Location global law firm
Over the years the company, one of the leading international law firms in the world, has been investigating several centers of excellence for a variety of legal and business support functions.
Assignment
Our client is one of the leading international law firms in the world. In the last decades the firm has become a truly international practice, opening offices in all key international financial centers, around the world, branching out into newly emerging legal markets, and merging with leading firms on the different continents.
Clients include some of the world’s leading businesses, financial institutions, governments and private individuals who are assisted with high-end, innovative, international and complex legal advice. The firm has a demanding professional environment requiring and delivering rapid, flexible and quality solutions for clients and internal customers alike.
Over the years the law firm has been investigating several centers of excellence for a variety of legal and business support functions (including Finance, IT, Business Services, HR, Business Development and Marketing).
Project summary
The main objectives of the new centers of excellence:
- To fulfil client expectations: the firm’s clients increasingly expect from them to demonstrate lower cost operations
- To remain competitive: various competitors have already established similar centers of excellence in the US, Europe and APAC
- To maintain the quality they are known for as a growing global company
- To explore the opportunities of establishing the centers of excellence thus providing clients with options on how their legal services are delivered
- To benefit from economies of scale and create process efficiencies through having support services focused in the centers of excellence
- To deliver cost efficiencies of at least 30% compared to the current operating model, without comprising service quality
Our approach
For this client we have done different location selection projects over the years, starting with a global review of location options for these centers of excellence, and after which zooming into Europe, APAC and the Americas to allow truly follow-the-sun services.
For these location selections for centers of excellence regarding legal and professional support services we followed our proven approach to location and site selection. The projects were executed in close co-operation with the company’s project team, global support team, Steering Committee and project sponsor. In close cooperation with the Steering Group the terms of reference for the project including the search criteria, scope and scale of the project, roles and responsibilities and location requirements, have been defined. The project team was actively involved in the long and short list assessment. In order to ensure seamless organization of all activities weekly calls were held with the project managers of the client and BCI.
The steps taken in the location selection processes are as follows:
Kick-off phase: scoping the project and the activities in the new centers of excellence to determine the project profile, scope and scale, the roles and responsibilities, location criteria and long list of locations and detailed project planning
Longlist analysis: a longlist of 21 potential locations was defined based on initial research by BCI: a truly global screening of all options in the Americas, EMEA and APAC on several factors. A desk research analysis was conducted to compare and position these locations based on a detailed set of cost, quality of the business environment and risk factors. The result of this step was a shortlist of 7 locations in geographies for further research. IT latency, quality and availability of talent and languages skills and management experience were the most important factors.
Short list Fieldwork: a combined BCI/client team went on visits to the selected top 7 locations. The second phase findings were checked and challenged, data collection was further expanded, potential for investment grants and employment incentives was investigated and assessments were refined by meetings with economic development agencies, municipalities, recruiters and similar companies, and detailed due diligence was done.
Final selection: the final selection was made based on this last step and a roadmap for the implementation phase was developed
Result
An in-depth comparison of onshore, nearshore and offshore locations supported the decision makers of our client to make a global decision by a deep understanding of the local mix of cost, quality of the business environment and risk. This allowed a decision for the right geography, right location and right building in both EMEA and APAC. The location selection for the Americas is currently in progress.
“Critical success factors include: a truly integrated client and BCI project team, a robust governance structure, openness and trust between all members of the project and excellent process integration internally and externally.”