Leading US law firm WilmerHale and one other large international practice have both appointed Copitrak for UK and European installations of its next generation eClipse system, starting with their London offices. The substantial wins have helped the cost recovery specialist to its most successful year yet while further consolidating its position as the cost recovery partner of choice.

Copitrak can now reflect not just on a healthy acquisition rate but on a level of client retention that would be the envy of any supplier, with just two defections over the past decade. Managing director Stewart Hadley is naturally proud of that achievement and feels, despite increasing competition, that the firm is well set to emulate that record over the next ten years:

“I’m not sure that I would have been as confident three years ago simply because the market was changing and we had to change with it. And it wasn’t just superficial stuff, it was really root and branch. Clients were no longer satisfied doing business with box-shifters; they started looking for added value, for suppliers to adopt the behaviour of more mainstream IT providers where a consultative pre-sales approach, agreed performance standards, 24/7 support  and an on-going relationship were the norm. For Copitrak, that meant bringing in new people into a new, improved infrastructure, and putting process through the business to manage everything from prospecting to implementation, training to troubleshooting.”

Key developments included the appointment of an experienced account manager to maintain closer relationships with clients; the introduction of extra resources and best practice methodologies to the project teams; the generation of a continuous client feedback loop on product functionality and future enhancements; the leveraging of the global office structure to deliver ‘follow the sun’ support; and the expansion of a cost recovery/cost management solution set that would give law firms optimum choice and not railroad them down one particular track.

Stewart Hadley continues: “The changes have been instrumental in us meeting the challenges posed by a changing cost recovery landscape. Just a few years ago, it was just about copies. Now we’re dealing with a far more intricate matrix of disbursements, from mobile calls to online precedents, and a shift in document production techniques. For example, where once a firm would have copied a file, now it’s more likely that it will print it, so there need to be mechanisms to capture print and recover print impressions. With that complexity has come a growing client need for cost management and analysis so that they can better understand where their costs lie. Throw in expense management as well and today’s cost recovery specialist needs to be a very different beast to those of even a few years ago.”

Stewart has been a keen observer of how PMS suppliers have reinvented themselves in recent times. He comments: “It’s interesting that where once they announced themselves as hardware and software resellers, now they focus exclusively on solution and service provision. Over the last three years we have worked hard to make the same transition and the level of new client wins and upgrade business from retained clients would seem to validate our decision to go through our own spot of reinvention.  One recent installation merited the comment from an IT manager that it was ‘the best implementation that he had ever witnessed from a supplier’. Another commented on the quality of our search engine technology saying that it was the best she had ever seen in the cost recovery field. Objective feedback like this hopefully indicates that we are getting things very right - our challenge now is to sustain this quality and keep up that amazing retention record. Check back in ten years!”