Event Report: Thomson Elite User Conference - June 2007

At the end of June 2007, I was lucky enough to be invited along to Thomson Elite’s user conference in Las Vegas. The three-day event, including a jam-packed agenda of 65 presentations and 39 tutorials, as well as an exhibition hall of over 40 exhibitors, might have overwhelmed a humble journalist like me. However, the whole experience kicked off in style, as check-in staff at Virgin Atlantic double booked my seat and I found myself upgraded to an almost dreamlike ten-hour London to Las Vegas flight in Upper Class. Of course, Alison Sharp, international marketing manager at Thomson Elite, never heard an end to the tales of my fortuitous upgrade, but in keeping with her impressive organisation of such an extensive event – attended by hundreds of delegates – she managed to demonstrate nothing but impressively professional patience as I wittered on about the food, the wine, the lie-flat bed, etc.
Once I at least briefly got over my in-flight excitement, I was taken on a tour of the conference area, including the event’s huge exhibition hall. The conference venue, the Wynn Hotel, is huge, as of course is everything in Las Vegas, but I was still taken aback by the extent of the proceedings. The exhibition hall, including its numerous stands, individually manned by several representatives from each exhibitor, gave a three-day continuous impression of business bustle. But this was also complemented by a well-thought-out addition to the conference, Thomson Elite’s ‘Learning lab’, which offered delegates one-to-one interaction with Elite, ProLaw and Hubbard One consulting staff. In particular, the latter’s significant presence at the event, as well as several sessions presented by Baker Robbins consultants over the three days, reminded me of Thomson’s efforts to expand its consulting arm in recent years, acquiring Hubbard One in 2005, and Baker Robbins & Company in May 2007. This serious push to provide both technology and related strategic/advisory expertise may also explain my invitation to the event. As former editor of Managing Partner magazine and now editor of Ark’s new finance title, FD Legal, my experience lies in a law firms’ strategic decision making, rather than specific product choices or technology implementations. By inviting me along, and including such a strong consultant wing, Thomson Elite seemed to be signalling its strong strategic as well as technology support to the legal profession.
Appealing to the strategic decision makers in the legal profession may have also explained the delegate split. I had expected a user conference filled to the rafters with IT managers/directors, all of whom would report back to their offices with practical tips on the latest technical upgrades. I was struck, however, by the sheer number of finance professionals, including finance directors and chief executives, attending the conference. Of course, finance directors have huge involvement in financial-management systems, many of whom will be using Elite systems in their day-to-day working lives. But their attendance at the event demonstrated two developments: just how the role of the finance director has changed to incorporate firm-wide responsibilities for financial-management processes; and how solution providers like Thomson Elite understand how important it is to target those in senior management generally, and not just those specialising in IT.
The sessions and tutorials were held in meeting rooms lined along corridors leading left and right from the exhibition hall. Thomson Elite had booked out so many rooms to manage all the presentations that I gave up counting; however, the number of speakers, topics covered, and available rooms, ensured that no session was unreasonably packed, despite the number of delegates. In fact, the only downside to attending presentations was the distances involved in walking from session to session, and then back to the exhibition hall. We all must have lost some weight in walking that week, and that’s despite the huge meals and nightly entertainment.
As you might expect, I attended those sessions that seemed most strategic, rather than technical – for example, ‘Global Expansion: 10 Things to Consider’ (presented by Jitendra Valera, vice president, international, at Thomson Elite); ‘Law Firm Mergers: The Anchors We Leave in the Water’ (presented by John Tsiofas, strategic consultant at Kraft Kennedy & Lesser; and ‘Marketing the Firm: An Integrated Approach’ (presented by Jason Parkman, vice president, business development solutions, at Hubbard One). But there was also an array of topics for the more technically minded, including ‘3E Integration with Microsoft Office’ and the extremely daunting sounding ‘Customizing Elite Enterprise with VBA Scripting’, to name but two examples.
There were, of course, also many presentations looking at Elite’s 3E. Last year, I interviewed Jitendra Valera for a Q&A that was published in the April 2006 issue of Managing Partner. At the time, 3E had just been launched, but Elite’s excitement about the product was palpable. “The 3E offering is fundamentally different,” said Valera at the time. “This is a paradigm shift. The next-generation 3E platform approaches the needs of the law firm not only from a core applications perspective, but also from the unique way the organisation works. Elite 3E enables the firm to automate the functionality within the process – and in a way that’s rapidly customisable and managed by the firm itself using the 3E platform and tools.” A year later, and Thomson Elite seems as enthusiastic as ever about 3E, with a significant 14 of the 65 sessions, and 11 of the 39 tutorials dedicated to developments and capabilities in 3E.
I also had the opportunity to talk to Bruce Wilson, vice president of business intelligence solutions at Thomson Elite. Business intelligence (BI) solutions are still fairly new to law firms in the US and UK, but Elite is keen to take its technology-based BI solution to a wider audience. As a technology product specifically designed for senior decision makers (that is, managing partners and chief executives), I wonder how firms will decide who takes on responsibility for BI implementation – for example, if IT manages implementation, will the chief executive or managing partner ever actually understand and/or use the product? Or will it prove just another wasted (and costly) investment lying in some dark, forgotten corner of the firm? According to a BI Ark Survey conducted alongside Thomson Elite’s user conference (for further details, see page 8), it seems that BI may be the hot topic/purchase of future months/years; it also seems that a firm’s finance team will play a large part in overseeing a firm’s BI. We wait to see just how successfully senior management in firms make use of this solution or approach BI generally. At the conference, however, Wilson was emphatically positive, explaining how Elite’s BI solution will provide far more than any traditional reporting solution, linking every part of the business and providing decision makers with visual/dashboard information, daily updates and information revealing problems behind the business. If it works as he hopes, this may well be another successful addition to the Elite stable.
Of course, all this hard work couldn’t dispel the fact that we were all in Las Vegas. On the first evening, we enjoyed a welcome party for international delegates at the world famous ‘Bellagio’ hotel and casino. The following night was a ‘Cirque Fantastique’ gala dinner, featuring a catwalk cum ice-skating rink, where acrobats and contortionists seemed to balance on a pin or just about turn themselves inside out. We watched while having a far more relaxing time of drinking and dining.
I also have to give a last word to my breakfast and poolside companion, who shall remain nameless, but who provided me with much needed last-minute tutorials on Elite products, as well as a most welcome respite to all that work and walking between sessions. I am not sure how many presentations he ever got to, as he seemed to spend much of his time shopping or sunbathing by the admittedly fantastic pool... But then, you can’t really plan a user conference in Las Vegas without expecting just a few work-related casualties.