Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Law Firm Employees Save Time, Communicate Faster with Integrated Solution
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:Professional services—Legal
Customer Profile
Based in North Carolina, the Womble Carlyle law firm serves clients worldwide in a range of industries. The firm employs 1,300 people in 11 offices throughout the southeastern United States.
Business Situation
The firm needed to provide its employees, who work out of disparate offices and client sites, a better way of communicating. Womble Carlyle also wanted to improve its phone and voice-mail systems.
Solution
Womble Carlyle implemented a new unified communications solution that integrates Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.
Benefits
Unifies voice and e-mail communications
Helps users get in touch faster
Saves time for employees
Increases employee productivity
Will provide video capabilities / "I save up to two hours every day because of Office Communications Server 2007. I no longer waste time sending e-mail messages or leaving voice mail and waiting for my colleagues to respond to me."
James Martin, Systems Engineer, Womble Carlyle
Womble Carlyle is a growing law firm based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The company has 1,300 employees in 11 offices throughout the southeastern United States. Recently, the firm sought a solution to improve communication between its attorneys, who are often out of the office, and the office-based employees who assist them with legal cases. The firm also sought to add communications capabilities to its phone system, which was nearing the end of its lifecycle. In February 2008, Womble Carlyle began implementing a unified communications solution based on Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging. This solution integrates voice, e-mail, instant message, and presence. As a result, employees communicate faster and are more productive. The solution will eventually give attorneys “soft phone” and peer-to-peer video capabilities.
Situation
Womble Carlyle is a full-service business law firm with 1,300 employees, including 530 lawyers, and 11 offices in the southeastern United States. Established more than 130 years ago in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the firm now consists of 1,300 employees. It serves domestic and international clients in the financial services, real estate, information technology, healthcare, manufacturing, and telecommunications industries.
In addition to attorneys, Womble Carlyle has different practice support groups made up of paralegals, systems engineers, application support specialists, and trainers. These groups provide on-site client assistance, case documentation, and technical support during trials.The firm's attorneys travel frequently to client locations and Womble Carlyle regional offices, and use laptop computers that run the Windows® XP operating system.
Until recently, these attorneys had only two communication tools: a Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition e-mail messaging system and an aging Nortel 61C Private Branch Exchange (PBX) phone system. “When our attorneys travel, they expect to have effective communications tools,” says James Martin, Systems Engineer, Womble Carlyle. “However, if an attorney needed specific client information from a paralegal, he or she would need to send an e-mail message or leave a voice-mail message and hope for a timely return e-mail or phone call. That made communication very difficult.”
Womble Carlyle attempted to fix some of these communication issues in late 2006 by implementing Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005. “We primarily used the instant messaging functionality of that solution, which helped,” says Martin. “It has been especially helpful for the different practice support teams, who can communicate faster.” However, the organization’s attorneys still had no reliable way of knowing whether a member of the support team was in the office on a given day.
At the beginning of 2008, Womble Carlyle started to look for a new communications solution that would integrate with its phone system.
Solution
When Womble Carlyle set out to find a new solution, it was looking for a unified communications system that would integrate with the firm’s Windows-based IT infrastructure.
In February 2008, Womble Carlyle learned about Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, a new solution that combines voice, presence awareness, and instant messaging capabilities into a single unified user interface. Womble Carlyle also became interested in Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging, which consolidates e-mail and voice mail functionality so that a user can access e-mail and voice mail messages from the same Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration clientinbox.
Soon after becoming acquainted with their features, Womble Carlyle began implementing a unified communications solution that combines both products. To deploy this solution, the firm worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner the NWN Corporation, a systems integrator based in Waltham, Massachusetts. NWN and Womble Carlyle rolled out the solution, which includes the voice and conferencing capabilities of Office Communications Server 2007 in addition to Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging, to 250 users.
NWN, which specializes in Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging and Office Communications Server 2007 deployments, helped Womble Carlyle install Office Communications Server 2007, and assisted the firm in implementing the Office Communications Server 2007 Access Edge server role.
The deployment team then worked on linking the organization’s existing Nortel 61C PBX, although the Womble Carlyle engineering team has yet to implement a true voice over IP (VoIP) solution. Once VoIP is fully implemented, Womble Carlyle users will be able to place and receive phone calls on their computers using the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 client. “That was a major reason we wanted to do this, because we were looking to replace the PBX system anyway,” Martin says.
