Robert Ambrogi Blog
Launched in 1993 and acquired by LexisNexis in 2004, Interaction is one of the most established client relationship management (CRM) products in the legal market. An on-premises product designed for large law firms, InterAction is used by three-quarters of the Am Law 100 and three-quarters of the largest firms globally, according to LexisNexis.
Now, in a move to make the software available to mid- and smaller-sized law firms, LexisNexis is releasing InterAction+, a cloud-based product that unites many of the features of the legacy version with a more-modern user experience and mobile connectivity, as well as unique integrations with LexisNexis content relevant to business development and relationship management.
And even though the product is cloud-based, LexisNexis is giving customers the choice of where to host their contact data — either in the cloud on LexisNexis’s data servers or in a hybrid cloud using their own data centers.
LexisNexis will continue to develop and support the on-premises version of InterAction. In addition, existing customers can add the cloud component with minimal effort on their part, LexisNexis says.
Integrates with Context Litigation Analytics
During a preview demonstration of InterAction+ last week, Aaron Pierce, vice president of product management at LexisNexis, and Namit Pandey, group product manager for InterAction, told me that they believe small and mid-sized firms are an underserved market for CRM software.
“We see a lot of firms that are managing contacts just through Outlook or managing contacts through spreadsheets or more traditional CRM solutions that are not as legal-focused as we can be with InterAction+,” Pierce said. “So we really wanted to bring all the great things that we love about InterAction to the cloud-hosted solution and be able to bring this to a brand new market.”
One notable feature of InterAction+ is its integration with Context, LexisNexis’ litigation analytics product. The integration can be used in business development activities to see litigation data on clients, prospects, and other firms.
Company analytics in InterAction+ are drawn from Context analytics in LexisNexis.
For example, when a contact is at a company, the user can see the company’s litigation history via Context, including the kinds of cases it is most often involved with and the courts where it most often litigates.
These basic company analytics are available to InterAction+ subscribers at no extra charge. If the subscriber also has a Context subscription, then the subscriber could continue to drill down more deeply into the company’s litigation record on Context.
InterAction+ users will have the same log-on credentials as for other LexisNexis products, so access to the Context integration and planned future integrations will all be via a single sign-on.
That connectivity to LexisNexis is also useful when adding a company to InterAction+. Via the Lexis+ research database, a user can verify the correct name of the company, ensuring consistency throughout the CRM, and then automatically pull company information to fill key fields in the contact form.
Dashboard for Quick Overview
The product also features a home page dashboard (see featured image above) that provides a quick overview of connections that an attorney, marketer, or business development professional might want to focus on, including those where the connections are weak, at risk, or have had low levels of engagement.
The dashboard might show, for example, that the user has had no meaningful recent activity with 78% of the user’s connections, and it will suggest the top-three that the user should pay attention to (based on the connections for whom the longest time has elapsed since any contact).
Other features include:
- A modern user interface with improved layout and design to simplify navigation and improve readability.
- A customizable daily email digest of business development tasks and priorities.
- Mobile accessibility via iOS and Android apps.
- An Outlook add-in that creates a sidebar where users can view InterAction+ data, allowing users, for example, to view a contact’s information while reading an email involving that contact.
- A global “add” button that appears on every page for adding new contacts, activities and notes.
Over the coming months, LexisNexis says, it will continue to add new features and content integrations to InterAction+, including news and company information from LexisNexis Legal News and LexisNexis Dossier.
The product is launching globally, with a focus on the United States, the European Union and Australia as its three cloud hosting locations.
Pierce said the product could be used by firms of almost any size, but that he thinks the sweet spot is firms of 20-200 lawyers.
Pricing will be based on a per-seat subscription. He was not able to say the exact price, but did say that it will be set at a level to be affordable to firms in the target market.
Although the product does not have any native lead-tracking capabilities, Pierce said that an API will allow it to integrate with third-party marketing and email products such as HubSpot or MailChimp.