Strategic appointment signals new regional focus from Thomson Elite

International practice management software market leader, Thomson Elite, has upped the competitive tempo in the Australian and Asian legal software markets with the opening of its new regional operation

Heading up the new Asia-Pacific business unit of Thomson Elite in Sydney is managing director Kaye Sycamore, a former director and co-founder of software company Keystone Solutions.

Elite already has a good foothold in Asia-Pacific, with a current total of 30 customers in the region. However, Sycamore says, this market presence lags behind Elite's dominant position in the US, UK and Europe where its software is used by more than one-third of the top 1000 US law firms, more than one-half of the top 100 US law firms, and 30 of the top 100 UK law firms.

The decision by Thomson Elite to open a new subsidiary - and to base sales, services and support personnel in the region - has been stimulated by strong new business enquiries from the region's professional firms, especially in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

"The market is demanding choice, and our direct presence in the region will balance the loss of choice following the Solution 6 acquisitions of CMS Open and Keystone Solutions," Sycamore says.
"In that context, we're extremely well positioned to offer a better choice. Elite's leadership position in the US and Europe continues to improve - we're winning between 75% and 80% of the new business deals in our markets, and so far in 2003 we've already signed 35 new customers. Our worldwide market share - with over 800 Elite customers - is twice that of the two closest competing products combined."

Strong and direct representation by Thomson Elite throughout the Asia-Pacific region, she says, is key to accelerating its position in the market.

"It's my job to ensure regional customers get the solution best fitted for their business requirements, and that they receive excellent service and support," Sycamore says.

"Practice management software is highly strategic to a professional services firm. It needs to be sold, implemented and supported by people who understand the strategic issues and who are committed to providing a long-term business solution."

"We're establishing a services team here to provide first-line support and implementation services in the region, as well as deploying our overseas-based resources as required. And we're building a network of specialist services partners, such as our southeast Asian services partner JuzLaw Solutions in Singapore."

Earlier this year, Elite Information Systems was acquired by The Thomson Corporation - a US$8bn company listed on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges. Thomson has a significant presence in Asia-Pacific with its subsidiaries Sweet & Maxwell in Hong Kong and Singapore; Brookers in New Zealand; and the Thomson businesses in Australia, including Lawpoint, Lawbook Co, West Group, WestLAW and FindLaw. 

The newly formed global software subsidiary, Thomson Elite, develops and markets the Elite, Law Manager, ProLaw and West km product lines.

Sycamore says Elite has traditionally been a high-end legal and professional services solution. However, the Elite Express option ensures it is now cost-effective for medium-sized as well as larger firms.

"Our target market for Elite is typically firms with 40 or more fee earners, and this is our focus in Asia-Pacific right now. But we're also evaluating options to introduce our other product lines into the region next year."

These new products include Law Manager for government and corporate legal departments; ProLaw - the most widely installed practice management solution - for smaller firms, with over 1400 customers in the US; and West km for knowledge management.

Profile - Kaye Sycamore

As one of the most experienced legal software executives in the Asia-Pacific region, Kaye Sycamore has a clear vision of the role and contribution that professional services software can make to professional services firms.

Her 20-year career in legal and professional services software has run in close parallel to the evolution of the software itself, from so-called first generation software in the 1980s - that handled back-office trust accounting - to current fourth generation web-based solutions that handle virtually every business process.

Back in the '80s, Sycamore worked at legal firm Buddle Weir to install the first computerised accounting system to be used by a New Zealand law firm. Later, as manager of Wang New Zealand's legal division, Sycamore was part of the development of NZLaw - a pioneering second-generation product.

In 1992, Sycamore was the co-founder of Keystone Solutions - a pioneer in third-generation professional services software - where, as well as being responsible for international marketing, Sycamore was director of product development, conceptualising functionality and architecture, and overseeing the teams.

In 1996, Keystone Solutions listed on the London Stock Exchange and by 2002 topped its string of prestigious sales with a major strategic sale to Clifford Chance.

Sycamore also worked behind the scenes to develop a fourth-generation blueprint for Keystone - taking the product down the track to a web-based architecture, and planning the addition of new high demand functions such as workflow and customer self-service over the web.

During 2002, Solution 6 acquired Keystone and after a brief period as president global solutions at Solution 6, Sycamore departed to join Thomson Elite as managing director, Asia-Pacific.

"I want to be at the cutting edge of professional services software," Sycamore says. "That's my comfort zone - working hands-on with customers using technology which can make a tangible difference to productivity, profitability and client satisfaction."

"Right now Elite has a major competitive advantage. It functions across all axes of a professional practice - integrating front and back office - and delivers the full enterprise-wide solution, spanning time and billing, financial and practice management, CRM, business intelligence and document management.

"Elite is the first, and still the only true, fourth-generation solution in the market. Our competitors are only now starting to bring their solutions to market. This latest Elite solution was introduced over three years ago, and is already used by more than 300 customers," she says.

