Informing an IT change and maturity journey for a Legal 500 firm

Our client is a leading Legal 500 UK law firm providing trusted counsel across the areas of business, family and property law, plus wealth management. Over the past decade, the firm has enjoyed rapid growth through a combination of commercial success and strategic acquisitions. A journey that the board is keen to continue on.

The existing IT function is managed in-house, providing both on-premise and Cloud based services to support several hundred staff. Plans to appoint a new Head of IT created an ideal opportunity to review the current IT capability and identify opportunities to move the IT function to its next level of maturity.

Challenge

Our client was keen to gain an independent view of how well the IT function was positioned to support a set of business-critical objectives. These were: managing IT risks in the context of growing cyber threats, effectively supporting the firm’s day to day activities, and aligning the technology strategy to organisational ambitions for future expansion.

The board wanted an independent perspective on their IT’s current state, and the actions necessary to get their ideal target state. They needed a business case to support this roadmap, including high level options and cost modelling to guide the executive decision-making process.

Our client specifically needed insight into any legacy vulnerabilities and the remedial actions required to address these. They wanted to understand how current teams, processes, infrastructure, and tooling compared with best practice standards, and their market peers. They were keen to explore opportunities for new technology to expand their digital customer services, and wanted to ensure value for money across internal operations, infrastructure, and the vendor supply chain.

We were selected to conduct this review, develop a roadmap and business case, and present the recommendations and options to the board. A rapid, targeted approach was chosen, so that a new Head of IT would enter their post armed with valuable insights to guide their induction.

Solution

Our select, multi-disciplinary team of experts performed the work in three stages. First, we performed a comprehensive review of IT team capabilities, engaging with the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and key stakeholders to understand headcounts, skills, roles, responsibilities, pain points and ambitions – and how these compared to market competition. These insights were used to design an optimal target model for the IT team, with recommendations for structure, skills, capabilities, governance guardrails and future ways of working.

We then moved to an end-to-end review of all technology architecture, examining hardware, software, Cloud applications and infrastructure. The review incorporated key issues including legacies and remediations, business continuity, cyber security, governance, data systems and integration, Cloud migration options, and supply chain efficiencies. A series of collaborative stakeholder interviews and workshops allowed us to validate our assumptions, before producing the technology change roadmap with recommendations and options for the board to consider.

Finally, we incorporated our findings and recommendations into a commercial modelling exercise. We mapped cost benefit options – including app, infrastructure and running, development, third party vendor, and licensing costs – demonstrating the tangible and soft benefits associated with each option.

The business case, roadmap and investment options were presented to the COO, providing a clear line of sight into the likely impact of keeping the IT in its current state, compared to implementing a new IT change roadmap.

Outcome

Our client is equipped with a comprehensive, independent review of their current IT capabilities plus recommendations for the journey ahead. They have a clear forward plan, detailing the necessary actions and the IT leadership skills needed to direct the change strategy. They can now onboard a new Head of IT and confidently kick-start the change implementation work.

“From the initial introductory meeting, Mason Advisory clearly understood our requirements and provided us with the necessary confidence they would meet our expectations. They proactively collaborated with us throughout the project resulting in a final output that will allow us to develop our IT function and set it up for success.”

Client’s Chief Operating Officer