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Summary
After acquiring two firms in 2021, Switalskis Solicitors needed an intranet and digital workplace solution that could centralize internal communications, facilitate cross-brand collaboration, and boost operational efficiency. With Claromentis, they were able to achieve this and more.
About Switalskis
Employees: 380+ across 11 offices
Industry: Legal
Customer since: 2021
Founded in 1993, Switalskis Solicitors is a Top 200 UK law firm, specializing in three core areas: claimant services, personal legal services, and business services.
To date, Switalskis employs more than 380 staff – including legal, HR, IT, finance, and project delivery teams – across 11 locations in Yorkshire and London. They are guided by four big goals, which they strive to achieve in everything they do;
- to be a great place to work;
- to provide their clients with excellent service;
- to achieve sustainable profitability;
- and to have a positive impact on the world.
The challenge
In 2021, Switalskis acquired two law firms. Initially, they operated as a group of companies with each firm trading under its own brand.
At this point in time, cross-company collaboration was tricky to facilitate. This was largely due to the firms’ incompatible digital workplaces. One firm owned a basic, one-page intranet that linked to a Teams site. Another used an HR application as a makeshift digital workplace. And Switalskis’ intranet was old and complex to use; every update required manual HTML/CSS coding (a skill that only two people possessed), meaning site content was frequently out of date.
To complicate matters further, each firm owned a disparate, on-premise Active Directory. And, while Switalskis’ team lived in the Microsoft 365 suite of tools, their counterparts did not.
Simply put, there was no efficient way to unify users, distribute information, or collaborate remotely with the technology they had. This meant only one thing: they had to find another, better alternative.
The solution
Switalskis required an intranet solution that could connect their multiple on-premise Active Directories, provide each user with a brand-aligned experience, and facilitate collaboration. More than this, they needed a platform that allowed them to incrementally add users in various configurations while they worked towards integrating the business and, eventually, consolidating all three ADs into one.
Claromentis was one of the only intranet solutions that could accomplish this. But that isn’t the only factor that swayed Switalskis’ purchasing decision.
The legal firm was impressed with the wide variety of platforms and applications available within the integrated digital workplace solution. To date, their favorite Claromentis capabilities include:
- Knowledge Base. Users can easily publish, share, and update their own legal guidance.
- News. This application has been a firm favorite from the start. Switalskis can distribute company news and keep employees informed, no matter where they are based geographically, in an effective way. There are no buried emails to sift through, and employees can easily comment and engage.
- Learning Management System. The Switalski team harnesses Claromentis’ built-in LMS alongside external e-learning authoring tools to build and deliver SCORM-compliant courses.
- Thank You. The Thank You widget on Switalskis’ home page receives consistent engagement, helping to boost morale and build the firm’s culture. Employees can select a related company goal or value when thanking a colleague, demonstrating strategic and cultural alignment.
- Permissions. Admins use the granular permissions system to control content visibility and bring people together from different parts of the business.
There is one Claromentis capability that shines brighter than all others, however – particularly for Switalskis’ Senior Associate and Special Projects Lead, George Lockley. And that’s our integrated business process automation platform, InfoCapture.
“In my view, InfoCapture is far and away the most important application in terms of what we’ve achieved with Claromentis,” Lockley explains. “It’s the only application in Claromentis that has a significant learning curve. But in my view it is well worth the effort. It has huge possibilities in terms of streamlining processes, team collaboration and driving efficiency. I’m still building new IC projects to streamline and workflow processes four years after starting our intranet build. The possibilities seem almost endless!”
The outcome: 5 benefits of Claromentis
Switalskis have come a long way from their clunky, half-there intranets of 2021. Now, the legal firm has a centralized digital workplace that every user can access and use with ease.
