Feature

FEATURE

Creating an Annual IT Plan

Developing a strategy for a solid technological future.

By Anthony M. Cocco

In many law firms, Information Technology planning is an activity that isn’t very well understood. Hence, IT planning is either done spur of the moment or is completely ignored. This is for a number of reasons. Most prominent is the fact that attorneys usually are not IT trained and many are not knowledgeable in the area of technology planning. In addition, many attorneys are too busy to spend the necessary time to do proper planning. Some administrators get involved in this planning, but in many cases, IT expenditures don’t get put high on the priority list from the budgetary perspective. The goal of this article is to explain the necessity of performing IT planning and to help your firm create its own IT plan.

Why Plan?

In addition to the old dictum that failing to plan is planning to fail, there are many other reasons for a law firm to create an IT plan. Unfortunately, in many firms, technology planning is handled haphazardly. For example, perhaps there is an attorney or group of attorneys who, because they are really good at Microsoft Word or computer use in general, find themselves on the technology committee. It’s not that they have had any special training or knowledge, but perhaps they tinker around at home with a PC or wireless local area network. They often are brought into meetings to deal with the consultant, but rarely do more than work through issues of malcontent or other service concerns. Usually, they don’t have the budgetary power or influence necessary to step back and create a long-term solution. By nature, their role is limited and ultimately set up for discontent. It’s not the ideal situation.

Proper creation of an IT plan offers some important advantages. For example, it increases the possibility that investments in technology will reap a positive rate of return. Also, knowing the firm’s technology needs in advance will lead to the proper selection of hardware and software. Different practice areas require different solutions. Therefore, by thorough planning, a firm reduces the risk of one-size-fits-all IT solutions that solve some problems well, but leave many others unresolved.

Careful IT planning reduces the knowledge gap between tech implementers and end users. It also reduces the knowledge gap of the decision makers by keeping them involved, educated and knowledgeable about the IT solutions the firm uses. Also, with an IT plan in place, as the firm progresses through the year, most IT decisions already have been made, approved and are in process. This eliminates confusion during the year about resources applied to certain people or departments, and provides justification for all expenditures. Planning allows the firm to better evaluate the success or failure of its IT initiatives. Finally, IT is integrally linked with customer service, and proper planning will enable a firm to capture any missed opportunities in service or other strategic areas. Strong technology implementations can add the following benefits:

make a firm indispensable to its clients;
help a firm get new clients;
help a firm recruit and retain great employees;
add to the day-to-day operational sanity of a firm’s culture;
help a firm carry on after a disaster; and
assist with valuable records management.

Participation and Roles in Plan Development

If there is one thing for certain, the whole process of IT planning and implementation can’t work without high-level decision-making support and guidance. It’s true the underlying information gathered during the plan’s creation is critically important. All is for nothing if the necessary resources for success are not provided. Top management must understand the aforementioned goals and benefits of IT planning. If management is apathetic or dismissive of the importance of this process, then it’s doomed from the start.

A good place to start when putting together your firm’s strategic plan is forming a committee and gathering information. The first question normally raised is who should be on the IT planning committee? It should not simply be attorneys and staff who understand what the consultant is talking about or understand computers. Even more important is having individuals on the committee who understand the firm culture and operations — how the firm works to provide services to clients and make a profit. In the beginning, it’s as much about business planning as it is about computers and technology. The committee should be a diverse group of attorneys, staff, firm management, IT consultants and valued clients. All practice groups should have a seat, and all firm employees should be included.

Before meetings begin, planners should produce an agenda and establish a meeting leader. Normally, there are a few people presenting topics and speaking, while a larger group of folks listen and learn. A good IT consultant or the chief information officer or director should be involved in all aspects of these meetings to help guide technological feasibility in the idea creation stage. Client and firm surveys that outline the current state of affairs in IT are very helpful in this preparatory stage. A firm should include the ideas and viewpoints of its staff and its clients as both are affected by the success or failure of a good IT department. Early on, it’s beneficial for a firm to engage in the old marketing SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. This analysis can open eyes for many decision makers and help align the IT plan with the business.

