Law Technology Today From the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center
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With legal technology vendors consolidating left and right, disparate products are being brought together under a single umbrella like never before. Instead of accessing four different products through four different vendors to tackle four different problems, customers are now able to buy a single integrated platform that solves those discrete problems—and more.
These cohesive product suites are a good thing for tech developers, but they’re even better for clients. By unifying products under one brand, tech providers create software solutions that work together seamlessly, offer one-call customer service, and simplify pricing and costs.
Plays Well With Others
Previously, customers had to work with several vendors and obtain several different products to solve discrete aspects of a larger problem. For example, our clients might use one product to create and format documents, another to complete tables and indexes, and a third for collaborative revisions and document sharing. These products weren’t necessarily compatible with each other, so customers struggled with extra steps, translation errors, and wasted time moving a document from one solution to the next.
Integrated software suites work better than separate products for at least two reasons. First, we as designers can think more cohesively about the entire problem our clients face, such as the document drafting lifecycle. We’ve been able to reimagine that lifecycle and offer a single unified approach that solves disparate customer problems across every stage of document creation, checking, and collaboration. Now, the entire software package leads our customers logically through the process of making their documents perfect.
Second, we can integrate and test our products as a coherent overarching solution, allowing us to eliminate bugs, delays, incompatibilities, and translation errors. We know the pain and headaches of changing platforms midstream—after all, Litera Microsystems got its start by solving translation errors during the legal industry’s switch from Corel to Microsoft. With one product suite, customers no longer have to deal with incompatible file types or glitches caused by products not working together smoothly.
One Call, That’s All
That absence of translation errors becomes even more noticeable when it comes to customer support. In the days of working with a combination of separate products, a customer might need to call several different companies to try to resolve a translation problem. Worse, the tech vendors might not be familiar with the other products that the customer was using or with the typical bugs that cropped up when switching from one product to the next.
Now, customers can call a single tech vendor for unified support. Additionally, when those customers call, they’re reaching someone who’s familiar with the full product suite, so they can get the answers they need. Customers also only need to learn how to use the product’s interface once—climbing a single learning curve and taking time for just one product training.
The Sweet Spot for Pricing
With separate products, customers have to pay multiple bills to multiple vendors. This separation makes it harder for customers to track what their software costs and harder to control those costs.
With a unified product suite from a single tech vendor, solutions are more cost-effective for the vendor to provide and for the customer to pay. This makes pricing straightforward, so it’s easier for clients to budget, control costs, and pay their bills.
Product suites offer a host of advantages, both for vendors and, more importantly, for clients. We as developers can create better products, offering a unified approach to larger problems with fewer bugs and incompatibilities. We can provide better customer service through a single call, limiting downtime and headaches. And we can offer those improved solutions at more affordable price-points that are easier to track and manage.
