Doing More with Less: How Operational Maturity Is the Key to Thriving in the Future

operational maturity (n) : an overall metric or measurement of technological reliability, resilience, and sophistication at the highest levels of management and operations.

These days, it feels like the only solution to driving new business successfully is to keep squeezing more out of the budget and growing the business with the team you already have. But people aren’t machines, and without the right technology in place, the competition can catch up quickly. Spreadsheets may have been a cutting-edge tech tool 20 years ago, but now there are faster and more robust ways to maintain data.

IDC^®, the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets conducted 15 interviews with legal stakeholders, surveying their operational maturity and their journey to becoming more data-driven. The resulting IDC White Paper, commissioned by LexisNexis, Legal Departments Journey Toward Operational Maturity, But Still Have Work to Do, delivers some surprising legal stakeholder insights. The respondents were a mix of general counsel, assistant or deputy GCs, and legal ops leaders (with an annual revenue of $300M).

While corporate legal is exploring its own processes, no department is an island. In recent years, enterprises and governments worldwide have shifted to a strategic focus on digital transformation. This has helped drive a laser focus on adoption and implementation of new technologies and related services. But how? What steps are organizations taking to launch into the future of operational maturity?

Legal stakeholders are trying to better understand data-driven processes and evaluating how to integrate technology into their operations.

This ripple effect doesn’t mean that organizations are standing up their legal teams with more resources. According to IDC’s 2019 Legal and Corporate Strategy Digital Transformation Survey, 83.5% of respondents said that general counsel was central to all business functions beyond traditional legal advising. This has led to legal teams widely deciding that they need to operationalize. With legal teams being seen more and more as a strategic business partner, it’s time to move away from the old way of doing things. “Good-enough computing” just won’t make new business happen or meet the standards of data privacy regulation and compliance. As one associate general counsel for an IT management services company puts it:

…There are GDPR regulations as well as the CCPA and other data privacy policies … changes now because of COVID-19, as we are an IT management service provider, so we have to adapt additional rules and ways that we are working with our clients to deal with.

Corporate legal departments are responsible for protecting the organization from risks, litigation, sanctions, and misappropriation of proprietary technology and intellectual property. These tasks are increasingly technology-driven and tied to corporate strategy and the health of the business.

The IDC White Paper Legal Departments Journey Toward Operational Maturity, but Still Have Work to Do is available to download now. Have you thought about where you stand compared to other organizations’ operational maturity? Take a look into the industry perspectives of legal stakeholders who are in pursuit of doing more with less.