Predicting demand and planning resource accordingly

• Quicker assignment of matter resources: With the implementation of resource planning tools, resource assignment can drop from 7 - 5.5 days on average¹;
• More visibility into resource, skills, availability, experience and proficiency for upcoming work through Retain International’s Skills module and "Talent Profile" within our "Skills" module;
• Act proactively to manage peaks and troughs through Retain’s Wallchart, minimising economic effects of fluctuations and redundancies, also enabling holiday and training scheduling, minimising inefficiencies and enabling happier teams;
• Ability to take on new work faster through instant visibility into resource availability and identification of resources that can be allocated from one matter to another with "Retain’s Wallchart";
• Ability to see which skills are trending and most in demand to proactively manage for future requirements.

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Forecast and phase matter workload

• Retain International’s solution allows resource planners or department managers to break down matters into elements and cost each element of work when planning matters, either within Retain’s platform or your Practice Management System, in relation to forecast hours or days required from fee earner;
• Easily search for the right solicitors or paralegal through Retain’s People Search module and allocate the ideal resources within Retain’s Wallchart to a matter. This also enables better identification around the seniority of resource required, time required, and the competency requirement.
• Huge pressures calculating more managed estimates is unavoidable. Compared to Excel and other resource planning solutions, users can easily see when fee earners will need to be spent on each phase of a matter once an estimate of the life of a matter has been made. Furthermore, Retain International can be integrated into your existing Practice Management Software to sync matters and the information around them, thus saving the need for double input of information.

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Better control your bottom line

• Increase billable time – organisations report an increase of 6% in billable utilisation, and an increase of 8% on the number of on-budget projects²;
• Manage changes in matter budgeting costs and prediction of matter life, providing more accurate resource requirements and scheduling even at departmental level;
• Use “reference class forecasting” to better predict the matter timescale, elements, phases, costs and “enforced contingency” of similar projects in the future from previous matters;
• Better resource utilisation and matter budgeting complexity criteria through “reference class forecasting”, enabling lawyers to gradually improve the estimated likely fees and the ability to change forecasts accordingly, establishing the most likely outcome for the specific project;
• The ability to plan in for “enforced contingency” within a project more easily than other resource planning tools like Excel;
• The ability to work out a sensible budget at the beginning and managing resources in line with that budget, better estimating matter pricing vs matter costing and report on forecasted profit throughout;
• No more “best guess” estimates with phases and elements missing.

Easily accessible data that’s integrated into your Practice Management System

• Excel workarounds do not integrate with firms’ practice management systems. A resource planning management system reduces all the disjointed, error prone, time consuming cost forecasts and resource allocations.

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Accessible, visual reporting on resources and capacity

• Research suggests only 9% of employers believe they have a good understanding of the resource factors that drive performance while only 8% or organisations report they have useable resource data³. With Retain’s Calendar view, quickly identify resource slack, resource overutilisation and maximise resource

View Infographic - "Redefining Success"