Improved email marketing for law firms

It is well known in marketing that keeping in regular contact with your clients and prospects is the best way to create and maintain fruitful relationships.  But because of the difficulties and amount of time it takes to organise and send out regular email campaigns, many firms neglect this important function.

We have now extended our LegalPoint system, part of our AlphaPoint® range of solutions, to support regular email marketing to all your clients.  The target campaign audience can be defined by a number of different criteria, and can be sent as one-off mailings or as a regular cycle of emails based on the client or prospect interests.

Email marketing is one of the many benefits which can be had from our latest version of LegalPoint.  Other features which have been introduced include

• automation in creating and sending of invoices via email as an attachment
• automated maintenance of task lists for each type of matter or each sales opportunity to ensure that no important steps in the process are overlooked

AlphaPoint® Content Manager

We are pleased to announce the release of our AlphaPoint® Content Manager System for building complex content rich web sites.  Developed using .Net technology, it is designed to produce W3C compliant, well structured sites, with full support for internal search engine optimisation.

Now successfully for a number of clients, it can cater for large numbers of pages easily, and is specifically designed  for ease of use.  It can be integrated with on site search, e-commerce facilities and blogs.  For one client we were able to perform on site and external search engine optimisation and  in nine months the site page rank had risen from 2 to 5.

We also provided advice and support on the pay per click advertising campaign, including advice on keywords, landing pages and conversion strategies.  The results have been a steady growth in new business for our client even during the current difficult economic climate.

Investment Performance

We have been contracted by a major UK software company to manage the support, maintenance and enhancements to the investment performance package used by many of the major Investment firms in Europe.  This package measures and attributes  the performance of hundreds of billion pounds of investment funds every day.

The contract was awarded based on the combination of our business experience in the Investment field and Performance Measurement in particular, allied to our technical expertise in databases and related technologies.

Still Minding the Gap

Management Information Survey - Part 2

Following on from our initial high level survey (see below), the team from the London Business School embarked on a much more detailed survey with a selection of firms to look at the use and needs for MIS in greater depth.

• Firms reported MI systems as being moderately effective but below the optimal level. MIS for Distribution in particular would benefit from improvements, with AUM reporting rated the least effective (and least important) metric. The only areas rated very effective were Investment Performance and client Inflows and Outflows. All other areas were rated as only moderately or somewhat effective.
• The level of manual effort to produce MI was rated as Medium to High, and in Distribution the effort was ranked higher than for other functions. AUM ranked as the most manually intensive metric. Producing MIS averaged 2 people (FTE) per organisation, and in the highest case 10 FTE. However, this could still be an underestimate if one takes account the effort expended across the whole firm.
• Data reconciliation from different sources is a challenge, although data management is an area many have addressed with considerable success. Reporting is still primarily basic and reliant on spreadsheets.
• Over 50% of participants had some difficulties with reporting of profitability and accruing performance fees for MI.
• All respondents have plans to invest to improve MIS, the majority within the next 12 months. The top ranked MIS planned development was Financial MI, followed by Executive level MI.

We also asked for views on the most important trends within the industry that would impact the need for and provision of MIS. According to respondents, the major industry trend impacting MIS is the development of new products to meet the changing investment environment - the commoditisation of beta and quest for ever more elusive alpha, and repackaging of products to meet the needs of a range of investors. This will drive the information needs of all business functions, to ensure successful manufacturing and efficient distribution, while maintaining profits and controlling risks.

Mind the Gap

Management Information Survey - Part 1

Alpha Analytic commissioned participants from the London Business School MBA programme to conduct a benchmarking survey on the provision of Management Information within Investment firms. Over 60 firms contributed to the survey, providing a good cross section of the industry and a meaningful sample size on which to base our findings:

• Near unanimous agreement that MIS are important in the investment business.
• Almost half of respondents are not fully satisfied with their MIS.
• Close to a quarter of respondents do not know how their MIS stacks up against the competition.
• On average, MIS effectiveness in reporting on Investment Performance and Risk, Client Satisfaction/Retention, and Key Client Analysis falls significantly below the level of importance that firms place on it.
• Respondents are content with the level of detail and timing of MIS reports.
• Management information systems are not well integrated.
• Report presentation quality needs improvement.
• There is widespread reliance on manual processes and spreadsheets.
• Access to management information needs to better permeate all levels of the organisation.