Client Intelligence: IT, Marketing and Library Services Unite

Picture if you will a software system that provides information solutions to law firms based on how they need and use information rather than the one-size-fits-all approach currently employed by most information providers ' a system that provides lawyers with client oriented information specifically tailored to the way individual lawyers work, and takes the “flood” of available Web-based information and leverages this multi-sourced data. Information needs to be pulled together from various resources within a firm. Most requests for existing client or new business information begins with the marketing department, whose assignment goes something like this: “We want to know more about our client X. We want to have an edge on getting to pitch for new business from client X. Client X will not think of us for this business unless we demonstrate that we have specialized knowledge about its business in this area so gather all the information you can including who our competition will be.”

The marketing department begins the process of gathering the information using sources from the Internet. In addition, the CRM database is in play to see who knows who at client X and who will have the stronger connection to the client (it's not always the relationship partner). Enter the library, whose role it is to provide more in depth research on Client X.