How Burke Warren Law Firm Utilizes AskCody Technology

Burke, Warren, MacKay and Serritella P.C. is a mid-size, Chicago-based law firm. The full-service law firm which emphasizes on one-on-one personal attention was introduced to AskCody in the beginning of 2022. When they started looking for a meeting management solution, they decided to run a POC which later led to the full implementation of the AskCody bookings and services platform in the summer of 2022.

Learn how Burke Warren, an independent law firm, incorporates modern AskCody technology to help support their complex meetings. What is better than to hear from the organization themselves?

Meeting challenges for the law firm

When we first approached Burke Warren, they highlighted the following challenges:

• Admins had too many laborious and manual processes with managing meetings and service items.
• Booking meetings was a time-consuming process. Multiple emails were sent back and forth between meeting bookers and reception to book a meeting room. 
• The reception and service providers did not have a proper overview of what was going on during the day or upcoming days.
• The reception was placed in the middle of bookers and service providers which led to miscommunication when rearrangements happened. Bookings were error-prone. 
• No standard way of doing things equaled a lack of control when handling important meetings. It resulted in misunderstandings and sometimes double-booking of rooms. 

In the search for a solution that could eliminate the manual booking processes and related errors, Burke Warren evaluated different vendors. Their primary goal was to automate the very convoluted and error-prone system of organizing meetings.

They were looking for a way to lift the weight of receptionists' shoulders who had to be the middleman in every meeting booking. They would receive long emails explaining; if a specific room was needed, if they needed IT support, if they wanted to have beverages or catering, or if they required a whiteboard etc. So, the booker had to spend time writing that request while the receptionist then was in the middle handling that person's request, facilitating orders, and getting the different departments involved that needed to assist with the setup or catering for the meeting. It was a very manual process that required several emails and phone calls back and forth just to book one meeting. An even longer process if smaller changes in the meeting were to occur.

That process of managing meetings left itself open to a lot of errors, as a lot of things can go wrong or break down, and it resulted in miscommunications and misunderstandings. Therefore, Burke Warren evaluated vendors on their ability to simplify the process and make booking meetings user-friendly. After a successful POC Burke Warren pushed the AskCody system out to end-users in June 2022, because of how it could not only simplify the booking process. but also because employees could stay in Outlook when booking. Thereby, AskCody fits very well within Burke Warrens' overall IT strategy, because, as a cloud-based solution, AskCody requires no additional application to be installed and that helps Burke Warren to be able to leverage Microsoft 365 to the fullest. 

"10 different people booking a meeting, resulted in 10 different ways of creating a meeting, and everything that goes with it. Meeting management can be a convoluted process, so we really needed a standardized system that was easy for our people to use and that could automate the current processes in place. With AskCody employees can now book rooms and request services themselves, and it gives them a kind of self-service aspect where they can take control of their own meetings."

- Anthony Moore, IT director, Burke Warren

Partner solution between the law firm and AskCody

Warren Burke had a very clear understanding of their requirements for a new booking system, already before they started looking for a vendor. Being able to communicate their needs made it easy to spot the perfect match when they started on their AskCody trial period. It only took a few weeks for them to understand how the setup would work, and implementation has later been smooth and at their own pace.

AskCody is still being rolled out in Burke Warren, however, they already implemented their conference center, meaning all conference room bookings are managed in AskCody. Now, the receptionists and admins can already see an overview of the larger events during the day in Central, where they can easily manage and make changes to meetings, while everyone involved will be notified automatically. 

Burke Warren has set up AskCody to include what they utilize most. For example, they included Service providers such as; Information Technology and Office Services. Office Services includes items like beverages, a restaurant option for catering, and room setup options, while information Technology has either requests for equipment or requests for a person to come to the room and set up a phone conference or a video conference.

With AskCody service providers now also enjoy that they can set up conditions for their orders. For example, they can confirm or reject orders that are not available, and then the meeting booker is automatically informed. Also, if they have a deposition going all day, they can order refreshments, lunch, and dinner to be delivered at specific times as well as specify any other  requirements like allergies. Furthermore, cost centers are all synced together, meaning that all the catering etc. that is built into the client matter number, all pertaining to that specific meeting, can further be pulled up on the back-end for confirmation. Thus, the loops between everyone involved in the meeting become very simple.

"Not only is the AskCody product a really good product and the best one that fits our needs, but working with everyone from our account executive to technical resources has been one of the best experiences that we've had with a vendor".

- Anthony Moore, IT Director, Burke Warren

Conclusion

By implementing AskCody Burke Warren can now easily interface with audio-visual, support services, facilities, conference services, and even with finance regarding everything that is required for a meeting. All under one platform where they can easily communicate back and forth - eliminating the time-consuming process they had before. 

Self-service has been adopted to a wide extent, but they have still ensured that with delegated access, any legal assistant can still easily book meetings on behalf of the attorney and make all the changes necessary. Thereby, they ensure consistency in meeting arrangements, and with AskCody the meeting booking process looks exactly the same each time. The receptionists are now in control of the meetings and so is the individual meeting booker.  

Next up in the implementation process for Burke Warren, is to roll out AskCody to more hotel spaces, desks, and meeting rooms.