The initial request was simple: “we would like to buy a management software”. After the first analysis we proposed the exact opposite, and in the end it was the right call.
Because this professional firm’s problem was not the lack of software. It was that the work of six people was about to be bent into the logic of a tool designed for someone else. We flipped the order: first the real process, then a tool built to measure on top of that process.
Three spreadsheets, one inbox and people’s memory
A firm that handles long, document-heavy cases managed its contacts like this: a few spreadsheets, scattered messages and whatever each person happened to remember. It worked, until the volume grew.
Then came the symptoms we see in almost every business of this kind:
- Nobody knew for sure where a case stood without asking a colleague
- Requests from the website were picked up “whenever someone remembered”
- Clients who asked for information without deciding right away vanished from the radar
Three gaps that, on their own, look small. Together they are work and clients lost along the way, without anyone noticing.
First the process, then the tool
We reconstructed the client’s journey from the first request to the closing of the case, interviewing the people who walk that path every day. Not how it should work on paper: how it really works, including the exceptions and the steps no one had ever written down.
That document became the structure. Every phase of the work turned into an archive, every handover into a field, every wait into a status visible to everyone.
Seven linked archives
Incoming requests, pre-qualification, active cases, documents, appointments, notes and history. Each archive is linked to the others: from a case you reach its documents, its appointments and everything that was said to the client, without digging through an inbox.
Requests coming from the website enter the first archive on their own, with the source already recorded: which form, which campaign, which page. They are assigned to a person and take on a status the whole firm can see.
The automations, written on top of the structure
With a clear process, the automations become obvious, because they follow steps that already exist:
- Internal notification whenever a new request arrives
- Reminder to the client twenty-four hours before the appointment
- Follow-up sequences for those who asked for information but are not ready to decide yet
- Internal alert when a case sits still beyond the threshold set by the firm
- Reminders on document deadlines, which in this field are the most frequent cause of delays
One rule above all: no automation writes to the client without the text being read and approved by the firm. Every message was written, reviewed and authorised before going live.
A single screen to see everything
The result is one overview that shows the status of every case and who is responsible for it, without opening ten different tabs.
The figure that really matters is not technical: it is that the process no longer depends on who happened to be in the office that day. And that is exactly why a firm can grow without doubling its people.
Your work does not fit a ready-made software?
If you recognise your firm in a place where information lives across spreadsheets, messages and people’s memory, get in touch. We start from how you actually work today and build the tool around that, not the other way around. Here is how our approach to custom CRM works.