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Product Review: DTE Enterprise Time Entry Software

By Swen Nielsen
August 26, 2003

Founded in 1890, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey L.L.P. is one of the largest U.S.-based international law firms with more than 750 attorneys and 26 offices strategically located around the world.

Our timekeepers' time had always been tracked in CMS, our time and billing system. As the firm looked for ways to improve the time entry process, it became clear that an easier and more flexible time entry solution was needed. We felt that if we had a tool where our timekeepers could enter time when they were disconnected (eg, flying or from a hotel), that it would increase utilization. At the time, some of our attorneys were tracking hours in Excel or Word when on the road, and then e-mailing their time to their secretaries to enter into CMS. Others would wait until they returned to the office to enter their time. We thought it would be more effective, and that billable hours would be more accurately captured, if our attorneys could track their time while it was still fresh in their minds.

We started looking for a time entry vendor late in 2000. We have some administrators in our firm who had used Advanced Productivity Software's DTE at other firms and liked it. We also got good feedback from existing DTE users at the CMS user conference. We saw a demo of the SQL-based DTE Enterprise and we thought it would meet our needs. Coming from a technical background, I was especially concerned about network traffic on the WAN. The way that APS structured DTE's synchronization impressed me. They clearly designed it with speed in mind and gave consideration to minimizing network traffic. We made the decision to implement DTE in the third quarter of 2001.

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