By Ari Kaplan with Jennifer Whittier and Tom Obermaier.
Ari Kaplan speaks with Jennifer Whittier and Tom Obermaier, the vice president of CRM and CEO, respectively, for SurePoint Technologies, a provider of financial and practice management software to law firms nationwide.
Ari Kaplan
Tell us about your background and the genesis of Cole Valley Software, where you served as president prior to the company’s sale to SurePoint.
Jennifer Whittier
Jeff Reade founded Cole Valley Software about 30 years ago. It has always been focused on legal marketing and customer relationship management (CRM). I met Jeff about 15 years ago, while serving as the marketing director rolling out ContactEase at a law firm in the Northeast. I learned a lot in the process, but failed with the implementation the first time around. The product itself was great, but the people and the processes were the challenge. As a marketing director, I really wanted to focus on CRM, and when I was about to leave the firm I reached out to Jeff. Cole Valley was rolling out its software to much larger firms and needed someone to oversee that effort. Who better to lead it than someone who failed the first time around? I began collaborating with Jeff, worked my way into different roles, and about five years ago became president.
Ari Kaplan
How does the acquisition of ContactEase and its inclusion in your portfolio further empower SurePoint’s customers?
Tom Obermaier
Based on my conversations with law firm managing partners, CRM capabilities are very much in demand. Leaders are all looking to grow revenue so CRM is an important add-on to what we have. In addition, the marriage between financial data and CRM is critical because CRM largely will tell you who to go after. Combining that with financial intelligence will give you the opportunity to understand what to go after. Merging who and what is the way forward for CRM and I think that is going to be a great benefit for SurePoint customers for an extended period of time. Finally, as we get into the age of AI-generated results, it is important for us to think about building a killer app that marries financial and CRM data on a predictive basis to help firms schedule and direct their own prioritization of efforts.
Ari Kaplan
Why was this the right time for a combination of this type?
Jennifer Whittier
A law firm needs the ability to access information quickly and easily. We had high adoption of our product, but we had a very aggressive roadmap that included moving to the cloud, to help law firms with limited resources, particularly in the marketing department, and needed a partner that understood where we were at the time. SurePoint has done everything so well and we’ve often looked at them as a role model for where we want to be so this came about quite naturally.
Ari Kaplan
How does customer relationship management align with profitability and financial performance?
Tom Obermaier
Firms focused on financial performance can apply CRM to help prioritize their most profitable matters, which will lead to a variety of predictive capabilities across prospects, or even existing customers, for what to sell, when, and who at the firm should reach. Combining profitability and financial performance with CRM is critical to giving ultimate success to our clients.
Ari Kaplan
How does your law firm experience influence your approach to customer service?
Jennifer Whittier
It influences every aspect of our customer service and goes all the way back to our sales process as well. When I am participating in a sale or talking with a firm about any reservations associated with introducing a CRM platform, such as concerns that lawyers may not adopt it, our contacts often don't know how to have the key conversation with their firm leaders. As soon as I tell them that I have been in their role and understand their challenge, the walls just come down and we have great conversations that ultimately identify the true business needs of the firm, which lead to how they can use these tools to solve those needs. I often advocate for leaders in the marketing department because having been on a similar team, I can relate to the isolation they feel from the rest of the firm’s management. One of the things that is exciting about SurePoint’s acquisition of ContactEase is that Tom [Obermaier] and I will have opportunities to influence the market and bring resources to help facilitate internal conversations about the concepts that management is asking their marketing teams for. We can also advocate for the marketing teams with the lawyers they support so that everyone is focused on efficiency and moving forward to get that whole picture of the client, which has been lacking.
Ari Kaplan
Have the expectations about the capabilities of legal technology changed among legal professionals as a result of the pandemic?
Tom Obermaier
I am seeing greater interest in technology to incorporate automated predictions to help solve the pain points of law firms, which are constantly challenged, especially during the pandemic, to deliver Big Law results on a Mid Law budget. That appeal has only been strengthened during the pandemic and I expect it to continue for decades to come.
Ari Kaplan
How has the shift toward remote and hybrid work impacted how professionals manage their contacts?
Jennifer Whittier
During the early days of the pandemic, certain law firms didn't have access to firm lists, yet they needed to communicate quickly and easily with their clients. It was surprising to the management of those that were unable to simply send an email to all of the firm’s clients to let them know they had gone remote and how they could reach their firm contacts. When we step back and think about what lawyers are doing day-to-day, they are managing relationships so contact data is more critical than ever. I have seen a bit of a back-to-basics approach in building a very strong foundation to manage relationships and communicate with clients, particularly by using contact information to not only help facilitate conversations internally, given that we're dispersed and not getting together as regularly as we did, but also to share information at the same time using one true source of record for that information within the firm.
Ari Kaplan
Where do you see legal tech headed as we emerge from the pandemic?
Tom Obermaier
Legal tech's has a bright future ahead. You will see more consolidation among the ERP providers. There will also be a greater degree of prediction and the ERP providers, especially those who are cloud-based like SurePoint, will lead that trend because they already have information they can utilize. I see great growth for law firms as they look to consolidate and automate many of their traditionally manual activities.
About the Author
Ari Kaplan (http://www.AriKaplanAdvisors.com) regularly interviews leaders in the legal industry and in the broader professional services community to share perspective, highlight transformative change, and introduce new technology at http://www.ReinventingProfessionals.com and his series at Legal Business World
Listen here to his conversation with Tom Obermaier and Jennifer Whittier.
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