The Evolution of (X)RM

Law firm business development is all about relationships. So it is not surprising that there has been a continual and ongoing search for technology and tools to assist firms in discovering and leveraging these crucial relationships.

For decades, the relationship technology tool of choice for law firms was CRM (Client Relationship Management). A large number of firms spent large sums of money attempting to deploy these systems to gain relationship intelligence and enhance Client communication, collaboration and service. But time has shown that CRM success can be challenging. In fact, some research indicated that over 70% of CRM implementations may have failed to meet expectations.

Then came ERM (Enterprise Relationship Management), a technology that promised to reveal vast numbers of relationships with minimal effort required from attorneys. But as powerful as ERM may be for discovering relationships, it wasn't a complete solution to help firms leverage those relationships.

Lately social media is all the rage – and we have new and sexy SRM (Social Relationship Management), technology touted to assist us with monitoring and managing these social networks and relationships in the hopes of increasing ‘engagement’ and ultimately, revenue. With the advent of all this exciting new technology, it’s not surprising that some people have questioned whether CRM is still relevant…