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Leading Australian Law Firm Allens Accelerates Innovation with OutSystems
10
legacy apps modernized
3
months delivery
70%
app support saving
Allens—a leading commercial law firm in Australia—is no stranger to using technology to streamline service delivery and improve customer experience. For four years running, it has been recognised as one of the 'Most Innovative Professional Services Firms' by the Australian Financial Review. In 2020, Allens started working with OutSystems and delivery partner DB Results to modernize ten crucial legal practice applications. Results include the retirement of a legacy platform, improved user experience, and a 70 percent saving in support effort in the case of one application, allowing its roll-out to numerous clients.
- App Modernization
- Customer Experience
- Digital Core Systems
- Operational Efficiency
- Web Apps & Portals
“We pride ourselves on embracing new technologies and developing solutions that help us push boundaries and deliver real value for our clients. Our 2022 strategy challenged us to accelerate our innovation efforts, and we needed to ensure we had the right platforms and systems in place to support this.”
Lisa Kozaris
Chief Innovation and Legal Solutions Officer, Allens
Challenge
Allens Wanted to Scale its Innovation Efforts
With nearly 200 years of experience helping clients solve their toughest challenges, innovation has always been a part of Allens’ DNA.
In 2020, the challenge for the firm’s Innovation and Digital Solutions team was how to keep pace with changing client needs, scaling out existing solutions in a robust way, and continuing to triage the stream of new ideas coming from its lawyers.
“Innovation in the context of legal services means looking for, and developing, ways to improve how we deliver legal services and outcomes to clients. It also plays a part in positioning us to capitalize on future opportunities. This new capability opens more possibilities for the firm to explore future solutions we can create for our lawyers and clients.”
The firm’s development team was keen to evaluate the OutSystems platform by building out three existing applications during an initial trial supported by delivery partner DB Results.
Why Allens chose OutSystems:
Speed-up development and improve agility
Modernize legacy systems
Improve UX
Solution
Allen’s Developers Rapidly Upskilled with OutSystems
Working together with DB Results helped the small team of developers rapidly master the OutSystems visual programming approach, as DB Results assisted with the design and build of more complex requirements.
Allens conducted user testing with representatives from the firm’s legal and corporate services divisions. The overwhelming majority (91 percent) preferred the user experience of the new OutSystems applications.
“The OutSystems developed application feels more like a modern, consumer-grade application compared to the previous ancient enterprise system."
The conclusive results from the trial made it an easy decision for Allens to adopt OutSystems as its low-code application development platform. The firm set an ambitious target to migrate ten legacy applications in three months to decommission a costly legacy platform.
Working alongside DB Results provided Allens’ development team on-demand access to additional technical resources to ensure the project ran smoothly.
Partner
DB Results
DB Results is a leading OutSystems Partner in Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand and the Philippines with 250+ certified developers in our dedicated OutSystems Delivery Centre. Since 2014, we have...
Learn more about DB ResultsResults
Allens Crushes its Innovation Backlog with Faster Development
Allens has successfully migrated all the production applications and several smaller MVPs and prototypes to OutSystems.
Improved scalability and reliability have enabled Allens to extend the benefits of some of its applications to additional clients. Previously, one of its legacy applications was only used by two clients because it required almost a full-time resource to support and maintain it. Even though the application significantly saved lawyer time, the firm could not justify scaling its use for other clients because of the high support cost.
Since migrating that application to OutSystems, support requirements have dropped to less than half a day per week— a 70 percent saving—with most of that time focused on product enhancements. As a result, Allens can now roll out the solution to more clients, saving more lawyer time and delivering service efficiency savings to clients.
For a dedicated innovation team servicing a large law firm, freeing up resources in this way has been a game-changer. Before adopting OutSystems, the team had a portfolio of 40-plus initiatives at various lifecycle stages, with 15 applications backlogged and waiting for developer capacity. Since adopting faster low-code development, the team has completed 21 of those initiatives. Allens now has the development capacity needed to support its pipeline of high-value initiatives and respond quickly to the continuous stream of new ideas coming from the business—five in the last month alone.
For more details on this story, hear directly from Lisa Kozaris, Chief Innovation and Legal Solutions Officer at Allens, in this interview with Digital Nation.
Outlook
Since embracing low-code development, Allens has increased the speed and quality of lean experimentation to facilitate legal service innovation. The team can quickly assess new product ideas and prioritize the best ideas for rapid delivery.
The significantly improved user experience provided by the new OutSystems applications has been a boon with end-users. Moreover, as developers can now deliver prototypes in days and MVPs in weeks instead of months, the Innovation and Digital Solutions team has improved engagement and enthusiasm from all stakeholders across the law firm.
