[The first in a three-part series on getting started in Experience Management by Rachel Shields Williams – Director, Knowledge Management Enablement & Insights at Sidley Austin LLP:]

Part One – Building the Business Case for EM

A successful Experience Management (EM) project starts with a clear business case and articulates what success will look like.

...the more departments that inform development of and leverage the EMS, the more autonomous it becomes.

To create that plan, project leaders (such as marketing and knowledge management team leaders) should build a "coalition of the willing" assembled from stakeholders within various departments. Somewhat counterintuitively, the more departments that inform development of and leverage the EMS, the more autonomous it becomes.

Start by considering the following questions:

• What are your organization's business goals?
• What is hard to do today?
• What questions do people wish they could answer quickly?
• What information does the organization already have and where is it located?
• How is data currently structured?
• What is the organization’s current data management strategy? (Do individual departments manage it, or is there a “data warehouse” or “data lake”?)
• Do current systems conform to a well-structured taxonomy? Is it shared or shareable? Is it accurate? Is there governance?
• Are there any legacy EM databases? How are they structured? Do they consist of high-quality, clean data? What and how much should be incorporated into any new EM system?

Answering these questions not only helps the team build a strong case for the investment but also helps to: surface system requirements; identify stakeholders and champions across the firm; locate which data exists within the organization; assess the quality of those data; and influence the development of data collection processes.

Identifying Stakeholders

Multiple departments should be involved in any EM project. Every firm is structure differently, but below is a brief list of common stakeholders in an EM project and certain questions they may be responsible for:

• Office of General Counsel – How will the firm handle ethical walls without impairing the ability to contribute information?
• Conflicts and New Business – What information is collected during the process that other departments could leverage within the EM system?
• Docketing – How does the firm collect and structure its court and judge information?
• Information Technology and Data Security – Is the firm comfortable storing data on the cloud? What security considerations or concerns does the firm have with new technology? What types of resources are available to support the project?
• Marketing and Business Development/Client Service – What are prospective clients asking for that is hard to find today? What data do the department currently collect and curate? What formal and informal data collection processes exist today? What client-centric technologies does the firm use?
• Knowledge Management – What does the department collect now? How is this information managed? Are there existing experience systems or similar databases?
• Accounting and Pricing – What information can be shared within the firm? Are there limitations as to who can see financial data? What information would make your jobs easier? Are there consistent taxonomies for classifying matters (e.g., industry, area of law)?
• Human Resources – What data does the firm collect about its people? How is it organized?
• Library and Research Services – What products do the department currently have in their portfolio that could be integrated with an EM system?
• Diversity and Inclusion – What questions are clients asking? What information can help inform and further the firm’s diversity and inclusion goals? What is the department tracking about clients, and what does it wish it could easily track and report on?

The more stakeholders engaged in use case discussions in the beginning, the more use cases will be uncovered, and the more stakeholders to help advocate for the EM system.

Stakeholders should be informed that not all of the use cases that are identified will be implemented immediately; however, as your firm works through the setup, rollout and adoption of the EM system, the use cases will be addressed in a phased process.

(Universal) System Requirements

Every firm is different and will have different goals and needs, but there are some universal requirements that should be considered when evaluating an EM system for purchase, including the following:

• Flexible Taxonomies – Can the system’s taxonomy change as the firm and related industries evolve?
• Configuration Without IT – Is the product configurable or do changes require customized code? (The firm’s internal resources responsible for maintaining the EM system shouldn't need to know how to code to make changes to the EMS, including to create new fields and values.)
• Normalize Data and Nomenclature – An EM system should be able to accommodate data from multiple places and provide a user-friendly mechanism to normalize information from internal and external sources.
• Passive Collection of Data – An EM system should be able to collect information from multiple sources so the only information that needs to be added is information that has not yet been collected in any system.
• Security and Permissions – An EM system should be highly configurable as to who can see what data points, and who can edit or contribute information.
• Audit History – An EM system should include a mechanism to see who edited what information when, which can be used to facilitate adoption and support data quality.
• Single Sign-On – An EM system should support “single sign-on”; no one wants one more password.
• Established Vendor Roadmap – The EM system vendor should have a roadmap for the growth and evolution of the product. The vendor’s past roadmap should be reviewed and compared to the history of the product’s updates to determine how well the vendor adhered to their plan.

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Upcoming: Part Two: Use Cases and Part Three: Integration and Taxonomy