Finally, the team deployed Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging, which is connected to the PBX system through Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking technology. The installation of the unified communications solution took four weeks. With this solution, Womble Carlyle employees can use Office Communicator 2007 to send and receive instant messages and use presence awareness. In the future, they will also be able to receive e-mail and voice mail messages in their Office Outlook 2007 inboxes.
Benefits
Womble Carlyle is building a unified communications solution that consolidates voice-mail and e-mail communications, which is already giving the members of a pilot group a faster way of getting in touch with each another. As a result, the firm’s employees are much more productive. The company’s long-term goal is to integrate Office Communications Server 2007 with a VoIP infrastructure. This will complete the organization’s unified messaging architecture and provide video and voice from the desktop, as well as voice-mail integration.
Unifies Voice and E-Mail Communications
When the company’s new unified communications solution is completely installed, Womble Carlyle employees will have a central place from which they can send and receive voice mail and e-mail messages. With this capability, they will experience increased flexibility in their communications. “All of our attorneys have mobile devices, and in the future they will be able to use Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging and Office Outlook 2007 to have an integrated experience,” Martin says. “For example, they will be able to receive a voice-mail message in their Office Outlook 2007 inbox. All they will have to do is play the attached audio file to listen to that message. There will be no need for them to even check their voice mail anymore.”
Using this unified messaging environment also means that Womble Carlyle attorneys will no longer have to worry about lost voice-mail messages. “Voice-mail and e-mail messages will be treated the same in this solution,” says Martin. “We will only need to perform backup on Exchange Server 2007 to save all messages. We also have a third-party e-mail archiving solution that will be integrated with Exchange Server 2007, so we can rely on that to save critical archived messages.”
Helps Users Get in Touch Faster
With unified communications tools, Womble Carlyle employees can contact one another much faster than they could with their previous solution. “The instant messaging features in Office Communications Server 2007 definitely help my staff communicate better and quicker,” Martin says. “If an IT employee is working in one of our server rooms and sees a light on that indicates a failed drive, that person can send an instant message to alert the rest of us.”
The solution’s presence awareness features also help Womble Carlyle employees communicate, because they can quickly choose the best method of communicating. “With presence in Office Communications Server 2007, I can see if a colleague is online, and use Office Communicator 2007 to click on the name to send an instant message. Or, I can choose to send an e-mail message if that person doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
Saves Time for Employees
Because the new solution speeds communication for the firm’s employees, they now have more time in their workday. “I save up to two hours every day because of Office Communications Server 2007. I no longer waste time sending e-mail messages or leaving voice mail and waiting for my colleagues to respond to me,” says Martin. “With presence awareness capabilities, I no longer have to walk down to another floor in the building to see a colleague, only to discover that the colleague is not there.”
In addition, with the solution’s single, standardized Active Directory® service, Womble Carlyle support group teams can spend less time communicating internally. “Using a centralized Active Directory, we can easily provision groups,” Martin says. “Now, employees in accounting can select the entire accounting team as one group in Office Communicator 2007 and send one e-mail message to everyone. Previously, they had to select each name individually. Now, instead of wasting time selecting 20 names, they can contact the whole group with one click of the mouse.”
Increases Employee Productivity
With this new solution, employees at Womble Carlyle can communicate more efficiently and are more productive on the job. “With Office Communications Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging,” says Martin, “I can focus more on general system maintenance because I’m not spending so much time every day trying to find someone.”
The new solution’s voice integration also improves productivity. “Office Communications Server 2007 gives us missed call notification, which our phone system never had before,” Martin notes. “Now I can see who tried to call me, and when, on my computer. I can call that person right back or send a reply e-mail message to find out what he or she needed. I’m able to help people who need technical support faster, which means that person can get more done as well.”
Will Provide Video Capabilities
In the future, Womble Carlyle employees will also be able to send and receive phone calls from their computers and use the peer-to-peer video capabilities of Office Communications Server 2007. For example, with that technology, the firm’s attorneys will be able to communicate using a Web cam on their computers. “The video capabilities in Office Communications Server 2007 will give attorneys a better chance of attending meetings they might not have been able to attend because they were out of the office,” says Martin.
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