UI is the New Culture – User Focussed IT Reviews

We are truly blessed – we work with some great clients many of whom are at the top of their game. We also work across sectors and for in house teams and firms of all shapes and sizes. Our biggest client turns over in excess of £30bn and our smallest is a sole practitioner. We have also worked for clients based in over 18 countries and so we get to see “global”.

Given such diversity, every so often we come across some superb insights and observations ahead of the curve. We get to see trends unfold – sometimes we are able to help the pieces to fall into place.

One area really gaining momentum is the User Interface of systems. One hugely talented client put it quite simply – “UI is the new culture”.  This resonated with market behaviours we are seeing elsewhere and the increase in instructions we are seeing for user focussed IT reviews. I will explain more.

So, what did they mean? For years culture has been hugely important to organisations – often it has been the “secret sauce” to success. Some law firms failed to realise this whilst for others this came naturally with all the benefits this brings. A third category charged HR directors with creating this but realised with time this could not be manufactured. Fundamentally culture is about the characteristics, knowledge and behaviour of an organisation. It is about how people feel about their organisations. It is about trust and whether their views align – does the organisation really care about the people it employs?

In the past culture has never been about technology – apart from perhaps in the sense that individuals may want to work for an organisation which prioritises how they leverage technology. The world has changed now though. In lockdown technology has become much more important and a greater proportion of our working day. It has gone up the pecking order.  Screen time and engagement levels with technology have seen massive increases – daily Zoom sessions have scaled from 10 million per day to 300 million. Meetings have been replaced by Teams and Zoom, as has supervision and social. Where technology is great it stands out a mile – where it is not the cracks show much more readily given people’s exposure and reliance has increased so dramatically. For many (and despite the well-intentioned efforts of some organisations to engage with people) technology, together with its strengths and weaknesses, has become the face of organisations – their most dominant touch point.

The key point is therefore that technology has become much more important and is a much greater part of people’s experience of an organisation – it is what they live and breathe. If the IT interface or support is poor this will reflect to a much greater extent than before and vice versa. How can an organisation be regarded say, as supportive or caring, when information technology just focuses on the technology and not the underlying information or processes leaving people to fend for themselves? How will an organisation know someone needs help, is struggling or stressed if the technology and processes do not provide methods of surfacing this – surely any platform should minimise any stresses and strains?  How capable is the online platform from which you operate and how well does it support the different levels of fee earners and support staff? What do your people think? If a firm have just pushed out their previous on prem processes and technology to an online format it is probably not enough as the needs of people (and how they judge your organisation) will be very different.

And so, whether we like it or not UI is probably the new culture – or at least a subset of it. There has been a landgrab and the quality of an organisation’s technology is more important now than ever. As I write this news is breaking about vaccines but even if there were a cure for Covid-19 next week the world will not go back to how it was before. As a minimum, firms will need dual operating platforms and to retain talent will need to be able to offer people a range of flexible working arrangements. If operating platforms are weak or inefficient staff retention will be hard.

We have also talked before about the “missing middle” being the fact that law firm systems often have a gap – a missing no/low code system to help with automation, dashboards and reporting. To act as an orchestration layer to many of the great start-ups we are seeing. This is and will be important, but my point is wider than this. The efficiency and flexibility of a platform will also be key though.

If the logic of this overall argument were not enough we, Hyperscale Group can also testify to this and the increased focus by law firms on technology and giving users the tools they need is also borne out by the 2020 PwC Survey.  We are seeing an increase in demand for user focussed system reviews (both from in house and law firm clients) and from the systems we have reviewed (both post Covid and in the 25 years before) we can vouch for the fact that technology platform capability and UI will become much more important factors in staff retention and what your culture stands for – given we employ former lawyers and PAs from law firms we are familiar with what lawyers really need from systems they are working with day in day out. Some firms are getting this right but others less so.  Also, if an organisations IT is hard to use and not optimised people will probably just start to leverage their consumer tech and smart phones with all the cyber and information security risks this brings.

From what we are seeing (and hearing from people within firms) having a great operating platform and user interface will become a key factor in the war for talent going forward and commend our clients for focussing on this area.

Hyperscale Group is a technology, digital and innovation advisory and implementation business. For more information on our User Based IT review service please e mail dereksouthall@hyperscalegroup.com