As I’ve written before,
"Business Intelligence" is  here
to stay.  (And if that’s an unfamiliar or unclear term to
you, please refer to the earlier post on this, which serves
to introduce the field; and no apologies necessary, as
the term "BI" is almost perversely non-intuitive to the
newcomer.  It only makes sense once one already knows what
it means.)

BI 101 to launch this piece:  BI  is not to be confused
with "competitive intelligence," which is all about how
your firm is perceived in the marketplace vis-a-vis its
competition, and about what the competition is up to—both
current and potential competition.  BI, rather, is about analyzing
the tremendous amounts of raw data spewed out by your firm’s various
systems. CIO Magazine defines it thus:

"But with Hillman Group’s new BI system, curious business
executives can query the system themselves and get instant answers
about such critical questions as the number of unfilled customer
orders, which is tracked by the system in real-time.

"There’s just one problem.

"The new system hasn’t made the business better—at
least not yet—only better
informed.
That’s generally the problem with BI, the umbrella term that refers to
a variety of software applications used to analyze an organization’s raw
data (sales transactions, for example) and extract useful insights from
it. Most CIOs still think of it as a reporting and decision support tool."

The CIO case study involves a computer sub-systems manufacturer
and a chemical company, but the key realities of BI come
through loud and clear:  (1) information is power, so
your firm has to be prepared to share that; and (2) knowing
that some of your partners manage things better than others
cannot be seen as threatening, it must be seen as empowering. The goal is not to rap the poor manager’s knuckles, but to show by example how he can emulate the good manager.

In
law-firm land, BI can analyze the profitability of entire
practice groups, of offices, of clients, of individual
lawyers, and of individual matters. Of far greater importance
than its ability to write a new gloss on historical experience
is its ability to capture "best
practices" and,
if sensitively and astutely managed, to spread those best
practices across the firm.  Who’s doing BI?  Firms such
as Alston & Bird,
Bryan-Cave, and Goodwin-Procter, which I cite for reasons
that will become clearer below, but permit me to seed your
thinking by observing that all three of these firms place
a noteworthy premium on "cultural" considerations.  (A&B,
for one, has not landed above all other law firms on Fortune‘s
"Best 100 Places to Work" a few years in a row by accident.)

The key to "second generation" BI is to conceive of it as more
than a historical-reporting tool and begin to use it actively
as a way to understand how you can do what you’re already
doing in better ways.  The management literature calls this
"best practices" or "process management," but don’t let
the terms glaze your eyes over.  CIO Magazine, with
its understandable CIO-centric perspective, puts it thus:

"Companies that use BI to uncover flawed business processes
are in a much better position to successfully compete
than those companies that use BI merely to monitor what’s happening.
Indeed, CIOs who don’t use BI to transform business operations
put their companies at a disadvantage. For CIOs who have carried
out this difficult strategy successfully, there is no looking back."

Or, in plain English:  If you use BI as a rear-view mirror merely
to point with delight and view with disdain, don’t bother.  Instead,
use BI to help you understand, at a fairly profound managerial
level, why, for example, two different matters that appeared
superficially similar generated remarkably different
levels of revenue and profitability for the firm—and how to
make the laggard look a lot more like the leader next
time around.

Next point:  Does this have to do with technology?  Sure,
and so does time-keeping.  The technology behind BI, in
other words, should matter not to you.  BI is 1% technology
and 99% culture.  BI
can improve matter management, client satisfaction,
and even professional development (by identifying,
for example, associates whose write off rates are especially
high or low).  These are things your firm must care about.  (Did
I forget to mention profitability?)

As a friend of
mine with no little experience in BI implementations
in law firms likes to say, BI will only have an impact
if your firm has "the
will to act."   Do you?