The promise made, and delivered, was a team that understood why and what we were building. The team became so closely integrated that it never seemed as if Lanna Softworks was a partner, they were part of the LegalZoom family.
Tracy Terrill
Website Development, Application Development & Staff Augmentation
In 2009 LegalZoom.com, Inc. was an established, successful company delivering legal solutions to millions of customers in the U.S. and Canada. With annual sales of more than US$ 100 million it opted to move from a start-up cash-based accounting system to an accrual based system.
The problem was they were having difficulty getting the required data from the on-line ordering system to support this move.
In February, Lanna Softworks founder and CEO David Turner was asked to assess and advise on a solution. After an in-depth analysis of current systems, several related issues were discovered that had to be addressed to fully solve the problem. In short, the model for order data was severely inadequate for the task, and many of the supporting systems were disconnected or missing entirely.
The solution was a complete multi-product approach to resolving the problems, and despite the complexity involved it was delivered to the clients’ exacting specifications.
A digital product catalog. The Product Manager captured the nuances of the complex LegalZoom product line right down to jurisdiction level, providing a strong reference point for products sold, and a full history of the evolution of the product offerings and prices over time.
A back-office Order Manager application provided a one-stop solution to find, review and update orders placed online, with a consistent method for recording and tracking changes. An integrated payment and adjustment component was included, and details of every change captured in a detailed, consistent manner to allow proper financial and performance reporting.
A “below-the-surface” shared Order Management API, to allowing consistent, reliable access to the new features for both online ordering and back-office order management, was also part of the solution.
By December, the full system was rolled-out throughout the company. It provided the financial group with the much-needed data to move forward with their accrual-based accounting initiative. It also provided significant productivity upgrades for the customer service and sales teams.
Tracy Terrill, the former CTO of Legalzoom, said:
To meet the demands of product development and fulfillment at LegalZoom, I needed to increase the velocity of our engineering team.
My goal was to integrate an international team, so each engineer at LegalZoom would have a partner that could extend our engineering day from 8 to 16 hours. After an exhaustive search of international options, I chose Lanna Softworks based on the promise that they wouldn’t just be an offshore team.
The promise made, and delivered, was a team that understood why and what we were building. The team became so closely integrated that it never seemed as if Lanna Softworks was a partner – they were part of the LegalZoom family.
The significantly improved detail and accurate data also provided the backbone for a new Business Intelligence initiative, and paved the way for the development of LegalZoom’s first subscription-based products, also with the assistance of Lanna SoftWorks.
That’s the subject of another success story for both Lanna Softworks and LegalZoom.com.