Bristows improves analytical reporting and accelerates cash flow with Qlik.

London law firm Bristows is utilising a Qlik legal solution from Informance to speed up its time-recording process, improve billing and accelerate cash flow throughout the firm. It’s Qlik legal dashboards, developed by Informance, give partners and staff all the financial analytical data they need to make faster, more informed business decisions.

Bristows is a full service, commercial law firm serving innovative companies and industry leaders around the world from its office in London. The firm has an international focus with approximately 80% of its clients being overseas, so for partners, having access to accurate and up-to-the minute client information and being able to collaborate with stakeholders is vital.

Prior to installing its Qlik solution Bristows’ method for delivering information to its partners and staff was inadequate, time-consuming and not particularly well suited to driving behaviours in the way that the firm required. This led Bristows to select Qlik as its new business intelligence reporting solution for delivering faster, more accurate information across the firm in a more analytical and visual way.

Jerry Merton, partner and chief financial officer for Bristows says: “We wanted a business intelligence platform that would enable partners and staff to manage their own reporting and analysis and one that would deliver a more visual representation of our data to really drive home, with impact, the key areas of the business that needed focusing on.  I’d heard good things about Informance and its Qlik legal solutions and when they demonstrated the Qlik financial dashboards they were able to display our data immediately through an interface that was both powerful and user friendly”.

Gavin Hogg, financial controller for Bristows says: “With Qlik the finance team can engage more effectively with the rest of the business as the digital dashboards display targeted information, whilst highlighting any issues before they arise which enables us to develop an action plan to resolve them.  This has meant we’ve been able to accelerate the conversion of work into cash”.

Jerry Merton says: “Qlik has totally changed our approach to data analysis and has already delivered a noticeable improvement in lock-up, debtors and work-in-progress. Qlik has also empowered us to share better quality information with our key stakeholders in a timelier manner, enabling them to focus more clearly on what the business requires them to do”.

Since the launch of the initial dashboards, Bristows has added two extra pieces of functionality that can be accessed by the partners daily. The first is an historical billing page that enables individual partners and management to review billing totals for the past twenty-four months, split by client, which has proved to be very valuable for the marketing team when targeting client promotions. The second is a time-recording monitoring tool which delivers daily time-recording information by fee-earner and has improved the speed of time-recording, enhanced the billing process and accelerated cash flow, as previously information had to be requested from the finance team but now partners can see it immediately and use it to follow up with an individual fee-earner.

Gavin Hogg says: “With the Qlik time-recording tool in place, fee-earners are now aware that the partners have their daily information which has improved financial results and encouraged better behaviours”.

Jerry Merton concludes: “Qlik has totally changed our approach to data analysis and information delivery and I am looking forward to where it can take us in the future.”

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