Opportunity: Based on the West-Coast, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP is an Am Law 50 firm who had been in a long-term relationship with two vendors for outsourcing and document processing services provided at its domestic offices. One of the vendors provided services for the majority of the firm’s offices, including traditional outsourced services (production, mail, hospitality, office services, supplies services, and reception), word processing, transcripts services, an administrative resource center (ARC), and multifunction devices (MFDs). The second vendor provided services at two of the firm’s offices for traditional outsourced services and MFDs.
A review of the relationships revealed that the firm was overall pleased with the service performance. However, the firm felt it needed to address its overall financial and contractual situation to ensure terms and conditions were the most competitive on the market and in line with peer firms.
In addition to benchmarking contract competitiveness against the market, the firm desired to increase efficiencies, improve pricing and terms, refresh its MFD fleet, look at alternative pricing models, and find any gaps between current and best practices. Another of the firm’s objectives was to review the MFD equipment. Thus, the focus of the Mattern process was to analyze the current situation and educate the firm on its findings and best practices.
Solution: Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe engaged Mattern to do a comprehensive review of services provided by the two vendors for its domestic offices.
Mattern performed a complete assessment of MFD equipment and traditional services at each of the firm’s vendor-staffed offices – ten locations in all. In addition, Mattern did an on-site assessment of the firm’s word processing, ARC, and transcripts services at the off-site location where those functions were housed. Mattern’s review included a comprehensive review of the outsourcing vendor’s MFDs, staffing levels, workflows, and processes at all locations.
Mattern interviewed firm and incumbent vendor staff to document all aspects of operations from execution to overall impressions regarding their success or lack of success. Based on this evaluation, and utilizing its industry knowledge, benchmarks, and long history with law firm operations, Mattern made several recommendations for the firm’s consideration.
Mattern recommended staffing and operational improvements in each office to increase efficiency. Amongst the items that Mattern recommended for traditional services and equipment were possible headcount reductions equating to (25.4%) in overstaffed offices as well as process improvements such as improved hours of operation and right-sizing the MFD fleet.
For word processing, ARC and transcription services, Mattern noted that pivoting away from an hourly rate model for document processing to a fixed management fee could reduce the firm’s costs by 29.5%. Mattern also recommended contractual improvements to bring the firm up to the standards of contemporary contracts as the current contracts were lacking in a few key areas.
Results: After a detailed review of the Mattern report, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe engaged with their incumbent vendor to renew the current services at improved pricing and terms.
Client Comment: “Mattern’s benchmarking and analysis of our outsourcing contract was invaluable. Mattern’s work armed us with the necessary market information to be able to drive a much more competitive renewal and feel comfortable that the negotiations with our current vendor led to a good competitive outcome without needing to take this out to a full competitive bid process.” – Kevin Cash, Former Chief Financial Officer, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP
