April 08 SOS Connect pumps up the volume for Withy King's Complete legal shops
Complete, the innovative brand of Withy King Solicitors, which was first to introduce the concept of walk-in legal shops in the south west of England, has returned to Solicitors Own Software (SOS) Connect software for practice management, in order to handle the rapid growth in processing volumes which the incumbent system was failing to meet.
Complete has clocked up a 144 per cent growth in business from its fixed fee services – such as conveyancing, wills and personal injury, in the last 12 months. Chief Executive Nikki Sherry, describes the operation as mid-way between the style of fully automated operation available from an e-conveyancer and that of a traditional high street practice. “The general public can literally walk into one of our shops and be re-assured that they have access to a qualified lawyer in every branch. By combining a personal touch with a highly efficient operation, which SOS Connect now helps us to provide, they also benefit from fixed and keen prices, so they know where they stand. It is a highly successful formula.”
That success created problems for the existing system which Withy King had implemented for the whole group in May 2007. It became too cumbersome for Complete’s bulk operation and slowed down the time taken to complete transactions due to the accounts function having to make many key strokes per request.
Complete gained group approval to search the market again for a system that could scale to meet future volume increases and reduce the time to process each transaction. SOS Connect was selected from a short list of three. Nikki Sherry said: “We liked the new SOS Connect version which is so closely integrated with Oulook and intuitive to use. It takes just two or three clicks to process each transaction which has greatly improved efficiency.”
Complete also expects to take advantage of the improved reporting and business intelligence aspects of SOS Connect which supports data cubes and the ability to slice and dice information in multiple ways to suit the needs of the business. The new 100-user system is on schedule to go live in May 2008.
