Case Study: Hill Dickinson

Highlights

• Enhanced client management: By integrating data with Dynamics 365 to enrich client communications and improve marketing outreach.
• Modernised event handling: Including a purpose-built mobile app to make attendee check-ins smoother.
• Improved data reporting: data centralisation has also improved its reporting quality and agility, allowing bespoke reports and insights at a granular level.

Who are Hill Dickinson?

Hill Dickinson is a leading global commercial law firm headquartered in Liverpool. With more than 200 partners and 1000 staff, the firm operates from 12 locations.

The firm provides advice and strategic guidance spanning the full legal spectrum, acting as a trusted adviser to businesses, organisations and individuals worldwide.

Hill Dickinson has partnered with ServerSys to advance its digital transformation using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. Since implementing Dynamics, this business has increasingly connected its data to enhance client experiences, as Lisa Gale, CRM and Digital Marketing Expert at Hill Dickinson, explains.

“We use Dynamics 365 to house all types of client data, which drives our outbound marketing and supports our business groups by helping them better manage their relationships. Historically, we relied on offline data lists, so Microsoft Dynamics has been amazing for us. It’s been a lot more secure and reliable in supporting our client management aspirations. This includes a dedicated client planning area, which allows the person who looks after that relationship to easily add meeting notes and any follow-up actions.”

Using connected data to strengthen client relationships

As Lisa continues, integrating Dynamics 365 with Hill Dickinson’s other data sources and services has been a crucial step towards data unification.

“An integration with our email marketing platform means we can quickly send newsletters, blogs, event invites and other messages. All updates are written back into Dynamics, so we don’t have to worry about manual updates or data exports. For example, anyone can sign up to our mailing list and select the topics they’re interested in. This synchronises with CRM, so we can easily segment any audience.

“To manage some of our events, we’ve also integrated Dynamics 365 with the ON24 platform, which automatically pulls through registrations and participant information so we can quickly follow up.”

Centralising its client data has also helped Hill Dickinson personalise its emails.

“Our events team uses data in Dynamics to pick any variables they want to use in personalised invitations to increase registrations and maximise attendance. Sometimes, we’ll use this data to personalise our newsletters and internal communications.”

Driving digital transformation with paperless processing

Hill Dickinson has used the Power Platform’s wider capabilities to implement a low-code app that simplifies its event check-in processes.

“Anything that we can do to help our events team streamline their processes, we’re all over it!” says Lisa. “Our in-person events are often large in scale. Previously, we used pieces of paper to mark people on a list and make manual changes. We needed a quick and easy process for people to sign in rather than stand in a queue and wait to be ticked off.

“Working with ServerSys, we’ve deployed a Power Apps solution that includes a barcode scanner. This enables our events team members to check in everybody at the location using an iPad. Each entry flows back to the Dynamics record to let us know whether they attended or were a no-show so we can easily follow up.

“The app has improved our attendee experience, and it’s one example of the digital transformation improvements we’ve been able to make with the Microsoft cloud platform.”

Simplifying CRM adoption with Outlook integration

As Lisa highlights, the seamless integration between Dynamics and Outlook helped secure user adoption by adding CRM capabilities to a familiar user interface.

“It’s great that we’ve got the integration with Outlook because it allows people to easily schedule client meetings within tasks. With over several hundred users across our various business groups, it has been a hard slog to get everybody on board, but Outlook for Dynamics helped to get us there.”

Enhanced reporting and data insights

Hill Dickinson’s data centralisation has also improved its reporting quality and agility.

“In some cases, our reports were manually collated, and some metrics were tracked in a spreadsheet or not at all,” explains Lisa. With Dynamics, we’ve now set up a series of bespoke reports. This includes the number of clients in the system, the number of non-clients, and the number of people who haven’t signed up for a preference list, which allows us to go into granular detail.

“Our engagement reports enable each business group to review individual clients quickly. This includes how many emails they’ve opened, which preference lists they’re signed up to, what events they’ve attended, and other interactions. It gives us a broad overview of whether a contact at that company is engaging with us. If not, we can try to find out why and see what we can do better.

“With clear visibility of this information, these reports have made a massive difference in how the business reacts and manages client relationships.

It helps ensure we improve from a client perspective to see if we need to change anything to improve and keep each relationship strong.”

Expert partner expertise

Lisa highlights ServerSys value in helping Hill Dickinson achieve these outcomes with Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft Power Platform.

“The ServerSys support team always works with me and finds the best possible solution for any issues we may have. Even if they can’t come up with an immediate answer, I know they’ll work hard until they’ve found a solution. ServerSys knows Dynamics and understands our business, which saves a lot of time explaining how to do something.

“We also have monthly calls with our account manager and project lead at ServerSys, which are great for hashing anything out. We can use this time to catch up on any tickets we might have open, steer our development of the system, and discuss future changes. It’s proven to be a good forum for sharing ideas. For example, we may bring a new requirement to the discussion, such as asking ServerSys if they can think of a way we could do something to solve an issue. It’s great to have that conversation and bounce ideas around. We might have thought of one way of being able to do something, but in various instances, ServerSys consultants have identified a better approach.”

Future plans

In assessing Hill Dickinson’s progress, Lisa points to the intuitiveness of Dynamics 365.

“In terms of benefits, its ease of use has been crucial, especially when we are training CRM champions across our business groups.

“It’s been great to see how Dynamics 365 has supported the business, and we have big plans for further improvements. To progress our journey towards unified client data, we are working with ServerSys on a project to integrate our finance system. Looking further ahead, we’re also aiming to connect our website with Dynamics.

“Each configuration is tailored to our needs, making our working lives better on a day-to-day basis,” concludes Lisa.