"I can't think of a better place to be than at Thomson Elite in Asia-Pacific. I'm working with the only true fourth-generation professional services software, and I'm in a market where demand is strong, but customers have so far been very poorly served in terms of having a real choice in terms of their software." 

Deacons goes online with new Elite system

Deacons Hong Kong has gone live with its new Elite financial and practice management system, on time and on budget - completing the implementation in just six months

Deacons Hong Kong chief information officer Philip Scorgie says the new system is now live across 500 desktops, and the business case benefits behind the decision to implement a new strategic financial and practice management system are already evident.

"The biggest benefit so far is that we now have the detailed reporting that we need. We can generate reports to analyse productivity, profitability and performance across different offices and locations, practice groups and teams, and also by individual client and matter.
"This is a quantum improvement in our ability to run our business, and also has major client benefits in terms of our ability to track and report when and in the way our clients want."

Elite's web interface, Webview, has been a powerful driver of user acceptance, he says, and fee earners - including senior partners - are responding positively to the simple 'point and click' environment.
"Another big step forward is multi-currency. We can share matters across regional offices and produce one bill in any currency. Clients like this, and we can also pay our vendors and agents in their preferred currency," Scorgie says.

Work is also going ahead with the first implementation of Elite's Unicode, now being applied to Chinese character sets.

"Part of doing business in China is satisfying rules for reports to be generated in Chinese characters. The ability to select which language and characters to be used in documents - and to have that fully automated - is a major step forward for the business," Scorgie says.
"All in all, we're very happy with how things are going ahead. When a law firm makes an enterprise software investment, it's ultimately entering into a long-term partnership with the software vendor," he says. "We're delighted that this critical implementation phase has gone so smoothly, and our decision to go with Elite has worked out so well."

He says Deacons' Hong Kong office chose the Elite financial and practice management system because of its extensive multi-language capabilities, integration of multiple applications with a single database, and comprehensive features. In addition, Deacons was impressed with Elite Apex for client relationship management (CRM), which features full integration with the Elite system, whereas other the systems considered by Deacons offered only third-party CRM products.

"The on-time and on- budget implementation is a tribute to Elite's implementation resources and its ability to work smoothly and effectively with our internal implementation team," Scorgie says.
Deacons is the latest firm to implement Elite, joining local firms in the region Allen and Gledhill (Singapore), Kelvin Chia Partnership (Singapore) and Zaid Ibrahim & Co (Kuala Lumpur), as well as regional offices of multi-national firms including Allen & Overy, Baker & McKenzie and Coudert Brothers.

CMS out, Elite Express in at KCP, Singapore

Fast-growing Singapore-based law firm Kelvin Chia Partnership (KCP) was first in the Asia-Pacific region to implement Elite Express - an optimised and simplified version of Elite's practice management software - and Elite Encompass for document and knowledge management.

Managing partner Kelvin Chia says his firm had been an early adopter of CMS Open, but ongoing support issues - as well as the need for a system with good debtors management, document management, and advanced customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities - drove the change.

"Our existing practice management system was failing us, and our lack of a functional practice management system was becoming a major problem for the day-to-day running of the business," Chia explains.

Earlier this year, due diligence was undertaken to review and select a system to replace CMS Open. Two products - New Locus and Open Practice - were considered, as were Keystone and Elite. The acquisition of Keystone by Solution 6 took Keystone off the list, while the implementation of Elite by Deacons in Hong Kong - with whom KCP has a close alliance - was viewed as an important plus.

Elite's strengths in CRM, knowledge and document management swung the decision.

"Today we have 35 fee earners, but we're an ambitious practice with aggressive expansion plans. We want to have state-of-the-art CRM and knowledge management because these applications are important to building closer relationships with our clients, and managing our growth," Chia says.

KCP project manager Benjamin Yap says implementation is now well underway with a schedule of around three months and a cost of less than US$200,000 for the complete Elite solution - financial and practice management, CRM, knowledge and document management.
The business case for the new system forecasts a positive ROI inside three years, he says. However, the leverage from CRM and the necessity of efficient practice management are viewed as critical, irrespective of cost.

"We're looking forward to immediate benefits, which were within the capability of our old system but we either failed to implement them or had to turn off because of support issues. We've had to revert to a largely manual system, and getting back to electronic time capture and automated billing - this time with a smooth online practice management system - is going to be a huge boost to the practice," Yap says.

About Thomson Elite

Thomson Elite is a premier provider of integrated practice and financial management systems for professional service firms worldwide, including the legal firms, accounting, engineering, marketing services, and management and IT consultants.

Thomson Elite was named in a top ten of software developers by the Los Angeles Business Journal in 2002 - for the second consecutive year, ranked among the Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu's Fast 50 technology growth companies, and was named in the Forbes' 200 Best Small Companies list, 2002.

Elite employs more than 400 professionals and has offices worldwide including Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Sydney and London.  For more information, visit www.elite.com
The Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com) - with 2002 revenues of US$7.8bn - is a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers. The corporation's common shares are listed on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges.