Background: Aging Intranet Moves Firm to Replace In-House Firm Directory
This internationally recognized, Am Law 100 firm with 460 attorneys has multiple offices across the U.S. and UK. In xx the firm was coming up against the challenges of dated technology: the firm's SharePoint intranet was falling out of support and, as such, was slated to be retired but with a very tight timeline to replace it.
One of the key features of the firm's intranet was an in-house built firm directory, a fundamental capability within any law firm for experience discovery. A firm directory is utilized by all professionals within the firm to quickly drill down and identify very specific instances of experience, from bar admissions, clerkships and committees, to contact information inquiries like specific partner legal assistants, vital confidentiality rules like quickly displaying ethical walls, or general organizational chart visualizations that help the firm's professionals identify the right person for the right task.
Because law firms are specifically in the business of selling their people and their experience, understanding what people and what experience the firm has by way of its people is a critical aspect of the overall knowledge management strategy of the firm.
When it became urgent to modernize the firm's intranet, however, leadership came up against the question of whether to again build the firm directory in-house or go to market for an existing product that would provide long term support.
While the firm considered building in-house a custom firm directory, doing so would place a significant time and cost burden on the firm's IT team, not only in the short run to build the directory, but then the firm would also be in the position of having to maintain and provide ongoing support.
Considering the firm's aggressive timeline to upgrade their SharePoint environment and implement a new intranet, however, leadership reached out to their referral network for a market-ready solution and discovered ikaun and ikaun's firm directory capabilities.
Investigating ikaun's firm directly revealed an off-the-shelf solution that could seamlessly and effortlessly bolt into the firm's Office 365 and SharePoint online as well as connect easily with the firm's key systems such as its CRM, financial systems and public facing website through pre-built connecters to deliver a full functioning, full featured firm directory very quickly.
Because the ikaun package had the configurations ready to go, this meant an ikaun implementation would radically reduce the implementation time, therefore making it possible for the firm to meet its aggressive timeline to update and launch a new intranet in the short term. Long term, implementing ikaun would allow for a third party to take on the responsibility for continuous updates and upgrades pushed through the cloud.
Since ikaun has all the predefined, pre-configured data connectors for the web and for internal systems, ikaun is purpose-built for swift implementation. At the same time, ikaun is highly configurable and customizable to adapt to any firm's specific requirements. Based on these capabilities, the firm selected ikaun to provide its critical firm directory functionality.
The Ease of Implementing ikaun in 90 Days
ikaun coordinated with the firm's internal IT and development teams to ensure a seamless integration of the intranet, ikaun and the other features that were being developed for the intranet itself in an initial design period.
The ikaun team provided various page layouts and template designs as part of the styling of the site, and in line with the firm's brand guidelines. Search pages were configured to provide the ability to filter and locate people based on an array of filters such as office, title, teams, committees and more. In the last transition steps, ikaun transitioned the management of the solution over to the firm's IT team. In the last steps, ikaun and the firm's IT team had to sunset the existing intranet, wind that down and repoint the fir to the new environment.
When ikaun moved from design to implementation, ikaun created a custom menu that integrated with the firm' SharePoint environment that consisted of performing the data integration from their website as well as their internal HR system.
Because ikaun is so configurable, the ikaun team was able to quickly adapt to last minute changes from the firm, for instance how attorneys were assigned to support teams--a new concept for the firm-and which needed to be represented within the firm directory itself. While the concept itself was not new, the firm pivoted into a brand-new visualization of this support structure that required quick last-minute flexibility that was easily accommodated.
Results: Launching ikaun
ikaun was launched within the context of the larger new intranet launch in a seamless transition, primarily as a result of the pre-built nature of the ikaun platform but also because of the diligence and analysis of the ikaun team to anticipate any issues prior to the implementation itself.
Today, ikaun's firm directory has become the most used and appreciated module of the entire firm intranet, utilized by every profession within the firm and receiving the vast majority of the eyeballs that are sent to the intranet on a daily basis. Anyone looking for information regarding the people at the firm, whether it's by location or practice, any professional can quickly drill down and identify the firm's vast array of differentiating experience as well as concrete skills and daily needs such as locations of notaries.
Notably, ikaun's firm directory is also now the critical piece of technology for their internal support group for the first-through-third year attorneys, paralegals and other staff who assist these younger professionals understand the hierarchy of the firm and how to access the vastness of its experienced professionals.
Ultimately, the firm concluded: "Partnering with ikaun has transformed our approach to experience discovery. The seamless integration, coupled with the platform's flexibility and pre-built capabilities, allowed us to not only meet our aggressive timeline but also to enhance our intranet's functionality far beyond what we had envisioned. ikaun's firm directory has quickly become an indispensable tool across our offices, enabling our professionals to access and leverage our collective expertise with ease. This project has set a new standard for smooth and successful technology rollouts at our firm."
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Facing the retirement of its legacy SharePoint intranet and an aggressive upgrade timeline, the firm needed to replace its in-house firm directory. Rather than burdening its IT team with a costly custom build, the firm implemented ikaun. Utilizing pre-built connectors for Office 365, SharePoint, and internal HR systems, ikaun deployed a fully customized, cloud-supported directory in just 90 days. The platform quickly became the most used module on the firm's new intranet, providing professionals with an indispensable tool for finding specific expertise, locating notaries, and understanding the firm's organizational hierarchy.
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