Entering a new market with confidence

As a well-established business, expanding into new markets can be part
of a natural progression. You’ve got a product or service that’s tried-and tested,
as well as the experience to drive the business forward. When you’re
ready to explore the opportunities, it’s wise to perform thorough market
research. Getting an independent third party to gather market intelligence and
customer insight on your behalf, provides you with the confidence that your proposition resonates with a different market and can avoid costly mistakes.

Background

Keyhouse is a market-leading legal software brand in Ireland. They wanted
to understand whether there was an opportunity to expand their practice
management software and support operations into the English market.

They asked Further to generate a deeper understanding of law firms’ usage
and attitudes towards case management software systems. Keyhouse wanted to
know what differentiated the English market from the Irish market and whether
law practices bought software and expertise in much the same way as they
did in Ireland, with similar barriers to purchase in place. They also wanted to understand the viewpoints of key buying decision-makers and influencers.

Our Approach

The project had two components. The main approach involved interactive qualitative research using our online research community platform, Together. This was supplemented with face-to-face interviews with senior partners in English law firms.

We worked with 24 carefully selected participants from a mixture of law firm sizes, with differing approaches to case management and IT capacity. As well as exploring current behaviours, participants took part in a variety of exercises and tasks tapping into emotions around IT and practice management, such as: mapping the competition, exploring the barriers and enablers along the consideration and purchase journey, providing feedback on sales collateral and
co-creating a better sales and support process. Keyhouse were able to review responses at all times using Together’s observer interface.

 Further made the work both fun and thought-provoking. We’re totally confident that their approach has covered more ground than would be possible
through traditional qualitative research alone.

Martina Winters, Sales & Marketing Manager,
Keyhouse

Key findings

While cost remains an important consideration when it comes to software and system re-platforming, we did unearth a number of other issues and barriers associated with buying habits and behaviours. We identified six distinct personas that Keyhouse could target and work with in order to address key pain points. As with other organisations, factors such as: resistance to change, the time taken for implementation, project management, size of practice, workload, day-to-day administration and confidence that software will deliver a clear ROI, were all concerns to be overcome. These needed to be acknowledged and addressed in communications that showed empathy and understanding of the stresses faced by the different personas.
By providing credible reassurances about their expertise in the legal sector and leveraging their training and support services, Keyhouse can show that they are more than just software providers and demonstrate they can be trustworthy IT partners.

 Further’s project team quickly understood our challenges. They pushed us to clarify our assumptions and to think harder about how to communicate the
value of our products and services. Their work validated a lot of what we already knew – which was very reassuring – and they mapped a clear way forward to penetrate different segments of the UK law firm market.

Martina Winters, Sales & Marketing Manager,
Keyhouse

Conclusion

We helped Keyhouse to understand the market for their product and services in England. We spoke directly to decision-makers within law firms as well as a host of other key stakeholders to discover what they would look for in a software management partner. Keyhouse can now move forward with confidence in their
proposition and develop messaging and a sales approach that should deliver results.