It Ain't Junk - its Jordans...

One of the tests of intelligent search and professional taxonomies etc was always whether a search for "Jordans" got you loads of guff on the cereal health bar firm, or whether it found the jewel in the West of England Trust's crown. Despite Jordans being in legal services since the 1860's, it was usually the whole food bars and their annoying slogan that came up with the most "relevant" hits, time and again - but that's artificial intelligence for you.
Jordans have always played a key role in legal services, however, and earlier in the year they unloaded a significant minority shareholding from 3i for £9m. It is irrelevant whether it was pushing or falling, but with the 2010 accounts now showing what the price was based on (on a current year basis) the arms length minority stake valuation speaks volumes. Benchmarks here are a long way away from the multiples for CPA and Complinet recently, although it is important to be careful that this was not a full free market pricing exercise. They are what they are, but clearly the market view of legacy know-how brands is not what it was.
Everywhere they look Jordans face challenges. While searching out healthy options - they are everywhere assailed by high carb, pumped alternatives which are increasingly better looking, more appetising and tastier. It needs saying - but a brand as strong as Jordans needed to be doing more than tinkering with international allocations since 06 to have viable alternatives coming through now. Not easy - as all the firms launching .Net and cloud solutions in the middle of a recession currently will tell you. The ICSA Software team have now stolen their breakfast - they are second by some way to the Blueprint range, and this is compounded by the world and his wife thinking they can do company secretarial software nowadays - there are 34 firms in the UK alone. Specialist innovative software teams like Class Legal are stealing their lunch and even Jordans would be hard pushed to compete amongst the innovators for High St legal software. The Practical Law Company has long since had their dinner in company law for large commercial firms, pinning Jordan Publishing firmly into the increasingly oppressed legal High St. Publishing is now the stronger sibling in the group and the home of their company secretarial services is having to fight hard in the high calorie market where DnB, Hoovers, Experian, and even BvD, ICC and RM are all playing hard ball.
It's a crying shame, as Jordans is a cracking brand and its divisional leaders have not been asleep or below par in any way. This is a brand that should long ago have staked a claim among in-company legal services and corporate counsel. It should also have bitten the bullet of becoming a full on software developer rather than dabbling - Bristol is after all one of our centres of excellence in just that (software - not dabbling, that is). Avoiding the clashing rocks of commoditisation and disintermediation in the company formations and information core business by taking refuge in the legal high street looked smart 10 years ago. Moving away from steel wholesaling in the early noughties (yep - really) and into legal publishing was a no brainer - now it is looking not quite like frying pan and fire - but it's getting there.
Jordans are a strong brand in legal services and a full RBP profile will be available shortly on the new website.

Flippin 'eck - Please Stop this Nonsense

A major player in the legal and professional services markets has announced the following guiding principles in their Annual Report - they were even voted on by their people - "customer focus, honesty and integrity, innovation, passion and service excellence".







Answers on a post card please if you can immediately spot which firm is boasting these guiding principles - surely it's obvious...you know the market well so they should be obvious...still strugging?...such a shining light must be blinding...oh come on...







But then again - to be conspicuously "customer focused" is no big deal - everyone says it, and frankly in my experience firms that have dominant market positions always claim this and confuse an inability to go anywhere else with a silence about doing so. If you flip each of these "qualities" to see who would do the opposite - you will see we are firmly in motherhood and apple pie territory.







"Honesty and integrity" are the sort of thing you only claim if you haven't got any. They are self evident - there is no greyness here - you are either pregnant with them or not - end of. If you have to claim it - you've lost it and simply demonstrate that you understand neither of them.







"Innovation" - well - in a tech business you assume this is cloud technology, simple and effective code, intuitive service, etc - but that's not what this lot are best known for. Perhaps they mean the financial innovation in taking very high profits each year from locked in clients - but even that's not new really, now is it.







"Passion and service excellence". Show me the firm which hates what it does and deliberately screws its clients at every opportunity - and then has the honesty to say we plan to keep doing this every year in their annual 200-page-spiral-bound-strategy-wonk " Action Plan", and these pious acclamations may just begin to have some meaning.







I despair. A simple strategic test is (1) flip the proposition to see if it really makes you look different from everyone else - if it doesn't - leave it out, and (2) define yourself in relevant ways - who would ever know this was not a doughnut factory in Wisconsin, and (3) know what you don't do...



- and start with "don't do bullsh1t".