Helping Cashroom, and you, in the legal profession

Hello World.

This is the reassuringly gentle, innocuous phrase that most geeks use when allowing their code, company, or indeed themselves to step out into public consciousness for the first time.  In my case, it is allowing myself the indulgence of introducing myself to the hallowed legal world as one of the most recent “joiners” to the Cashroom team.

My background is varied – coming initially from medicine and then into the internet and datacentre market for 20 odd years.  Now, I navigate between growing companies like the Cashroom, early high tech start-ups and pushing forward the throttle on a single-engined turbine aircraft around Europe.

I would argue there are two key factors that join the dots between my past and present.  Firstly, they are highly technical, well regulated, and detail-oriented endeavours. Second, regardless of all of that, success relies on what airline pilots are taught are “human factors”. This is what brought me to Cashroom.

Not only have they successfully built and grown a straightforward idea – that of simplifying and improving the quality of cash room and accounting for legal firms in the UK – but they are doing it through the integration of great technology and even better people.  Helping them to take the business to the next stage by continuing to build on that culture is what some would call “my wheelhouse”.

That covers the good stuff.  Now for the “not so good”.

One could argue we are about to enter the most challenging of times.  Inflation.  Risk of recession.  Tight labour markets, and ever-increasing regulatory pressures.  Whilst these are things that we, as all responsible businesses, are working to mitigate and plan for, these are the very challenges that have historically brought to the fore the advantages of outsourcing.

When one looks back to the last major recession in 2008/9, major firms like Cisco and “big pharma” managed the downturn through reducing internal headcount, outsourcing where other partners had scale and capability to help them succeed.

Hence my excitement about Cashroom.

They have a proven track record in this space, building great technology to integrate with the market leading practice management systems, banks, and other tools, but they also know what it takes to operate services with best practice, motivating great people to deliver for all their customers daily.  They are well placed to help legal firms navigate the coming macro stresses and accommodate the labour market tightening – capacity and capability.

The legal industry in the UK and other Anglophone economies are still in the “early adoption” phase of outsourcing elements of backoffice such as cashroom, or professionalising their business information and analytics through better management accounting – less than 10% .  Which shows there is still plenty of work to do to help the industry see the benefits to both bottom line and quality of their operations.  And as history shows, it sometimes takes the shock of volatile times to motivate management (or in this case, firm partners) to revisit not just what they are doing, but how they do it.

As I hope you can see, I am excited and proud to have been invited to join the team, and look forward to helping be a small part of the journey – helping them and you in the legal profession in the coming years.

Aydin Kurt-Elli