Cost Recovery, Management & Control for Law Firms
Many firms are finding that they are recovering less from copies each year. Ten years ago, almost 97% of all clients reimbursed the firms for copies. It was pretty simple to put a cost recovery system in place and expect to collect the money, but times have changed. With clients putting more pressure on their firms, law firms can no longer rely solely on a cost recovery model. Firms that rely on that model will continue to experience declining recoveries. With nQueue’s methodology we capture all cost and expense data in order to deliver on three major areas:
Recover
The ability to recover ALL costs—not just copies—from clients is still an important part of the equation. According to recent legal specific surveys, some 51% of firms are billing for prints and 36% are billing for scans.
If your firm isn’t at least studying the printing and scanning you do and the financial impact to the firm, you are missing the highest percentage of soft cost recovery today.
nQueue can help you recover a higher percentage of soft costs and hard costs.
Manage
Cost Management is taking the time to understand the full implications of costs and expenses. By drilling down into who is doing what and who is charging for what, firms can get a much more complete understanding of the financial picture and make better decisions to improve profitability.
For example, many firms miss the opportunity to fully understand all of their overnight, messenger, car service and similar expenses due to invalid client/matter numbers. This lack of data, however, impacts the way the firm views its attorneys, matters, practice areas and clients.
Some clients pay for a higher percentage of costs and expenses. The ones that don’t may not be as truly profitable it seems. If “you can’t manage what you don’t measure,” building a data warehouse with this information and then mining that data is a requirement for good management. After all, a dollar saved is a dollar earned.
Control
Cost Control is likely the biggest leap for a law firm, as firms typically implement strong Cost Recovery and Cost Management policies first. However, nQueue makes Cost Control simple by enforcing a series of rules, such as flagging a print job as non-billable, forcing it to duplex or black & white. We can also help with more advanced cost control measures, such as limiting spending for car services, messengers and other expenses and providing cost transparency before costs are incurred.
nQueue provides today’s firms with Cost Management and Cost Control along with Cost Recovery to reverse the trend of declining recoveries and improve profitability firm wide.
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