site (www.visalaw.com), which
allows them to log on to view their own applications and other
limited information.
To alleviate the volume of calls from clients seeking updates,
Siskind chose ILW.com, an immigration law Web portal that
lets clients track the status of their immigration cases. Using a
case number, a client can track the case's progress -- without
calling the firm, Siskind says. His company also uses
OpenAir.com for client invoicing. Clients receive their
invoices via email or the postal service, or they can log on to view
the latest invoice. This eases the load on the bookkeeping
department and reduces the cost of mailing.
The services and tools closely match Siskind's own style, he
says. With a simple layout and no heavy applets to slow downloads,
Siskind's global clients, who may have dial-up connections through
older computers, can enjoy quick downloads from his site and the
others he uses. "It's very much 1996 technology," he says. "That
keeps the site simple, and simple has turned out to be better for
us. Clients want speed and quality. Through the use of these
applications, we can improve both."
To date, the firm has spent just under $50,000 on the process,
though Siskind anticipates more expenses down the road. He hopes to
bring an IT employee on staff full-time to handle site services and
network functions. Today, Siskind and another attorney continue to
handle much of the Web service for the practice, including writing
the electronic newsletter and updating the site.
Siskind says he feels somewhat hamstrung that he doesn't have the
deep budget that larger firms have to explore new technology. On the
other hand, "Big firms may have a lot of money to throw at these
things, but they also have committees," he says. "I've always
thought that small firms have an advantage in that they move faster
and create more customized applications. Big firms have less
customization, so it may not be ideally suited to the practice."
Everyone Accounted For
With several accountants
traveling around the country, the support staff at the accounting
firm Davis, Nichols & Associates LLP in Valdosta, Ga. often
found themselves playing "a whispering game," says managing partner
Tom Davis. Accountants would call in seeking updates to their
calendars, contact data, or other information that resided on the
company computer. Support staff would stop what they were doing to
ferret out the information and relay it back to the accountant.
Davis recalls as recently as several years ago having to fetch
information about scheduling, client services that needed to be
performed, or other pertinent data. If he was working in the field,
Davis would have to dial into the office to get information. His
assistant might have to call another staffer who could find the data
and call Davis back with the answers. The traveling accountant was
often without vital information until the staffer could fish it out
or get back in touch, says Davis, who travels 130 days each year and
manages the practice as much from his laptop as from his desk in
Valdosta.
"The workflow had a fairly long time span associated with it," he
recalls. Besides being a time drain on support staff, it sapped
efficiency and became a strain on the ability to serve clients,
Davis says. Clients expect more service, and firms are trying to
deliver without having to staff up, he says. "We're fighting all
these fires because we don't have the people," he says. "At some
point it begins to hurt the delivery of the service."
In 1997, Davis began searching for a tool that could seamlessly
link him with the office. "Firms are getting more adept, and they
want to have this information with them," he says. The solution he
sought would go beyond using such Web-based tools commonly used by
his peers for client support and interaction, including NetMeeting,
Timbuktu, Citrix, and WebEx, he says. "It's more than contact or
personal information management," he says. "It's managing and
combining several different data sources that flow into a single
point that help you effectively manage the information and
relationships."
Davis was not alone in his need for remote access. At the time
that he was looking for a solution, the American Institute of
Certified Public Accountants was considering a similar tool for
other CPAs. The result at the AICPA is CPA2Biz
(www.cpa2biz.com), a remote interaction tool and ASP
scheduled for a mid-2001 launch that will allow small- to mid-size
firms to mimic the client service acumen of their larger brethren.
The CPA2Biz suite will manage a variety of accounting and
administrative services on a Web-based infrastructure for CPAs and
small businesses, says John Hudson, CPA, senior director, and head
of marketing strategy for CPA2Biz.
In the end, though, Davis created his own system. Designed as a
LotusNotes-style application, it communicates with Microsoft
Exchange and is similar to Act! or Goldmine. The system also links
with other information sources and databases, including time and
billing packages and telephone billing and rolls them into a
single-view platform. It worked so well for him that he's now
looking to market it to other accounting firms as a Web-based
application.
For Davis, any Web-based tool must offer all the capabilities
that are available internally as quickly as if the users were
in-house. "We are using the Internet to allow remote staff to access
information like they would in the office," he says. They also must
do it at a price that's reasonable for the small to mid-size
practice.
Now, when Davis or his partners are on the road, they can access
the firm's Web site, client information, calendars, and a variety of
data that previously had to come via a phone call to a staffer. For
in-office users, the system uses caller ID to identify inbound calls
and bring up the desired client information on the company computer:
case profile, last activity or correspondence, or even the bill or
receivables.
Davis compares this element to the local pizza-delivery chain,
whose system uses caller ID to call up past customers' names,
orders, and addresses. In either case, the result is the same:
customers are served, time is saved, and the company operates more
efficiently. "That pizza technician is not wildly scribbling your
order, and we're not trying to retrieve information on the fly," he
says. "All these things are coming together to help us be as
efficient as we can and make sure our clients are being taken care
of."
Getting Back To Business
Danburg Management Corp. of
Boca Raton, Fla., has 24 staffers and more than $10 million in
annual revenues from commercial real estate development and
management, but the firm's admitted Achilles' heel was its human
resources department: It didn't have one.
When either interviewing candidates or signing a new employee,
staff accountant Karen Wildstein handled the whole process. She had
to fish through dated forms in the file cabinet or call an outside
HR consultant to get newer ones. Neither she nor anyone else had the
time to make sure employees were properly prepared and informed of
company policies, and the double-duty taxed Wildstein's attention
and cluttered up her schedule. It also could have led to costly
mistakes and potentially a lawsuit, says president Jamie Danburg.
"As an employer, these are things I have to worry about," he says.
"We're a multimillion dollar corporation, and I can't afford to get
sued for reprimanding or terminating someone."
Danburg had heard concerns from Wildstein that she was spending
up to two hours a week on issues unrelated to her primary job of
managing the company finances. "We're a high-dollar-volume company,
but we're reasonably lean in personnel," he says. "We have a
constant HR need, but we can't afford to hire a full-time HR
person."
In 2000, the company turned to Setnor Byer Insurance & Risk,
a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based risk management company, and began
using their online human relations and risk management service, The
Human Equation (www.thehumanequation.com).
Danburg Management now has its own forms and site on a
password-protected area, and Wildstein now downloads the employment
forms or packages she needs or reviews the site's advice columns and
information on hiring, firing, and a host of other issues. When
Wildstein needs an application or tax ID form, she heads on line and
downloads one from the site. If Wildstein has a question on policy
or the law, she can check the frequently asked questions area or
call for advice. When employees are hired, Wildstein can request
driver's license information and credit and criminal background
checks. Making sure employees' records are clean can help keep a
company's insurance rates low.
Wildstein now steers new hires and current staff to the site to
review Danburg Management's employment policy. If a question arises
about whether a hire was informed about company policy, Danburg can
rest assured everything was covered, he says. "It's all there
automatically, and it's the most current laws or regulations on the
books," Danburg says. "It has helped very much for us to have a
cohesive operating manual. Nothing falls through the cracks."
The service has brought professional HR acumen and policies to a
company that for years operated that department loosely, Danburg
says. Previously, requests for time off were met with Danburg's
mood; if he felt like it or if the office seemed to be running
smoothly at the time, he may have granted the request. "There wasn't
a cohesiveness or policy to it," he says. "We weren't able to keep
track of those situations."
By following procedures, the company knows that new hires have
been told about company practices and policies, which limits
liability and exposure. Documentation is backed up, and policies are
followed. "Policy is on the Web site," Danburg says. "No one
questions that. If something were to blow up, we've dotted the Is
and crossed the Ts."
Danburg spends approximately $2,000 a year on the service and
feels it's money well spent. "A couple thousand bucks a year --
that's nothing compared to what we have at stake," he says.
Wildstein now spends around one hour a month on HR and has more time
to concentrate on what the company really does -- imagine that.
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