The Assessment

After your firm forms an IT committee and determines how the tech planning meetings should run, the committee needs to answer the question “Where are we now?” This is the basis of your IT assessment. The assessment should cover a diverse group of people from the firm and the firm’s operating environment (vendors, clients, co-counsel firms and more). The assessment must allow your firm to outline the state of affairs, look to the future, and generate ideas and needs for future IT implementation. The assessment can work by practice areas or by technological areas. I prefer the latter in my assessments.

An assessment includes a great deal of information gathering and processing. I like to look at the following areas when I perform a firm’s assessment:

hardware;
software;
servers, desktops and notebooks;
network elements (cabling, switches, routers, firewall);
Internet, intranet and Web site;
training for legal staff and IT staff;
remote and home office access;
disaster recovery;
antivirus, anti-spyware and security;
wireless systems;
industry-specific applications (time and billing, litigation support); and
results of surveys.

For each area, complete a careful inventory and include information such as the condition of the hardware and the version of software. For example, an assessment of servers can provide information such as the make, model, manufacturer, location, speed, RAM, hard drive space, security hardening, use (application and file serving), service pack level, maintenance agreement, support personnel and so forth. This should be performed for all servers and desktops in the firm. Once this information is collected, it’s possible to standardize the level of desktop and server you want to run (or need to run, depending on software requirements). For example, the standard for a desktop can be 2GHz processor or greater, XP operating system Service Pack 2, 512MB RAM and 40GB hard drive. Any system that doesn’t meet the standard should be budgeted to be replaced. Use the same methodology for servers.

A departmental summary of software can be completed during the assessment stage. This is an outline of what software each department uses and intends to use throughout the next year. This type of analysis helps with licensing issues as well as budgeting of costs for software upgrades. All basic software, such as antivirus, anti-spam and anti-adware, should be updated each year, and contracts for pattern files that update the newest virus signatures should be put in place. Analyzing the results of surveys also can be completed so any needs for existing replacements are considered as well as needs for upcoming cases or practices. Then, all these needs can be put into a summary budget plan.

Creating a Budget Plan and Putting it Into Action

A summary budget plan is created by gathering the inputs that were developed during the full technology assessment. This can be done in a number of ways, depending on the findings of the assessment. A multisheet spreadsheet can work well for this purpose. The first sheet can be the hardware sheet, and on the left legend list all of the hardware needed. The next column should include pricing, vendor, responsible installer (in-house or outsourced) and financial investment amount. Start a new sheet for software and include similar fields of information. For each of the assessment items previously mentioned, a new sheet should be developed. Once all of these sheets are completed, you have a budget document that can be used as a guideline for your plan and as an expanded to-do list for the vendors and internal staff.

The tech committee now has the technology “bible” for the next three years. This living document is a budget, a plan and a project management to-do list. Using this as a base document, the committee should resume meetings and make decisions about which items will be completed with priority, and which items can be held off until another year. Normally at this stage, there are a lot of priorities, and often there is much contention about which items should be completed first. If you don’t have a reliable, secure and functional network, then there really is no need to add applications, strategic or not, until you have a rugged infrastructure. I recommend you handle any budget items related to infrastructure and security with high priority. Next, look for budgetary items that have the highest and fastest rate of return — the projects that will most quickly impact the bottom line in terms of productivity gains, new client development, existing client service or new market and practice area penetration. Later, the items with less priority — but that still have intrinsic value to employee satisfaction and retention, customer service, cost saving and other law firm enhancements — can be addressed.

The assessment is a very time-consuming project when performed properly and completely, and meeting regularly will help move the process along. Once that data is gathered and presented to the committee, the fun begins. The firm will make decisions to solve the problems and improve its operations. Normally, the first task list will be a doozy and will never be done in a single year. That is fine because you should not expect that it will. A plan and budget should cover a three-year period and be updated annually to take into consideration all changes that have occurred during the year. If the process can be implemented properly and effectively, a firm can begin to reap the benefits. Best of luck in creating your annual IT plan.

Anthony M. Cocco is an Information Technology consultant to law firms in the Philadelphia area. He has worked in-house in several firms as IT director, and now consults small- and mid-sized law firms. He has an MBA specializing in IT, and is certified in Cisco, Microsoft and Novell. He holds a master’s degree in project management and is a Six Sigma Green Belt. He can be reached at amcconsulting@comcast.net.