Hire IT Support Who Knows Your CMS!

Why It’s Important They Know Your CMS & How It Helps Save Money

Investing in a Case Management System (CMS) is no easy feat. It takes a lot of time, a lot of consideration, and a lot of money to get it up and running. It takes even more time and costs even more money when training your staff on how to use that CMS. And, to make matters worse, you need IT support to maintain your CMS monthly. Investing in technology support from IT professionals costs another monthly fee that most legal firms don’t even want to think about. But, they have to.

And when you’ve already spent so much money on your CMS, investing in the “cheap,” “cheaper,” and “cheapest” tech guys look extremely appealing. Although it may seem appealing, and although it may save you money upfront, in the long run, you will spend far more revenue investing in the “cheapest” solution then you would have if you hired IT support who knows your CMS.

Why? Most legal firms don’t consider what makes an IT support company a good fit for their firm. Rather, they focus on this:

What is the lowest possible amount I can pay for IT support?

Thinking like this is dangerous, and it blinds firms from making smart investments. Instead of looking at costs only, it’s important to think about things like:

Does this IT Support company specialize in Personal Injury tech support?

Do they know my industry and its challenges?

If not, will they be able to understand my challenges and technical needs?

Does this IT Support company know my Case Management System?

Are they an expert in my Case Management System?

Will they know how to fix issues on my CMS?

If they call my CMS vendor, will they know how to communicate issues to them?

These are just some of the questions firms should be considering when thinking about hiring IT support. What many firms fail to realize is that if their IT person does not understand their CMS, they will waste your money.

Although you may pick the cheaper solution, you are paying more because the IT support you invested in will not be knowledgeable where you need them to be. It’s a hard truth that many firms only learn after they’ve gone through a bad experience. And usually, these bad experiences look similar to this:

• You Will Pay Extra for Your IT Support to Learn Your CMS – that equals more hours spent learning before they can even fix the issue!
• You Will Lose Thousands of Dollars in Downtime – if your IT support doesn’t know your CMS, extremely long downtimes will be inevitable.
• They Will Outsource for Help, and You’ll Pay for It – when they can’t fix an issue, you’ll have to pay an extra fee on top of theirs for additional help.
• Their Lack of Knowledge Costs You More – Fixing issues will happen slowly because your IT support will be unable to work efficiently because they’re playing catch up.
• Your IT Support Doesn’t Care – When you go cheap, more than 99% of the time, your IT support could care less about your business. Protecting data, backing up, and so on are not their top priority. So when things blow up, you’re in trouble.

This is just a small portion of the problems that come with investing in cheap IT. Alternatively, there are IT support specialists who do specialize in Case Management Systems, and that is where you should be investing your money.

When your IT people walk through the door, they should:

• Know Your Case Management System Fully
• Know Your Industry
• Know Its Challenges
• Know the Technology Challenges Personal Injury Firms Face
• Be Experts in Technology
• Care About Their Customers

Make sure your IT people hit every criterion on this checklist because it is what will save you money. They will be able to perform tasks 100x faster than an inexperienced IT person. They will be able to stop issues before they occur, and decrease the risk of downtime by 99%, saving you thousands. IT people who know your CMS will be able to help guide you to make better technology investments (with your CMS and in other technology areas) to help you grow because they will care about your firm. And those investments will help you take on more cases, become more efficient and make more revenue.

It’s important to always remember that you get what you pay for.

Cheap solutions will result in poor performance and bad problems. Higher investments will yield extremely beneficial results.