Robert Ambrogi Blog
Do you know the one common trait seen in successful law practices?
Business intelligence, or a basic understanding of key metrics, performance indicators, and milestones that convey a pattern of success or potential pitfalls. Which give the firm’s leadership the insight they need to correct course before disaster strikes, or capitalize on an opportunity for growth. The good news is you don’t need an MBA, or a friend that’s an analyst to collect and report on this type of information.
Introducing Smokeball Ai
Smokeball Activity Intelligence is a first-of-its-kind activity tracking and reporting tool. Smokeball Ai completely changes how a law firm can view time, effort and progress over the course of a particular matter, or across the firm as a whole.
As attorneys, paralegals and legal professionals we understand that there are two important components to activity tracking: quality and quantity. Each document you create, email you send, task marked completed, meeting held, and phone call taken will be automatically logged for you—freeing your attorneys and staff from administrative work so they can actually get back to practicing.
What does this mean for you? More insight into the actual quantity of effort your team puts towards a particular client or individual matter, combined with the detail you need to value the quality of those hours so you can improve client satisfaction, or your bottom line.
How does it work?
Smokeball Ai captures only what’s relevant to a case or file. That means that you don’t waste time tracking time or sifting through time reports that you, in all honesty, don’t have time for. What makes Smokeball Ai more powerful than any other activity recording option is our integration with Word and Outlook. Smokeball Ai will keep track of how much time you spend adjusting or preparing documents in Word and monitor emails sent and received through Outlook.
When you are ready to bill your clients, simply export the recorded data from Smokeball Ai into an excel document. Each action you have spent time on in Smokeball is weighted by how much time is required to complete it. Once your data is exported into Excel, simply upload it into a billing software like QuickBooks, or an invoicing tool of your choice to complete the billing process.
Why you need Smokeball Ai
Time tracking is frankly a waste of time. We know you have more important things to focus on throughout your day than remembering how much time you spent managing your inbox. Because Smokeball automatically manages your emails, document versions, tasks, and events, it is uniquely able to deliver new reporting functionality in a way that requires no extra work or tracking by your firm.
Set better goals around billable hours
With Smokeball Ai, you know how each minute of every day is spent. The knowledge you will glean from Smokeball Ai regarding the number of activities, or total time to complete said activities will allow you to set better, more realistic goals for your staff.
All that little time you missed adds up to a lot
Forgot to log all of your emails and client calls? That isn’t a problem with Smokeball Ai. These smaller 5-10 minute activities are easy to miss when keeping track of time. But those missed minutes add up over and can cost you thousands of dollars of missed profit. Don’t miss a minute of your day again and let Smokeball Ai do the tracking and recording for you.
Know how much time you are spending on non-billable activities
It is often easier to keep track of the billable hours since those are the hours you are getting paid for. But what about all that time you are spending on administrative tasks or marketing your firm? Smokeball will not only help you keep track of all those non-billable hours, but you can generate reports from all activities. Learn what activities are helping you run a better business and use that insight to optimize for the future.
View an Activity Timeline of all the actions taken on every matter
Run the Smokeball Ai report on an individual matter to see how much time you spent on each activity to simplify how you bill clients after a settlement. Smokeball Ai will help you feel assured that you didn’t miss out on commonly forgotten tasks.
In conclusion
By uniting the tools that rule your day—word processing, email, and calendars—you can finally tame the chaos of traditional time recording and altogether simplify your work process. Plus, with the flexibility to add activities outside your normal routine, you can keep working, confident that every detail is seamlessly recorded along the way.
The clock is ticking! Get started with Smokeball Ai today by giving the Smokeball team a call at (855) 668-3206 to schedule your personal demonstration.
Sponsored post by Chelsey Lambert, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Smokeball, Chelsey.Lambert@Smokeball.com. Smokeball is a provider of productivity software for small law firms, based in Chicago, IL. Her mission is to help attorneys and legal professionals understand the technology that is available to them, how to use it, and the positive impacts it can have on their business. After leaving the Chicago Bar Association in 2014, she continues to speak and write for legal organizations across the US, on technology, hiring, marketing and small law firm best practices. In her spare time, she enjoys a good yoga class, volunteering, and taking in the sunshine on Chicago’s beautiful lakeshore.