Anthony W. Ulwick

Outcome-Based Segmentation and other analyses were performed.

The innovation and the impact

Using ODI, Kroll Ontrack gained a better understanding of the opportunities presented by electronic discovery, and it used this knowledge to develop an effective product strategy. Kroll Ontrack focused on the job of e-document discovery and the outcomes that members of the legal community desired, which led the company to develop groundbreaking new solutions.

For example, Kroll Ontrack rolled out a new product called Harvester and some related imaging tools that addressed the top two underserved electronic discovery outcomes: “Minimize the likelihood that relevant documents were excluded from capture” and “Minimize the likelihood that information is inadvertently altered or destroyed while the data is being captured.” Because two other outcomes, “Minimize the likelihood of making coding errors” and “Minimize the time that it takes to obtain all information relating to a specific subject,” were also important, Kroll Ontrack added a custom-coding feature to its online review tool.

The ODI-based research guided the pursuit of numerous other innovations as well. For example, Kroll acquired a clever search technology that employs clustering algorithms to enable a user to find documents associated with a keyword even if that keyword does not occur in the document. This was done to satisfy two of the outcome opportunities identified. In addition, Kroll Ontrack launched ESI

Consulting, which offers clients expert guidance in tackling the task of capturing all relevant documents. Lastly, it rolled out a new trial preparation tool that targeted litigation process outcomes.

Reflecting on the top opportunities that the ODI methodology revealed, Allen recalls, “There has been a ton of innovation at Kroll around these outcomes. These are the heart of it. We brought forward all elements that an electronic document has available and made them available to filter or search by. And we have continued to add features along the way.” By adding innovative features to its electronic discovery platform every quarter to address additional underserved outcomes, it made it very difficult for competitors to catch them.

Kroll Ontrack’s electronic discovery product employed a dominant strategy—it got the job done better and more cheaply than competing solutions. Prior to Kroll Ontrack, competitors had been attempting to address the challenges presented by electronic documents with modifications to the paper document discovery systems. In contrast, “Kroll Ontrack leapfrogged the competition with a revolutionary innovation,” observes Johnson, “because it added capabilities based on the job that customers were trying to get done rather than seeking to improve the current solution platform.”

A myopic definition of the market ultimately cost the leading competitors their discovery business. Allen concludes, “If these big, well-established companies had understood the outcomes that customers really valued, they could have dominated this business. I think they saw themselves as paper document processing companies, not discovery solutions providers. The leaders today—none of them were players in the old paper discovery business.”

Kroll’s market strategy has paid off. Kroll Ontrack grew is revenue in this market from $11 million in to over $200 million in about 6 years. For years, Kroll Ontrack was the industry leader in both market share and revenues. They received acclaim from industry experts and customers for quality and were named the top electronic data discovery system by readers of Law Technology News. They were also recognized by Law Firm Inc. as the most-used electronic discovery provider for seven years in a row.