At OneAdvanced we support eighty-nine of the top hundred law firms in the UK to provide world-class legal services. Our customers and their clients rely on the latest and highest quality software solutions for secure and accurate document management and billing, ensuring the best possible value for legal clients. Astrid Bowser is passionate about providing those solutions to our customers in her role as Senior Product Manager. We spoke to her to learn more about her passion and dedication to quality customer service.
Can you tell us more about your journey to OneAdvanced?
In total, I have enjoyed 14 years of experience working in the Legal Sector. I joined OneAdvanced three years ago as a Senior Project Manager, supplementing my sector experience with time working with our legal sector software solutions. I currently manage our Time Capture solution, which allows our customers to accurately record billable hours, producing accurate and timely bills for their clients.
Can you tell us more about the Time Capture solution?
Time Capture is one of the products within the Legal and Professional Services Division and it is a best of breed time capture and validation solution that has been serving the market in its various guises for about 30 years. Its sole objective is to increase the number of billable time entries, maximise performance of a firm and improve realization rates. If more validated billable time is captured, the more likely it is to be paid by the client this law firm is serving.
We were very fortunate to hear from one customer that adopted time capture, who confirmed that each team member only had to find one additional minute of billable time per day, and the solution has paid for itself.
What do you enjoy most about working with the legal sector?
Legal professionals are experts in their field and highly qualified, capable, and caring individuals, because, ultimately, they are trained to help their clients resolve very specific problems. At OneAdvanced, we match that by providing software solutions to fix specific problems or address specific needs. I love working with the legal profession, and it's because of those passionate people.
How do you ensure the product meets the needs of the customers that it serves?
It's simple really: continuous research, continuous questions, and continuous listening. We listen to what our customers are saying, listen to what the market's saying, listen to what our networks are saying. Having a holistic view of all this information allows us to make the most informed decisions for the direction of evolving the product.
You can never stop listening, there's never too much feedback. If you can identify trends in particular feedback and what you learn, you can make better-informed decisions for the product.
What are the key challenges and the opportunities you see in the legal sector?
Spurred on by the pandemic, there has been a big drive to adopt new technologies in the legal sector, and there has been a marked increase in our customer base. Most importantly, there has been a shift towards cloud adoption, where on-premise solutions were more common before. We speak to some incredible lawyers and very talented legal professionals, but the transition from those traditional solutions to more modern SaaS solutions is a difficult process in any organisation.
That’s where the key challenge lies – in ensuring quality change management. By having a great process, we can ensure that our customers are supported every step of the way, and they can overcome any challenges on that journey. That gives us an opportunity to provide new and next generation solutions to this critical sector.
How have you been inspired by your customers?
I'm fortunate to have good working relationships with a lot of our key customers who use our product. One of whom is absolutely meticulously focused on what it means to record time for a law firm. He works with a large international law firm, and he has, through his own analysis from his role within the organisation, curated millions of data points and put that into his own research papers to better serve his law firm. He's candidly shared that research with me with the goals that if this research helps me improve a time capture solution, then that better serves him as a customer. But also, it helps to improve the product so that multiple customers benefit, as well as their clients who receive accurate and timely bills along with quality, reliable legal services.
We’d like to thank Astrid for sharing her invaluable insights with us, and for all the work she does to support our customers. We have a great team working with our legal sector customers, and you can learn more about how we support them in conversation with Tashan Everett.