Legal Technology

LSG is a leading web-based software application and business process outsourcing company with a global network of offices in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. We spoke to Philip Knight, Director of Programmes at LSG, to find out more about their company and how they remain at the forefront of their industry.

Emerging from humble beginnings, our company was established in 2005 and initially offered bill review services. However, our product and services portfolio has expanded considerably since then.

Today, our solutions now provide electronic business process management tools that focus on planning and performance measurement of the client’s legal and non-legal professional service providers. We specialise in the areas of procurement, and supplier and litigation management.

Furthermore, the company delivers sustainable and demonstrable financial and business benefits for its clients via proprietary applications, services and support solutions. These solutions enable electronic procure-to-pay engagements to be facilitated in the general insurance, claims, legal, banking, finance, mining, construction and energy industries.

As the technology has evolved, LSG has been part of managing significant change and transition projects for our clients via the development, implementation and operation of web-based supplier management tools for an expanding customer base. Our company serves clients in more than 70 countries and is certified ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 27001:2013.

In terms of our philosophy, we strongly believe that technology and services should support business processes, rather than drive them. Traditionally, we have operated more in the legal sector, providing electronic solutions and services that address litigation and legal spend management, case management, e-billing and legal bill review. More recently we have added e-procurement to our range of products. The products are flexible and geared to improving efficiency, reducing cost, removing unnecessary work for staff and driving best practice.

Moreover, we work very closely with clients and suppliers to achieve these results, understanding that every client has different business requirements. For instance, we understand that our insurance company clients are very focused on their risk exposure and combined ratio, and measurement of operating expenses and supplier management is essential to understanding business performance.

We take a set of key performance metrics from data obtained from a variety of client sources and produce a set of dashboards that provide data visualisation of the required metrics, can facilitate early case assessment/better closing ratio and drive informed decision-making throughout an organisation.

Our client portfolio includes large insurance companies, Managing Agents in the Lloyd’s market, TPAs, corporate legal departments, suppliers of almost any type. Our approach is to understand what a potential client needs and how we might assist, then talk with them as openly as possible to ensure that a) we understand their requirements, and b) they understand how we can help to solve their problems and provide the services they need.

As a company immersed in technology, we are of course always looking at new ways to innovate and improve our services. In this world of consolidation, reduced margins and ever-increasing costs, legal firms and related professionals need to leverage efficiency and drive margins with appropriate, secure, electronic platforms that cater for their requirements and that are scalable and flexible enough to handle data from a variety of sources.

Furthermore, where mergers have occurred there may be multiple platforms and data sources.
Data and efficient data-handling are a key part of contemporary commercial success so smooth transition to proven, secure, cutting-edge technology provides a single repository that reduces costs and inefficiencies.

Client and regulatory requirements drive the necessity for requisite platforms and reporting. Removal or reduction of paper-handling reduces dramatically mundane and slow-paced administrative overheads, driving efficiency and reducing work for staff involved.

Despite our success, we have also had to overcome a number of challenges throughout the years. Servicing our customers can bring challenges and risks due to disruptive innovation, changes in client requirements, regulatory necessities or the unexpected. We always try to be the ones to produce innovation, manage client requirements with care, understand and handle risk and provide the means to measure and ensure regulatory compliance. The unexpected are things we deal with and learn from. There is an ever more pressing need for improvements in data analytics quality, particularly in areas driven by regulatory requirements such as Solvency II and we will be working hard to service these requirements.

Looking towards the latter half of 2016 and beyond, we are confident that we will continue to grow and prosper. As a successful company we want to continue to provide excellent service for our clients, drive profitability and ensure our staff are happy, well trained and committed to these ideals. The global nature of our business means that challenges can appear at any time. As such, we aim to be foresighted and nimble enough to handle anything that is thrown at us, quickly and efficiently. Our solutions are flexible and are designed to be adept at accepting change.

We continuously monitor our clients’ needs and expectations in order to realign our solutions’ roadmaps. We build and constantly improve our “technology ecosystem” to offer both enterprise and local level solutions, ensuring fluid inter-connectivity between the various features.

Ultimately, legal technology should be an enabler that eases workload and drives efficiencies. It should be pro-active and flexible, synchronising with clients’ workflows as closely as possible to ensure minimal culture change, training requirements and distraction for staff. Suppliers of legal technology should be committed to supplying what customers want. Not a one-size-fits-all package. Our litigation and supplier management platforms provide support and facilitation, empowering management and staff through efficient, simple workflows, suggestions and prompts, based on data assessments, and data visualisation.

Company: LSG
Name: Philip D. Knight
Web: lsg.com