Bottomline Technologies: Three steps to reducing your claim legal spend
In this soft market, it’s critical to eliminate every unnecessary expense and keep claim legal costs under
control. That is easier said than done, though, because once a claim enters the litigation process, it
becomes almost impossible to manage.
Unless you have a plan.
Yes, having a legal spend management plan can make controlling your legal costs easy. It can even result
in some additional benefits, like increased efficiency and the ability to make better, faster business
decisions.
These three steps are essential components in any successful plan to reduce claim legal spend:
1. Understand your goals and know how you’re going to achieve them
If your goal is to reduce costs, you first have to understand what your costs are and whether or
not they’re reasonable. Once you have that information, cost-reduction opportunities can be
abundant. Are the rates your law firms charging in line with your expectations? Do their billing
practices make appropriate use of timekeepers? Are you using firms that are most likely to
generate the best outcomes for you? If you aren’t sure what the answers are to these questions,
that’s okay. The information is available; you just have to be able to access it. So...
2. Take advantage of technology
Automating the bill review process opens up a whole world of possibilities in terms of
eliminating excess costs. Because e-billing systems automatically validate the accuracy of
all invoices, checking them against established billing guidelines, you can be confident that
all “low-hanging fruit” for cost-savings opportunities are being addressed (think accuracy of
math, avoiding duplicates, etc). Beyond those basic functions, however, the best legal spend
management solutions also make it possible to report on all of the legal spend data being
captured, providing critical insights into billing trends and practices. Imagine being able to
quickly see a comparison of the performance of your law firms for a particular matter type.
How much could be saved if you always chose the right firm for each case? (If you’re concerned
about the bandwidth it takes to conduct this kind of analysis, some vendors also offer bill review
services to ensure you get maximum ROI from your legal spend management program. Keep
that in mind when evaluating vendors—it’s a service that can add significant value for very little
cost.)
3. Measure, manage and refine
A solid legal spend management program that continues to deliver value and savings year
after year is one that evolves to meet changing needs. Once you’ve established clear goals
and implemented the necessary technology to achieve them, continue to monitor progress,
validating that your goals are in alignment with the needs of the business and your technology
solutions are configured to achieve the necessary results. Considering all the time you’ve saved
now that you have a smoothly running legal spend management program, this should be an
easy—although critical—final step to ensuring that you’re keeping your claim legal costs under
control.
For more information on how to reduce unnecessary claim legal spend, visit
www.bottomline.com.
About Bottomline Technologies
A leader in providing collaborative payment, invoice and document automation, Bottomline
specializes in helping insurance companies create legal spend management programs that
reduce costs and increase efficiencies. With a wide variety of legal spend management solutions
ranging from e-billing technology to expert bill review services, more than 100 firms in the
U.S. and Canada rely on Bottomline’s innovative approach to e-billing, bill review and analytics
to manage their legal spend. In March of 2011, Bottomline Technologies acquired Allegient
Systems. This combination brings unparalleled experience and value to claim organizations who
want to improve the management of their claim legal costs.
