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When was the last time you stopped and thought seriously about your PMS and what it could do or needs to do to improve your firms ongoing business intel or efficiency?

Some of the questions we have frequently been asked over the last couple of years have related to linking marketing driven data/information with a firm’s PMS.

Let’s consider a key area of spend within the marketing budget – PPC (Pay Per Click). Few firms adopting this marketing approach have very little tangible evidence of what the actual ROI (Return On Investment) is. The simple reason behind this is that many firms, not all we hasten to add, take the time to track inbound leads and their source of acquisition, let alone then measure the volume and ultimate conversion rate once manual intervention in the office happens. Then of course there’s the question of how much revenue did that lead generate? This can all be autonomously tracked by your PMS.

Next.

Think about all the leads generated by your website. How much do you know about them and what added value could this information carry? Another great example of potential missed opportunity and that valuable follow up action to allow you to cross sell your services – which is a much easier task selling to a known lead than an uninformed cold call. Wouldn’t you like to know what your audience has engaged with and is obviously interested in? This can all be automated to your PMS as well.

Then, if one of your visitors takes the time to complete any of your web forms with a view to engaging your services, what do you do next? Our guess is that you probably receive an inbound email notifying you of the enquiry and then have to record the details via manual processing i.e. keying all the details into your PMS, and then someone sends an email to acknowledge receipt of the enquiry. Surely if this could all happen behind the scenes and the process was automated it would save hours of admin time? This kind of very simple automation starts to take away human error and the mismanagement of sensitive data and provides a much greater peace of mind in the knowledge that a good piece of your client on-boarding process was taken care of. Again, this can all be automated directly into and via your PMS.

These are just a few examples of what you could consider as simple hygiene factors when it comes to website/PMS integration and all of which are now achievable from Accesspoint. These are the things that can make or break your competitive edge giving you that vital information for a head start.

Not restricted to the above there’s lots more you should also consider.

Driving accurate and meaningful data directly to your PMS means you can now also get valuable marketing reports and statistics quickly at your fingertips. With this kind of information your direct marketing activities should become far more targeted and meaningful to your recipients, encouraging more cross selling and in turn more business – you now have campaigns that can be followed up and measured.

Aside from your website, mobile apps also play a part in this data driven PMS centric environment and I would encourage all law firms to adopt their own app. Having your brand in front of your clients all the time carries obvious benefits and can allow you to make your client experience even more personal and data rich – all GDPR compliant.

This is obviously an extension of your website and can also utilise some of the aforementioned topics. Apps are fast becoming a powerful marketing tool, not to mention the direct communication benefits that they have to offer for your clients and as we are all starting to see they are becoming key features in our future. Ignore them at your peril as others won’t and they are set to be another very attractive shop window.