By Chris Obdam, founder and CEO of Betty Blocks.
Increasingly, the legal industry is leveraging powerful digital solutions to optimize processes, save non-billable hours, and elevate client services. However, while in theory law firms and legal departments are on board with building powerful legal tech solutions, in practice there are various barriers to innovation.
The challenges of keeping IT projects under budget and within deadlines, eliminating risks of failure, and successfully implementing solutions often make innovation easier said than done. So how can firms and departments actually start building limitless digital applications?
The Current Ways of Building Legal Tech Aren’t Working
Law firms and in-house legal departments are increasingly building their legal tech stack. However, there are challenges and risks in the various routes to development being used in the industry.
Development by the IT department:
- IT departments often use traditional development techniques which suffer from a lack of agility and cross-departmental collaboration. These projects have high risks of not meeting end-users needs, or going over time and budget.
- IT departments have growing workloads and their own responsibilities, so business projects get put on ever-growing backlogs.
- Business users are forever dependent on IT for any added functionality or increasing capabilities
Outsourcing development:
- This is an expensive and lengthy process
- Solutions are built by those not truly familiar with the business needs.
- Organizations remain dependent for any maintenance work, additional functionality, or adjusted capabilities.
Purchasing off-the-shelf products:
- Off the shelf products are built as a one-size-fits-all solution, meaning that your organization will inevitably run into limitations when requiring added functionality or company-specific capabilities.
- Inevitably, companies end up making the same investment twice when the old application stops meeting requirements.
All in all IT projects have a high risk of going over budget, not meeting deadlines, blocking ideation, not being successfully launched or adopted by end-users.
Noticing the issues in all of these options, leading law firms and in-house legal departments have taken a different route. Increasingly, organisations are empowering business users and lawyers to build digital solutions collaboratively with IT using low-code / no-code (LCNC) platforms.
Custom Building Applications With No-Code: The Way Forward
Those leading the industry understand that custom building internal applications or developing customer-facing solutions is the way forward.
Low-code / no-code (LCNC) development empowers business users to collaboratively build solutions with IT. This means that those at the forefront of the industry are developing the solutions to their own problems. No-code development occurs in agile, iterative cycles where applications are tested frequently and consistently improved on. This ensures that solutions always meet end-users’ needs, and empowers business users to independently handle maintenance while alleviating the pressure on IT. No-code development is a future-proof solution: your applications grow and adjust together with the needs, requirements, and digital maturity of your organisation.
At the beginning of their no-code development journeys, organisations often search for answers about how to get started, what to get started, and how to make this work internally. Organisations are challenged by things such as:
- Properly identifying business needs, and assessing what is most urgent
- Scoping applications and identifying requirements
- Accurately allocating a timeline and budget
- Calculating and proving the ROI and tangible value of no-code development
- Getting internal stakeholder buy-in
- Onboarding end-users and successfully integrating an application into the business. Implementing organization-wide change and facilitating a shift in the way of working
- How to maintain and consistently iterate on solutions
At Betty Blocks, we have combined our 20+ years of application development experience with our industry knowledge to eliminate these risks and barriers. The result? The 4-Week Guarantee.
Your First No-Code Success Milestone: The 4-Week Guarantee
With the 4-Week Guarantee, Betty Blocks gets organisations from a use case to a customised application with a fixed price, assured scope, and guaranteed timeline in just four weeks. Through clarity, speed, and assurance the 4-Week Guarantee eliminates the risks associated with and barriers to application development.
With the 4-Week Guarantee, organisations go through a preparation phase of selecting a use case, identifying customisation requirements, and establishing a go-live plan. Then, after a development phase of just four weeks, we provide you with an ROI-generating application.
The 4-Week Guarantee empowers your organisation with:
- An application where functionality meets all scoped requirements, and is tested and validated with end-users
- A proven go-live plan ensuring end-user adoption, a smooth launch, and long-term maintenance
- The tools and knowledge to identify business needs, and link these to digital solutions
- Familiarization with the platform and acquaintance with agile development methodologies
- Proven and tangible value and a clear ROI for no-code development projects, facilitating future scoping, planning, and scaling
The 4-Week Guarantee is the first success milestone on your application development journey.
Click here for more information, a free demo, or to start verifying your use case.
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About the Author: Chris Obdam
Chris Obdam is founder and CEO of no-code platform Betty Blocks. He’s a born programmer turned internet entrepreneur with a passion for people and a lust for life. His vision is to empower the human side of innovation and push the limits of what is possible with technology.
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[ Artificial Lawyer is proud to bring you this sponsored thought leadership article by Betty Blocks. ]