Cut month-end reporting prep time from one week to just a few hours
Saved 15+ hours per week through automation and real-time reporting
Identified and resolved unbilled work and receivables earlier
The Challenge: Manual Reporting in a Fast-Paced Legal Environment
Like many firms in the legal industry, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips’ finance team was constrained by manual data entry, static reports, and long turnaround times for performance insights.
Financial analytics was still a relatively new function within the firm, and legacy tools lacked flexibility for evolving needs.
“We had static reporting and rigid tools,” says Matt Crowley, Senior Financial Analyst at Manatt. “When leadership needed answers, it took too long to get them. By the time we built a report, the data was already stale.”
Client pushback on rates, productivity challenges, and economic shifts made it more important than ever to respond quickly with real-time data.
But preparing board presentations often meant assembling 50–60 slides manually, and performance metrics lacked context or drill-down capability.
Unlocking Real-Time Reporting With Vena
ProLytics Consulting Group played a critical role in Manatt’s successful implementation and early success with Vena. They helped architect the initial data model for budgeting and revenue tracking, and provided ongoing support as Matt expanded Vena’s capabilities.
With their expertise, the team was able to create a productivity model that drills down to daily activity, allowing for detailed insights into attorney utilization and department-level efficiency. ProLytics also guided iterations to streamline reporting structures and ensure accuracy across all outputs, becoming a trusted partner in Manatt’s digital finance transformation.
Vena replaced manual reporting processes with dynamic, self-serve models that Matt and his team could expand, iterate and improve in real time. Starting with a budgeting model implemented with ProLytics’ help, the team quickly scaled to build reports across revenue, productivity, and department performance—many with drill-downs and time comparisons built in.
Matt estimates he now saves at least 15 hours per week and has cut month-end setup from a full week down to just a few hours. That time has been reinvested in collaboration with marketing, business development, and operations—making finance a strategic partner, not just a back-office function.
Vena’s PowerPoint integration allows Matt to easily build board decks with 50–60 slides directly from his data models, freeing up time to analyze trends and answer ad hoc questions. He also caught aging unbilled inventory and receivables faster using Vena, allowing leadership to take corrective action early.
Matt participated in the Vena Copilot beta and plans to fully integrate it into his daily workflow over the coming year. He’s already planning to train his analyst team and extend usage across the organization. Future plans in Vena also include building revenue forecasting models, enhancing existing productivity tracking down to the daily level, integrating with Power BI for richer dashboard visualizations, and expanding scenario planning in collaboration with leadership.
In most legal firms, financial analytics is still very manual. But Vena let me take what I already knew in Excel and elevate it. I’m building faster, smarter and helping others do the same.”
Matt Crowley
Senior Financial Analyst, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP