The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/116777
Thad Jampol, IntApp's Chief Technology Officer, is responsible for overseeing the company's overall product and technology strategy. He is the architect of IntApp's risk management, application integration and time capture solutions. Thad is an expert in legal software applications and IT environments and has worked with many large law firms in the U.S. and U.K. to address business process optimization, confidentiality management and regulatory compliance challenges. He can be contacted at thad.jampol@intapp.com. Norm Mullock is a veteran and active champion of data-driven innovation in the legal industry. As the head of IntApp's integration practice, Norm leads the company's efforts in expanding law firms' adoption of modern data architecture and management strategies. Prior to joining IntApp, Norm spent more than a decade advancing the adoption of leading business intelligence solutions with BI pioneer, Redwood Analytics, a company Norm co-founded. He can be contacted at norm.mullock@intapp.com. Traditionally, IT departments focused on ensuring lawyers could work and that operations would run smoothly, but IT now has the opportunity to have direct impact on overall firm success. This opportunity arises from the exponential increase in information over the past decade, coupled with the increasing value management places on data as an asset that helps define and effectively execute strategy. The big questions management asks to set strategy and govern operations — whether to take on new clients, take on lateral hires, outsource repeatable processes or merge with another firm — can only be answered with a complete view of firm data. As market pressures force firms to cut operational costs, the challenge IT currently faces is to develop an information strategy that both streamlines operations and provides management with real-time insight into the firm's overall current performance. Unfortunately, many firms struggle to achieve this goal because their data are scattered across multiple systems and applications. Disconnected data risk diverting information from being an asset to a liability, because these scattered data: • Encumber business processes that span multiple systems; • Compromise data quality; • Frustrate lawyers; and • Ultimately cost the firm time and resources. To overcome problems created by information silos, firms must establish a data architecture that can both share information between systems and generate a 360degree view of firm activity. Master data management (MDM) is a data architecture and governance strategy that sets the foundation for IT to support management's needs effectively. Under MDM, data flows are designed to consolidate an authoritative "master" representation of critical business entities, such as matters, clients and people, that appear across multiple systems. As master entities appear in different forms Peer to Peer 61