Solution Benefits

  • Reduced Costs
  • Increased Productivity
  • Improved Sustainability

Customer Profile

  • Legal Sector
  • 9 UK Locations
  • 700+ Staff

About Womble Bond Dickinson

With 700 staff across it’s 9 UK based offices, Womble Bond Dickinson’s annual paper consumption was twice the height of the world’s tallest building. A comprehensive print management services audit by Agilico identified potential reductions in paper consumption of up to 20% with the adoption of smarter working practices and enhanced digital workflows.

Womble Bond Dickinson has more than 1000 lawyers located in 26 offices in the UK and US. Its attorneys and professionals provide a full range of legal services to regional, national and international businesses and other clients in a wide range of industries.

Challenges

The challenge was to take out 600 trees worth of unnecessary document creation and associated costs this coming year, whilst pretty much eliminating the traditional stresses and strains associated with document printing, capture and management, through a more resilient, consistent and customised printing and scanning platform… no mean feat!

Document efficiency – Printing, managing and distributing documents – is a perennial challenge in the legal sector. In document output alone a typical law firm with 100 staff will consume two million sheets of paper or 238 paper generating trees per annum. Much of that volume will need to be shared and distributed as efficiently as possible. But an unnecessary proportion of that volume will be a waste of time and money… printed, mislaid, reprinted, read and binned!

”Agilico delivered a robust and well thought-out solution via an imaginative implementation plan. Agilico worked with the firm so ensuring that they had a deep understanding of our requirements.

IT Services ManagerWomble Bond Dickinson

How we helped

The approach to this challenge was to get under the bonnet and truly understand how the firm ticked, how each and every department worked and how the day to day productivity of each and every user could be enhanced, and the day to day document related headaches, resolved. As a result of this consultative, partnership approach a deep understanding of all the challenges not just the opportunities was developed, a more resilient, measured and balanced solution, the outcome.

The new 60-strong Canon MFP fleet at Womble Bond Dickinson has bespoke connectors and simplified workflows, with one driver and a common platform, meeting all required scanning, imaging and document creation needs. The print environment is more flexible and secure utilising the users’ unique ID cards to release stored jobs.

Results

Already the new platform and enhancements are providing measurable, sustainable improvements in financial and environmental performance, with cost control and waste reduction, supporting Womble Bond Dickinson’s corporate social responsibility initiatives.

Paper consumption dropped instantly – nearly 200,000 pages in the first month and 700,000 pages purged in November alone! The energy saved from lower paper usage in the first year will equate to the total energy used in the Aberdeen office in one year. Time wasted chasing paper is now invested in meaningful work that contributes to bottom-line profitability and client satisfaction.

read more

There is now increased user satisfaction, device availability and productivity through improved digital document workflows and stress-free printing. One single billing per page helps with accountability, disbursement and fixed costs.

Agilico ‘lived’ in the Womble Bond Dickinson account to understand the challenges – cultural and technical – and hand-held the client whilst implementing a simplified and more powerful answer to the firm’s document output and capture needs. The new eCopy-enabled Canon MFP platform leveraged Womble Bond Dickinson’s existing investment in key legal systems, including cost recovery (Copitrak) and information and client management (Interwoven).

A phased implementation was recommended and rolled out over 11 weeks at Womble Bond Dickinson’s headquarters in Bristol and offices in London, Plymouth, Southampton and Aberdeen in the summer of 2010.

Installations took place at weekends, minimising disruption, and a highly innovative bespoke training programme under the banner of ‘Delivering The Less Paper Womble Bond Dickinson’.

A series of internal ‘hearts & minds’ staff videos, ‘Top Tips’ and ‘Quick Wins’, helped to generate a positive wave of anticipation ahead of each install. As a result, training sessions were well attended, and Agilico’s on-site support staff even wore special Womble Bond Dickinson implementation team uniforms and became affectionately known as the ‘Men in Black’.

In essence, Agilico’s people-centric approach and understanding of all of the issues and challenges ensured the whole IT led solution, not just the platform, is seen as a total success story at all levels