Microsoft-Norton Rose

Vendor: Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT)
Customer: Norton Rose www.nortonrose.com    
Vertical Markets: Legal Services
State: International – United Kingdom

Technology Used: FAST ESP

Solution: Norton Rose LLP is a very large legal practice with offices in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Employing more than 1000 lawyers, 240 partners, and 2000 staff members in total, Norton Rose LLP specializes in corporate finance, energy and infrastructure, transportation, and technology.

The challenge the company was facing was that they had to find a way to reduce the amount of time individuals spent locating information. At Norton Rose LLP, the time spent on such tasks is considered time wasted, and there was a lot of it. That’s because practitioners had to use many different search systems, each with a different interface and a different way of working, to find the information they needed. This made finding data difficult and time-consuming, and the company wanted to move to a simpler and more intuitive system, one that could deliver search results from all sources in response to a single enquiry.

After evaluating seven search engine providers, Norton Rose LLP chose the FAST Enterprise Search Platform for its speed of operation, flexibility, ability to work with multiple sources, and ability to return the most relevant results. Norton Rose and FAST worked closely together throughout the search facility building process, and the NavigatoR system was launched in February of 2007.

Not surprisingly, a reduction in search time has been one of the most important benefits of the NavigatoR system. The search facility is intuitive and fast, and allows practitioners to access up to date, relevant information quickly, which helps to enhance the level and quality of service provided to the firm’s clients. The new system also delivers more useful information by ranking results by relevance. Search terms in returned documents are highlighted to help individuals find relevant information within documents, and little to no formal training on how to use the system has been needed. Finally, the time savings, estimated to be at least one-third of the time previously spent, translate to an annual cost savings of £500,000.

Further details: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000004290