Here are just five of the biggest benefits they’ve experienced since launching Claromentis:
1. Streamlined support requests and queries
Before Claromentis, support teams received requests via email. This resulted in a sprawl of elusive email chains, disparate document folders, and complex manual spreadsheets for tracking progress. Beyond wasting employee time, these inefficiencies obscured insights and impeded any progress improvement efforts, too.
Switalskis transformed these processes for the better with InfoCapture – Claromentis’ integrated business process automation platform, comprising no-code e-form and workflow functionality.
Their multiple InfoCapture projects gather request information in a standardized format, meaning support teams no longer have to contact employees for missing information. These tickets are then centralized in one easily trackable system, with relevant stakeholders copied into every update. Department heads and team leaders can view a helpful overview of any ongoing support for the people they manage, with the ability to run custom reports that provide tangible insights.
2. Clear, trackable policy reviews
As a heavily regulated business, policy lifecycle management is a critical compliance task for Switalskis. Policy owners must review documents regularly and update them to reflect new regulatory requirements and changing internal standards.
Before Claromentis, a dedicated team member had to monitor review dates, send out reminders to policy owners, and file the completed reviews manually.
Now, with the Policy Manager application in their digital toolkit, policy lifecycle management is a breeze. Thanks to automated review reminders, audit trail creation, and version controlling, policy owners no longer have to carry the mental burden of remembering to update documents.
3. Centralized knowledge sharing and support
Knowledge management was once a complicated ordeal for Switalskis. Legal experts captured guidance in PDF documents and circulated them via email. Lawyers were then responsible for saving individual copies and making sure they referred to the most current version.
The Claromentis Knowledge Base eradicates these inefficiencies. Legal teams can produce, update, and share articles in a centralized repository. And users can find the up-to-date guidance they’re looking for quickly.
This has resulted in significant time savings and ROI for Switalskis. Every five minutes their fee earners save is a unit of chargeable time they get back.
4. Company culture improvements
Claromentis hasn’t just transformed Switalskis’ operations; it’s reinvigorated their culture, too.
The team frequently uses Claromentis’ extensive application suite to bring teams together and inject fun into their working environment.
Previous culture activities they’ve organized include:
- Monthly informal quizzes.
- Intranet competitions – including caption, photo and treasure hunt competitions (the latter involves “hiding” elements on pages for users to find).
- Learning and development “top tips” advent calendars at Christmas.
These activities are quick to build in Claromentis, making it easy to spark joy without impacting daily work.
5. Dedicated and reliable Claromentis support
Last, but certainly not least, the Switalskis team benefits from Claromentis’ attentive customer support team, e-learning resources, and consultancy services. All of which help them to extract the most value from their digital workplace solution.
Speaking of the support she’s received, George Lockley says:
“Claromentis support is excellent in my experience. During the initial site build I worked through the excellent e-learning to find my feet, but I still had lots of questions and the team was always there with answers. The first-line support team is highly responsive, usually getting back to us with a solution or advice within an hour or so, even for general queries.”
On the rare occasion Claromentis cannot solve an issue, the support team responds honestly, provides advice for workarounds wherever possible, and eagerly accepts ideas for new features and improvements.
“We’ve been assigned a customer success manager who catches up with us at least once a quarter, too,” Lockley continues. “Any action points from those calls are dealt with within a couple of days and have led to further positive and helpful interactions with others at Claromentis. The support around InfoCapture is particularly strong, and I’m very grateful to Stas and the team for the help and advice they offer on an ongoing basis. Working with Claromentis I genuinely feel listened to and supported.”
Enable your teams and strengthen operations with Claromentis
Suffice to say, Claromentis has revolutionized the way Switalskis operates.
The centralized intranet acts as one source of truth for legal knowledge, company communications, SCORM-compliant e-learning courses, and cultural activities. While the integrated BPA platform standardizes operations, streamlines compliance workflows, and enables employees to work more efficiently.
If you’d like to find out how our digital workplace solution can achieve similar results for your regulated organization, book a 10-minute discussion call with one of our experts.
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