Is your Firm thinking of changing the financial system and you have many questions? How do I start the process? What’s involved in the selection process? What resources am I going to need? How should I budget for this? How do I build the project plan? Is there anyone out there that has gone through this process before, has some words of wisdom and is willing to share them?
If these are the questions you have, we may have some answers for you. We are introducing a series of on-demand presentations that will address most of your questions. The following is the list of the on-demand presentations and their brief description:
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Financial System Selection
This on-demand presentation goes through the fact finding, what’s important for the Firm, how to identify the vendors and how to communicate with them, reference checking, the evaluation process and communication to the Firm Management.
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Budgeting for the new Financial System Implementation
This on-demand presentation identifies key cost components of the implementation, helps you to set realistic expectations for these costs, defines both internal and external cost components, identifies the hidden costs and talks about developing an expense model.
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Project Planning & Resourcing
This on-demand presentation provides the outline for the project plan, identifies common pitfalls, helps you build the project timeline, helps you with designing the project team, identifies the key roles and explains the benefits of internal vs external resources.
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Managing the Development Cycle
This on-demand presentation walks you through requirements gathering and specifications, what tools can be used, the development timeline, testing and issues logging.
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Effective Ways of Designing Billing Templates
Being able to bill clients is a key for any law firm. This on-demand presentation helps you develop a design methodology for billing templates, addresses why you should document each design decision and points out challenges in the design process.
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Lessons Learned from Financial System Implementations
In this on-demand presentation you will hear a feedback from 25 firms that have gone through a financial system implementation. The feedback comes from CIOs, CFOs, Project Managers, System Managers as well as Accounting Managers. You will hear the answers to “if I had to do this again, I would . . . .”
All on-demand presentations are presented by Beth O’Connor and her colleagues from AAC Inc. Beth O’Connor is the Principal and Founder of AAC and is a CPA and MBA. She entered the legal workspace in 1986, worked for a large financial systems vendor before starting AAC in 1996. She worked in various capacities on over 150 implementations of financial systems in law firms and other professional services organizations.
To view all installments in the New Financial System series, please click HERE.
We hope you’ll find this series useful. If you have any questions, please contact Susan McClellan, Project Coordinator at ILTA - smcclellan@iltanet.org.