The Challenge

As a rapidly growing firm– Merlin Law Group has now recovered $2 billion in damages– their finance team struggled with disjointed systems and a lack of unified reporting. Their main data sources were Salesforce and HubSpot. However, their reporting systems were clunky, inflexible, and lacking in visualization options that helped the wider business understand the data. 

Aubrey Lane, Business Analyst at Merlin Law Group, says their main challenge was the inability to drill further into the numbers to get deeper insights. 

“I can pull our sales team’s records of clients they’ve met with. But I can’t pull records of our expenses with clients quarter over quarter,” says Lane.

Lane adds, “We weren’t able to visualize the data in a clear way that our C-suite could look at.” The main goal for her and the team was to simplify their reporting, making it easier  for multiple people on the accounting team, and for it to provide a clearer picture of the company’s story for the C-suite.

The Solution

After vetting multiple solutions, Lane chose CONNECT by Datarails for its ease of use, flexibility, and visual reporting capabilities. CONNECT allowed them to consolidate data from various sources, including Salesforce (Sales CRM), HubSpot (Marketing CRM), Paycom (Payroll), and Concur (Expense Management) into a single source of truth.

“The simplicity of formula building in Datarails is really wonderful,” said Lane. “It helps the user understand the language you’re building to connect all of this information and populate it the way you want to see it.”

With CONNECT, Merlin Law Group does everything within the system. This compares to their old way of working which involved sending out multiple spreadsheets or placing lots of data on  Powerpoint. Using CONNECT they can drill down into the numbers and see different data points to capture more details. 

“Our report creation has gone from a couple of days down to maybe a couple hours”

– Aubrey Lane
Business Analyst at Merlin Law Group,

The Results

With CONNECT by Datarails, Merlin Law Group has streamlined its reporting processes. At the same time, this has enabled the firm to make faster, more informed decisions based on up-to-date data.

“The time savings mean we can get information to the higher-ups in a faster manner, which helps them make key decisions quickly. In turn, those key decisions help with the generating of income a lot faster.”

– Aubrey Lane
Business Analyst at Merlin Law Group,

Key Benefits and Results Achieved

  • Reduced time to build complex reports from days to just a couple of hours
  • Enabled faster, more informed decision-making with up-to-date data
  • Consolidated data from multiple sources into a single platform
  • Provided user-friendly formula-building and data visualization capabilities
  • Allowed for scalability to produce 30-50 reports per month across various areas
  • Set the stage for implementing Datarails’ other capabilities

Conclusion

By implementing CONNECT by Datarails, Merlin Law Group has successfully overcome its reporting challenges and taken a major step toward becoming a truly data-driven organization. With the ability to consolidate data from multiple sources, build complex reports with ease, and visualize key metrics, the firm has streamlined its processes and gained valuable insights to drive strategic decision-making.

Merlin Law Group plans to expand its use of CONNECT further. Its goals include 30 to 50 reports per month across various areas such as teams, mentors, hierarchy, expenses, and client journeys. 

“The potential of going with the full suite will unlock so many capabilities that we haven’t even tapped,” said Lane.

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