An attorney in your firm is on the road and decides to visit one of the firm's best clients, John Smith, Chief Counsel at ABC Corporation. To his surprise, the receptionist informs him that John has just resigned and was replaced by a Sue Jones. The attorney had a great relationship with John, who was the reason ABC retained your firm in the first place. He knew John was thinking about leaving, but he had been wrapped up in litigation for several weeks and had no idea John had made the decision.

The receptionist says that Sue will be available in about ten minutes if the lawyer would like to meet her. He needs to make sure this client is happy and continues its relationship with the firm. He accepts.

The lawyer quickly takes out his Blackberry and peruses the e-mail messages that have been accumulating in his inbox over the past few days. Not surprisingly, there are several urgent messages from John notifying him of the changes. Too late to get the skinny on Sue from John.

From his Blackberry, the lawyer then signs onto the firm's CRM system and runs a search on Sue Jones. The system reveals that Sue used to be associate general counsel for XYZ. He wonders if anyone else in the firm knows Sue. He clicks on another option, and the CRM system reveals that an associate at the firm, Bill Davis, knows her well - their kids play soccer together.

A connection! The lawyer quickly calls Bill from his cell phone and explains the situation. Bill says Sue is very formal and business-like, she appreciates thoroughness and attention to detail, and she enjoys the theater. They hang up just as Sue enters the room.

The lawyer addresses her formally, congratulates her on her new job, and extends greetings from Bill. Sue is impressed that he's done his homework on her and that they have a mutual friend. The lawyer then offers to provide a case-by-case review of all open matters, which she gladly accepts. After they've completed their review the lawyer offers to take Sue and her husband to dinner and a Broadway show that night. He is on his way to cementing the firm's relationship with ABC's new general counsel and ensuring the company's ongoing business.

As the above scenario illustrates, client relationship management (CRM) solutions not only play a role in law firms' wireless platform strategies, they are becoming increasingly fundamental. Lawyer mobility is on the rise. And as the workplace must be extended to meet evolving needs, so too must CRM technology, which delivers the relationship intelligence that attorneys now rely upon for new business development and delivering better client service.

Relationship intelligence is a firm-wide asset that reveals the unique and complex connections between people, companies, relationships, experience and expertise, empowering professionals to leverage who and what they know to uncover new revenue opportunities, differentiate themselves from the competition and enhance client service.

Architecture for Tomorrow
The significant value-add that CRM software delivers is its ability to aggregate your firm's information about people, companies, relationships, experience and expertise into one centralized system, then deliver it to users on their platform of choice. This requires an open, n-tier architecture which will not limit you to any particular platform or device. Instead, it will provide you with the flexibility to pick and choose where you wish to deliver information based on current and projected user demand.

With n-tier architecture, a centralized database server acts as the repository for housing relationship data. The application collaboration module integrates data from various other systems into the centralized knowledge base.

The application server sits over the database server, executing calls in XML to the central repository. It then serves up this data to a page server, nugget server or data server. This n-tier approach renders the relationship intelligence solution infinitely flexible, enabling it to serve up data to virtually any type of platform including a browser-based Web application, a firm intranet, a corporate portal and personal digital assistants (PDA's). Using this architecture, relationship intelligence can also be delivered to more traditional platforms such as a Windows desktop or directly into Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes.

More importantly, an n-tier architecture eliminates the complexity involved with aggregating data from multiple sources. It ensures that lawyers have access to all the information they need, without regard to where it is sourced.

ROI & Mobile CRM
The greatest ROI a firm can expect to receive from a mobile CRM strategy depends upon how integrated that strategy is with the firm's overall CRM vision. If an attorney is working in Microsoft Outlook and needs some client background, he does not care that he can look this information up directly from the CRM application. He wants the information then and there from the system he is using - Outlook. Likewise, if that attorney is sitting in a hotel room, dialed in to your intranet or corporate portal, he wants to be able to access relationship intelligence directly, without having to sign on to another application. And when that attorney is on the road and needs client information wirelessly, it had better be available.

User acceptance of CRM and the ultimate ROI payoff comes when attorneys and staff can get immediate answers to their questions from any platform they are using at the time, or from any technology with which they're most comfortable. Mobile CRM via wireless devices or the Internet certainly offers value in appropriate situations. But the greatest value is derived when attorneys don't even have to think about how to access relationship intelligence - it's simply there whenever they need it, wherever they are.