BlackBerry Partner Newsletter

Making all the right moves to penetrate the legal market – An interview with PensEra’s Dan Felean.

About PensEra Knowledge Technologies
For more than 15 years, PensEra Knowledge Technologies has served as technology consultants and developers for law firms and departments across North America. Understanding how lawyers work has allowed us to develop practical technology solutions that lawyers actually use. PensEra believes the success of a technology solution should not be based on changing the behavior of professionals, but instead it should enhance their experience and become part of their natural work process. Their flagship product is TimeKM™ and TimeKM Mobile™ for BlackBerry®.

PensEra and BlackBerry
The increasing mobile work habits of PensEra’s clients encouraged them to partner with BlackBerry. With attorneys being amongst the earliest adopters of BlackBerry, it seemed like a logical move to extend the reach of the TimeKM system to mobile professionals.

TimeKM Mobile for BlackBerry became a natural extension of the time tracking process, for the frequent times attorneys work away from their desk. A mobile lawyer has even less time and patience to devote to time capture, so the mobile environment validated and reinforced their approach for quick capture, leveraged effort and limited interaction.

What’s the ROI for this solution? By capturing activity immediately, lawyers save time and effort and recover more value from work performed outside the office. Example: Attorney billing at $200/ hour + 15 extra minutes of billable time/day = $250/week = $12,000/year per lawyer. In short, TimeKM provides ROI on the law firm’s entire mobility investment.

What makes TimeKM Mobile successful in the legal sector?
The key to the success of TimeKM Mobile is that it is built from the point of view of a multi-tasking, on-the-go lawyer, instead of for the needs of the accounting system. TimeKM system leverages the existing activity on the BlackBerry device (calls, email, calendar items) so the lawyer doesn’t have to re-enter unnecessary detail. In short, an attorney can capture time faster (and with less effort) than sending an email.

Our intelligent mobile server categorizes all the mobile entries by lawyer, date, case, etc. and they are displayed on both the lawyer and secretary’s desktop TimeKM console for easy revision and approval. This allows the busy mobile attorney to capture without disrupting his work, and it leverages the role of administrative assistance at his office. Any lawyer can learn to use TimeKM in 5 minutes, so training costs are reduced, startup is accelerated and the law firm benefits immediately.

What additional steps are you taking to get more depth in the legal market?
PensEra recently formed an alliance with Juris, Inc., a leading vendor of billing and accounting systems for mid-sized (10-100 lawyer) firms. A recent American Board Association (ABA) survey indicated that 26.5% of all mid-sized US law firms use Juris law office business software, so Juris is the clear market leader in this category. Midsize firms need to be effective away from the office as much as large firms.

Juris already knows how to sell to the mid-market segment and also has a sizeable client base to tap, so the alliance was a savvy business move to get more penetration in the mid-sized sector of the legal market. Existing Juris clients will be comforted and encouraged to invest in BlackBerry mobility with the assurance that TimeKM is made to work with their accounting system and will be supported by their trusted Juris support staff. The strong ROI from TimeKM will help overcome initial investment reluctance and will help accelerate the efficient penetration of an emerging mid-sized market.

With this alliance, Juris gets the benefit of an immediate proven mobile time tracking solution, and the resources of dedicated mobility specialists at PensEra. Together, Juris and PensEra have built .NET-based integration to automate and simplify the capture and transfer of time from TimeKM Mobile for BlackBerry to the Juris desktop accounting system. This total solution will be sold as a Juris “plug-in” and will be supported directly by Juris - with the background support and assistance of PensEra. (Note: Neither Juris nor PensEra sell BlackBerry directly, so this marketing campaign paves the way for BlackBerry resellers.)

What’s on the horizon for PensEra, BlackBerry and BlackBerry Alliance members?
This summer, Juris is launching TimeKM Mobile for Juris and is holding 12 seminars in cities across the USA. PensEra will be speaking at each seminar and giving away a BlackBerry device at each event.

PensEra is also excited to have begun rolling out an installation in a global law firm that involves mobile lawyers from 38 offices in 25 countries in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

PensEra is very interested in developing reseller relationships with BlackBerry Solution Providers and System Integrators. “We believe these organizations have the most potential to develop vertical specialties in order to sell and service value-add systems like TimeKM Mobile to end users as a turn-key solution,” said Dan Felean, Director of Marketing at PensEra.

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