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Case Study

Roythornes Solicitors

Legal

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How automating a manual legacy process is improving client service delivery ​

“By automating our workflow with Ethos Hub Bespoke solutions, we’ve made significant time savings on processing client forms”

The Challenge

With five offices across the Midlands and East Anglia, Roythornes Solicitors offers services to private clients as well as commercial companies including property developers.

Within the Real Estate team, a labour-intensive workflow is to process the reservation forms that buyers complete at the developer’s sales office when buying a new-build property.

Roythornes wanted to streamline the property reservation form to improve client experience and save time. In partnership with Ethos, their aim was to use form data extraction and workflow technology to reduce the time from receiving a reservation form to opening a file on their system by 100%. “The legacy process was inefficient and involved re-keying of data and navigation between different systems,” says Jonathan Swan, IT Director at Roythornes.

The Solution

Automated data extraction solution

Roythornes has worked with Ethos’ sister company Walters since 2009 receiving a range of services from office fitting to managed print and office supplies.

Ethos’ account manager introduced Jonathan to Ethos Hub Bespoke, customised solutions for business process automation. Roythornes allocated a member of their IT resource to work with Ethos’ in-house automation and integration experts to build and test a proof of concept for the property reservation form.
The result is a new workflow that cuts the processing time of each form to 5-10 minutes. “That’s a significant time saving, racking up worthwhile benefits when you multiply it by the number of reservations we process each year,” says Jonathan.

A digitised workflow also means Roythornes is not printing off reservation forms, contributing to the company’s targets to reduce paper use across their offices. As an iiE-accredited company, automating document processing is another “support point on the sustainability agenda”, says Jonathan.

Bringing staff on board with automation

The property reservation workflow will launch with one property developer client – “we’re starting carefully to build confidence in the solution and will iterate with other developer reservation forms. It’s super important that we bring people with us on the digital transformation journey,” says Jonathan.

“Colleagues are sure to request tweaks, but the beauty of the design is it is inherently agile,” he says. “The workflow is built on strong foundations but is a simple process. We’ve not overstretched ourselves in terms of our ambitions from data extraction.”

Jonathan also expects the workflow to spark interest within the company for further automation. “Once colleagues are familiar with the data extraction process, the idea factory will thrive. Springboard use cases will likely come from the reservation form workflow and further process automation will follow.”

Relationship with Ethos

Working with Ethos as a tech partner has also been a positive experience for Roythornes. “We had two teams who are both very focused and capable,” says Jonathan. “Our in-house developers knew exactly what we needed from the Ethos solution. Ethos, in turn, are clear subject matter experts in all things form data extraction and were very responsive, turning things around in hours not days or weeks.

“Both teams were very much on the same page from the outset and the synergy was immediately apparent, this was as frictionless a working relationship as you could wish for.”

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Roythornes Solicitors

How automating a manual legacy process is improving client service delivery ​

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Roythornes Solicitors

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Legal

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The Challenge

With five offices across the Midlands and East Anglia, Roythornes Solicitors offers services to private clients as well as commercial companies including property developers.

Within the Real Estate team, a labour-intensive workflow is to process the reservation forms that buyers complete at the developer’s sales office when buying a new-build property.

Roythornes wanted to streamline the property reservation form to improve client experience and save time. In partnership with Ethos, their aim was to use form data extraction and workflow technology to reduce the time from receiving a reservation form to opening a file on their system by 100%. “The legacy process was inefficient and involved re-keying of data and navigation between different systems,” says Jonathan Swan, IT Director at Roythornes.

“By automating our workflow with Ethos Hub Bespoke solutions, we’ve made significant time savings on processing client forms”

The Solution

Automated data extraction solution

Roythornes has worked with Ethos’ sister company Walters since 2009 receiving a range of services from office fitting to managed print and office supplies.

Ethos’ account manager introduced Jonathan to Ethos Hub Bespoke, customised solutions for business process automation. Roythornes allocated a member of their IT resource to work with Ethos’ in-house automation and integration experts to build and test a proof of concept for the property reservation form.
The result is a new workflow that cuts the processing time of each form to 5-10 minutes. “That’s a significant time saving, racking up worthwhile benefits when you multiply it by the number of reservations we process each year,” says Jonathan.

A digitised workflow also means Roythornes is not printing off reservation forms, contributing to the company’s targets to reduce paper use across their offices. As an iiE-accredited company, automating document processing is another “support point on the sustainability agenda”, says Jonathan.

Bringing staff on board with automation

The property reservation workflow will launch with one property developer client – “we’re starting carefully to build confidence in the solution and will iterate with other developer reservation forms. It’s super important that we bring people with us on the digital transformation journey,” says Jonathan.

“Colleagues are sure to request tweaks, but the beauty of the design is it is inherently agile,” he says. “The workflow is built on strong foundations but is a simple process. We’ve not overstretched ourselves in terms of our ambitions from data extraction.”

Jonathan also expects the workflow to spark interest within the company for further automation. “Once colleagues are familiar with the data extraction process, the idea factory will thrive. Springboard use cases will likely come from the reservation form workflow and further process automation will follow.”

Relationship with Ethos

Working with Ethos as a tech partner has also been a positive experience for Roythornes. “We had two teams who are both very focused and capable,” says Jonathan. “Our in-house developers knew exactly what we needed from the Ethos solution. Ethos, in turn, are clear subject matter experts in all things form data extraction and were very responsive, turning things around in hours not days or weeks.

“Both teams were very much on the same page from the outset and the synergy was immediately apparent, this was as frictionless a working relationship as you could wish for.”

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