Wilson Allen’s chief revenue officer Kaye Sycamore dives deeper into the market drivers behind WA’s launch of iDEA – the first of a new suite of subscription services.

The launch of iDEA – Digital Enablement and Adoption service – will be followed with further subscription-based services, all based on our recent qualitative research with practice leaders in the US, Canada and the UK. Read the full report here for a description of the planned services and order of release.

So, why have we chosen to start the rollout with the Digital Enablement and Adoption service?

The answer is that this is the area of greatest need and strongest demand which emerged from our research. It’s what our customers want most, right now.

And that’s entirely understandable. Never before has there been such a rapid proliferation of new technology. And never before have in house training and enablement resources been so constrained and so expensive. There’s a skills gap and there’s a serious issue around the ability of in house teams to meet the return on investment expectations of firm management. Expert skills in such areas as data analytics, as well as routine training in PMS applications, are in short supply and are resulting in significant salary expectation increases.

Whatever a law firm is doing, litigation, corporate, M&A, there are hundreds of apps all adding up to a major enablement problem.

So, enter Wilson Allen’s Digital Enablement and Adoption – a full service to manage, maintain and deliver training programs for onboarding, tech skills & adoption, tech rollouts – including eLearning courseware and tools.

We are uniquely well placed to walk the talk in providing this service. Eighteen months ago we acquired the specialist learning and enablement company Capensys, bringing into Wilson Allen their people and assets as a strong foundation for a truly industry leading enablement and adoption service.

Wilson Allen is expert in both the technology and the training. We are across the full legal tech stack, we are deeply embedded in the technology landscape. We have a full complement of digital assets for self-serve, self-learning. But we also supplement with classic, instructor led training in an adult learning environment.

We have been doing this for a long time and understand the cultural nuances of training within large complex firms. And we have the culture and deep industry knowledge to make a good cultural fit.

We have a deep resource pool of over 100 staff and specialist contractors expert in helping firms enable their new technologies. We can design the program, and implement the program. We can either do it all or supplement in specialist areas.

It’s important to stress that iDEA is not project based but rather based on an annual agreement, customised for individual firms, with an annual service fee. No one else is doing a comparable service on an embedded basis.

As we emphasized in the media release announcement of the iDEA rollout: Law firms don’t need more projects, they need an ongoing partnership with a partner who can add value over time, ramping up or down depending on in house resources.