Why does this matter?

First up, we need to talk about why this matters.

Why do we need to worry about deciding what to automate on Josef? Isn’t it easy? Don’t we just pick one of our documents, automate it, and off we go?

Choices, choices, choices

Josef isn’t like lots of the other software that you use. It isn’t just a place to store documents, or a means of electronically signing a contract, or a way of sending emails.

Josef is more than that: it’s a place for you to transform the way that you work.

The only downside of this is that it means we have to do a little more work at the outset. We need to decide what it is that we want to create on the platform, and consequently how we are going to change the way we work.

Do you want to build an intake bot? Or a document automation bot? Do you want to improve the way you deliver services to clients? Or do you want to make the way you work more efficient?

All of these choices can be overwhelming! People like choices, but they don’t always like choosing. Luckily, this module will walk you through how to do just that.

Success is not assured

Automation projects can and do fail. In fact, Ernst & Young estimates that up to 30-50% of initial process automation projects fail.

While that might be a scary statistic, the good news is that we know why these projects fail, and how we can put ourselves in a position to avoid such failure in our own projects.

Lots of people talk about execution as the reason for failure: proper planning and resourcing, stakeholder engagement, quality assurance and testing, and change management.  

But ultimately it doesn’t matter how well you execute if you’re executing on the wrong thing. Alberto Savoia, an Innovation Agitator at Google and a lecturer at Stanford, implores people to:

“Make sure you are building the right ‘it’ before you build ‘it’ right.”

By choosing the right project from the outset, not only do we give ourselves a better chance of success, but all of those execution issues become easier to deliver on.

A cautionary tale

An in-house team in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) space that we work with recently analysed why one of their bots wasn’t being used very much after launch. 

Once they went back and crunched the numbers, they discovered that the document they automated wasn’t requested that often – it just seemed like it was.

Also, when the department that used this document was asked why they weren’t using the bot, they answered that it wasn’t really solving a pain point for them.

Slow down to speed up

The law is a difficult industry to work in. The deadlines are hard, the standards are high, and pace is fast. In the face of all of this, it can be tempting to push harder and faster to get it done sooner.

While this approach works for many of the tasks we do in the law, it can actually do the opposite when it comes to legal automation.

Instead, particularly at the outset of such a project, it often pays to “slow down to speed up”. By taking time at the outset – including to make sure the project you’re working on is the right one – you’ll be able to move faster later. 

And, crucially, you’ll be able to deliver more value to your team, clients and organisation.

Now, move onto the next Session to learn what others are doing in your space.