Borden Ladner Gervais (BLG), the largest full-service Canadian-based law firm, engaged HBR Consulting (HBR) to help provide better visibility into firm-wide spending patterns and assist with streamlining and nationalizing their procurement and third-party contracting functions.
Challenge
Outside of a limited number of central functions, such as information technology, BLG had been managing purchases and supplier relationships at the local office level across their various Canadian offices. With an increased focus on centralizing the function of procurement the leadership team needed to find a way to quickly access data on upcoming contracts and spending, which historically had not been readily available.
Approach
To address the specific reporting needs of BLG – across spend analytics, budget reporting and contract management – HBR worked with BLG to implement multiple modules of SpendConnect, a software-enabled service that enriches and solves critical data challenges for law firms. Taking a service-focused approach, the HBR team worked with BLG’s leadership, as well as individual department and office stakeholders, to collect the Firm’s active third-party contracts. Next, the engagement team partnered closely with finance to collect the necessary payables and budget data, which allowed HBR to create a consolidated dashboard, including contract renewals, budget goals and actual spend data to deploy to key stakeholders across the Firm.
Objectives
To address concerns about the misinterpretation of data due to disconnected platforms, HBR identified three solutions for consistent problem areas:
Centralization of third-party contract data. SpendConnect serves as a single repository for all contracts. With proactive user alerts and realtime reporting capabilities, SpendConnect reduces contract auto-renewal risk and allows for proactive planning throughout BLG’s contracting cycle.
Creation of interactive expense reporting. SpendConnect provides enriched data across key categories and vendor relationships. With intuitive, easy-to-use reporting capabilities, SpendConnect allows BLG’s procurement team to identify cost savings opportunity areas, measure successes and instantly analyze reports for stakeholders.
Streamlining the budget reporting process. Dashboards are designed to provide key stakeholders with instant access to budget data, allowing them to continuously monitor budgets, make better real-time decisions, and support BLG’s project management office (PMO) with project-based budgeting and planning.
Results + Benefits
Since the start of implementation, BLG has continued to identify new SpendConnect use cases that validate the immediate benefits of the solution. Across the Firm, users now have access to spending data, budget performance and key contract details at their fingertips. As a result, BLG has experienced:
Efficient workflows. SpendConnect has greatly compressed the time it takes BLG to report on project budgets.
Increased value. Procurement is now able to generate real-time vendor profile sheets, which has been seen as value-add by stakeholders; the creation of spending statistics across key categories of spend has also added value to the Firm.
Greater visibility. Contract owners are proactively alerted by SpendConnect of upcoming contract renewals; users can also leverage a dashboard pipeline to collaborate on opportunities.
“SpendConnect has allowed us to fully nationalize our contract and spend management for the first time. The platform is highly intuitive and well designed, and having the ability to link contracts, spend actuals and budgets is invaluable. The reporting facilities are outstanding and provide us the ability to easily generate KPI reports across spend cycles, and within categories across our offices and functions,” said Jules Cranwell, Chief Administrative Officer at Borden Ladner Gervais.