1. Test new ideas with clients or risk complacency
Many firms believe that clients are happy with know-how updates as they are.
But if you don't offer clients new ideas and approaches, then they're only comparing you to your competitors, not to a better solution. And the industry standard is pretty low.
We develop new approaches to know-how sharing and test them with clients to help firms develop better-than-average approaches, formats and ideas.
2. Involve know-how authors in defining and implementing any changes
Know-how begins and ends with the people who write it - the fee earners, practice support lawyers, and investment-research analysts.
Many firms expect changes to established practices to be hard to implement, but we've found that there are few problems if you can prove to authors that clients see added-value in the new ideas.
3. Take a business-issue and business-impact led approach
Clients read newspapers and trade journals, your competitors' publications, and subscribe to news services your know-how offerings need to add value, not duplicate information that's already been received.
Focusing on business issues and business impacts will make your know-how products stand out from those of your competitors.
And make sure that you highlight business-impacts in the summary (see 'recommended reading' in the right-hand column).
4. Improve the basics of client briefings
We use the mnemonic 'Running Animals Beat Crawlers' as a reminder of the basics that all firms should be getting right:
Relevance: Tailor content to client sectors or types, and highlight the kinds of businesses likely to be affected.
Actions: Highlight any actions that clients can take, if you cant think of any appropriate actions, ask yourself why a client should read it and why you're sending it to them.
Brevity: Send clients the briefest possible summary and make it easy for them to request further information.
Context: Make the context clear for clients. While the author is likely to have closely followed the events and issues around a specific development, clients may have had other things on their mind.
5. Use technology to improve the client service and reduce costs
Technology can smooth the production process, and reduce the effort and cost required to get know-how updates to clients we've learned a great deal about how to automate document production from investment-banking projects.
An improved user-experience for clients (e.g. hot-topic web pages, showing the context around a particular event) will make them more likely to listen to your messages than your competitors'.