The edition for law, accountancy and consulting firms
The Professional Services Edition counts the introductions.
Your firm grows by referral and almost certainly cannot name its ten best referrers. That is not a marketing failure. It is a record that nobody has ever kept, and it is the first thing this edition keeps.
Start here
Every firm has this picture. Almost none has it written down.
One good client introduces the next three, and two of those introduce more. Ask a managing partner which client is at the root of that and you will get a name, a pause, and no evidence.
Three questions this record answers on its own.
- Which ten clients have introduced the most work, ranked, over any period you choose.
- Which introductions were never thanked, which is the single most common way a firm loses a referrer.
- Which of your own people are being introduced to, because a referral usually goes to a person rather than to a firm.
An introduction is recorded on both records, the one who gave it and the one who arrived. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the graph can be drawn at all.
The second difference
A client is not a purchase. It is a year that repeats.
Retail counts baskets and this industry counts cycles. The same client has the same year end every year, the same renewal every year, and a firm still rebuilds the list by hand every year.
The obligation you both already know about
A year end, a filing, an audit, a return, a registration renewal, an insurance renewal. The date is known twelve months ahead, it moves for nobody, and the work is won by whoever raised it first.
The review nobody is contractually required to ask for
A will after a birth, a shareholders' agreement after a new partner, a lease three years before it ends, a structure after a change in the rules. Valuable, entirely predictable, and the first thing to fall off a busy desk.
The end of an engagement
The matter closes, the invoice is settled and the relationship goes silent. This is the single moment a firm most reliably loses a client, and it is a date the practice system already holds.
The firm that asks first usually does the work.
The only screen that matters
A partner reads one list, on a Monday.
The person who owns the relationship is a fee earner with no free hours and no appetite for a marketing tool. If the edition does not fit into one list they read before their first meeting, it will not be used, whatever else it can do.
Four rows a partner can act on before the first meeting.
The hard boundary
What this edition refuses to hold.
A relationship record in a firm sits next to material that is privileged, confidential or walled off, and the value of the edition depends entirely on it never touching any of that.
No matter content, ever
No advice, no correspondence, no documents, no file notes and no work product. Vivalto knows that a matter exists, what type it is and when it opened and closed. It does not know what is in it.
No client money, and no billing
Client account, time recording and billing stay in the systems that hold them and are audited as such. This edition reads that an invoice was settled and holds no figure that belongs in an audited account.
A group can never be built from matter content
A segment here is built from relationship facts: service lines used, dates, introductions, how long someone has been a client. Building one from the substance of advice is the thing this edition must be unable to do, rather than merely discouraged from doing.
An ethical wall is your decision, enforced by us
Software cannot decide where a wall belongs. Your firm decides, and the edition holds that decision so that a walled client cannot appear in a list, a programme or a report on the other side of it. We put that in writing with your risk partner before anything is switched on.
Where it sits
Beside the practice system, never on top of it.
YOURS
Matters, time and billing
The practice management system keeps the file, the hours, the invoice and the client account.
OURS
The relationship and the dates
One record per client, who introduced them, which service lines they use, and every date that repeats.
THE FIRST PIECE OF WORK
The link between the two
We build the connection to your practice system with your team, and it is the first thing we build.
What a firm asks first
The four questions a managing partner puts to us.
Our partners will not use a marketing system
They should not have to. The Monday list above is the whole of what a fee earner touches, and everything that produces it happens without them.
A firm that wants more than that has it, but the edition is judged on whether the list is read.
How do you know who introduced whom
Somebody records it once, at the moment the new client is opened, and the edition holds it on both records from then on. There is no clever inference here and there should not be, because a guessed referral source is worse than none.
Does this reach into our matter files
No. The boundary section above is the design, not a policy laid over it. The edition is configured to receive the fact that a matter exists and its type, and nothing from inside it.
We are three offices and two brands after a merger
One installation carries several brands, each with its own settings, and a client is one record across all of them. That is how the engine runs multi-brand operators.
Ask us the question your own systems cannot answer.
Thirty minutes, on your own numbers. Bring the question 'who introduced our ten best clients', see the product running, and we will show you the shape of the record that answers it.
hello@vivalto.ai