There’s a dearth of affordable, well-designed, comprehensive case management software built for mediators. So when I hear of one on the market, my interest is immediately piqued.

Enter InterMediate. While new in the U.S., InterMediate has been on the market for three years in the U.K., home to its developer, Colin MacGregor of Resolute Systems. Colin’s adapted the software and its terminology to fit the U.S. market and he’s been testing it with a mediation program in Maryland.

Colin contacted me to see if I’d be interested in giving the software a test-run and writing a review about it, unfiltered by him. Here’s what I found.

Features

Colin’s clearly spent a good deal of time learning about ADR case management and working with mediators to build this system. Though not remotely a complete features list, here are some of the tasks InterMediate does with ease:

• Case assignments
• Case notes
• Correspondence
• Scheduling
• Referrer tracking
• Case progress tracking
• Case outcome reporting
• Customizable templates for standard documents
• Invoicing and fee management
• Mediator performance evaluation
• Financial and other reporting – almost 50 standard reports plus additional ones upon request
• Emailing system for following up with parties and basic e-marketing
• Ability for mediators to log case notes home or separate offices

Pricing

InterMediate isn’t a piece of software you buy as an experiment because it’s got a fairly hefty fee compared with case management and client management software I’ve discussed here in the past. But the fee shouldn’t daunt you if you’ve got needs those other pieces of software don’t handle for you, because, frankly, when your practice is thriving, you’ll rely heavily on your case management software to keep you sane and professional.

A single-user system is $1,000 USD and includes FileMaker Pro. There’s also a monthly subscription fee (my recollection is that it was about $60) covering full support, change requests, report customization, backup management, and software updates.

Colin spent time on the phone with me to walk me through the installation and setup, then through the system and features. I can easily see from his patience and manner that his customer support would be top-notch.

User interface

InterMediate is built using FileMaker Pro, so if you’re already familiar with FileMaker, a well-respected and long-on-the-market product, you’ll find InterMediate pretty easy to learn. If you’re unfamiliar with FileMaker, your learning time is likely to be a number of hours because the software is so feature-rich.

Like the pricing, that shouldn’t daunt you because time devoted on the front end is likely to save you time and a few gray hairs later. And InterMediate is pretty straightforward to use once you understand its logic.

Best uses of InterMediate

I suspect some solo mediators will find InterMediate more powerful than they need to manage clients and cases. But I can see three types of mediation offices that could benefit significantly from this software if their present system doesn’t measure up:

1. Mediation offices or centers with multiple mediators, such as community mediation services and community justice programs. InterMediate was first designed with just such a setup in mind.
2. Small or solo-practice mediation offices with thriving client loads and needing a trustworthy, reliable system to keep everything well organized.
3. Any mediation office that wants a single, comprehensive software package to do all the client- and case-management tasks.

Bottom line
InterMediate’s a fine piece of software for mediators who want a comprehensive case management system and are tired of cobbled-together systems or of adapting to systems built for other purposes, such as legal case management.

Find out more about InterMediate at the Resolute Systems website.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MakingMediationYourDayJob.com.

It’s been almost 18 months since I wrote a review of mediation client and case management software and even longer since I created my list of 10 must-have tech tools for the wired mediator. That’s too long when we’re talking tech.

So I was happy to find Jolt Magazine’s recent CRM Heaven or CRM Hell? Seven Options Reviewed from the Trenches [note" link no longer working]. CRM, or client relationship management, requires really effective software to do it right, and Jolt’s article gives a nice run-down of the options.

Me? I still use Highrise, and happily so. Someone asked me at the ACR conference why I use that one instead of one of the super-powerful options like Act! or SalesForce. What I want may not be what you want, so the question’s a good one. Here’s what I look for:

• Few bells and whistles. A long list of features may look inviting on a software product’s sales page or box, but really, how many of them do you actually use? I want software that does the most important things really well and doesn’t swamp me with the rest.
• Scalable. I want software that I and my client base won’t outgrow.
• Easy to learn. I don’t want to spend my time mastering complex software in order to squeeze out of it what I need. I want something that’s intuitively simple and straightforward.
• Portable. I never want to worry that I’ve left my office without a critical client note or file. So I want software that lives “in the cloud” (on the web) and which I also lets me download database files for safekeeping
• Likely to be here next year. While I’m always intrigued by new CRM options, like a kid drawn to the newest shiny object, I’m left wondering whose will make it and whose will die a quiet death. It’s a pain to port client records and data into a new system, so I want one from a credible company that looks like it’ll be around for a while.
• Built for small business. And I mean small business of an ADR firm’s scale. Many of the options are built for companies of 50, 100 or 1000. Those companies don’t need exactly what I need.

So that’s why I use Highrise. But it may not be for you, if your list is different. Jolt Magazine’s article should help you consider some alternatives.

I hope to be teaching a client relationship management workshop in New England in the next few months, so if this is a topic that interests you, watch here for an announcement.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

What tech tools are most worth the investment of your time and money to support your quest for a thriving mediation practice in 2008? Here’s my list.

Some are free, some are close to free, and a few are an investment. Most are pretty simple to set up and use. I use all of these almost every day and consider them central to my mediation business success: [Read more...]

A Mediator Tech reader wrote to ask about good software to manage mediation cases and clients. I thought I’d share an expanded version of my reply to him.

Customer relationship management software, which may also be called contact management software and shares some similarities with case management software, is designed to help you efficiently and effectively track clients and sometimes cases from start to finish. It helps you organize and easily locate prospective, current and past clients, including contact information; track conversations, projects, and follow-up tasks; notify you when a follow-up is due or it’s time to send a thank you; and keep telephone, email, and all digital files associated with a case or client in one easy-to-find place.

It’s really essential software for any ADR practitioner to have in place, both for serving your clients well and for keeping your sanity. [Read more...]