New consultancy launches with Cann-do attitude
One of the trailblazers for managed IT services within legal, Chris Cann, has launched his own management and technology consulting business.
Chris, a former partner at regional firm Martin Kaye, will draw on a dozen years at the management coalface and nearly three decades of wider law firm experience to help small-to-medium sized firms meet some of today’s key business challenges: from formulating strategies for growth to responding to the Legal Services Act, from coping with the increasing regulatory and compliance burden to leveraging IT systems and workflow.
Advice and practical assistance around outsourcing and managed IT services will be one of the Cann Consultancy’s lead offerings. In his role as Martin Kaye’s IT head, Chris pioneered the adoption of managed services back in 2000 and gave the sector an early lesson in what could be achieved: by completely outsourcing the firm’s core infrastructure to an IT specialist, he created a scalable, resilient, cost-efficient IT platform on which to build the business whilst also freeing up internal resource to focus on long-term projects for the benefit of both clients and staff.
IT consulting services will revolve around system audits and cost analyses; the development of the business case for alternative IT delivery models; procurement, including the drawing up of tenders and the evaluation of suppliers; the drafting of contracts and Service Level Agreements; and project management.
Risk and compliance are increasingly linked to systems and automation and again, drawing directly on his experience of creating procedural frameworks and workflows, and the technology to support them, Chris will look to advise firms on how to marry the two for effective risk management.
Keen to offer added-value and the prospect of a ‘quick win’ for clients, he has introduced a fixed-price risk audit package – a site visit, interviews, and system and document review prefacing a gap analysis report for any business wanting to measure itself against the Code of Conduct 2007 and/or Lexcel standards.
Commenting on his new venture Chris Cann said: “I’m not the first consultant to come into this sector and I’m sure I won’t be the last but I think I’m probably one of very few with the years – and the knocks! – under my belt that allow me to fully empathise with my target market. And it’s because I’ve been there myself that I’m taking a deliberately pragmatic approach, one that’s rooted in the realities of today’s legal business and is focused squarely on getting things done and moving firms forward.’
For more information on the Cann Consultancy, please visit www.cannconsultancy.co.uk
