The following piece was contributed by Eric Schurke, CEO, North America at Moneypenny.

Litigation finance is an industry built around measurement. Funders scrutinize risk, duration, capital deployment, potential returns and portfolio performance, because understanding what creates or erodes value is fundamental to making good investment decisions.

But there is another form of value creation that is much harder to see on a spreadsheet: the progress created by the hundreds of conversations, emails and interactions that surround a matter.

A call is answered. An email is sent. A follow-up is logged. A message is passed to an investment manager. All of that looks like work being done, but the more useful question is whether any of it actually moved the matter forward.

That distinction between activity and progress is one I think more leaders should be paying attention to.

Busy doesn’t always mean productive

Every interaction creates work, but productive communication should also remove work somewhere else.

If a conversation gathers the missing information needed to progress an assessment, resolves a question from a law firm, arranges the right follow-up or gets an issue to the person capable of resolving it, it has created value.

If it simply results in another message, another email or another task being added to somebody’s list, it may have created activity without creating much progress at all.

That matters in litigation finance because senior legal and investment professionals are an expensive and finite resource. Their time is best spent applying judgment to complex matters, assessing risk and building relationships, rather than chasing information or dealing with routine requests that could have been resolved earlier.

So perhaps productivity shouldn’t simply be measured by how efficiently communications are handled. We should also ask how much unnecessary work those communications remove.

Think about what happened next

At Moneypenny, this is something we’ve thought about a great deal because answering the phone is only a small part of what a well-managed conversation can achieve.

Depending on the business and the interaction, that might mean capturing detailed information, qualifying an inquiry, arranging an appointment, updating a system, following up an outstanding action or ensuring a complex conversation reaches the right person with the right context.

For a litigation finance business, the specifics will obviously be different, but the principle is the same: the value isn’t simply in handling the interaction; it’s in what happens because it was handled well.

That changes the questions leaders should ask.

Rather than only looking at volumes, response times or the number of interactions completed, look at outcomes. Did we obtain the information required? Did we resolve the issue? Did we eliminate another round of follow-up? Did we protect someone’s time? Did we move the matter to its next meaningful stage? Those measures tell you far more about productivity.

AI should create progress, not just efficiency

This becomes particularly relevant as AI takes on a greater role in business communication.

There is understandable enthusiasm around what automation can do faster and at greater scale but simply automating activity doesn’t necessarily create value. If AI answers a question but leaves the person unsure what to do next or captures information that still needs to be manually re-entered or clarified, the business may have made one interaction faster while creating more work downstream.

The real opportunity is to use technology to remove friction: handling routine requests consistently, capturing and organizing information, supporting faster routing and completing straightforward actions where appropriate.

Then, when an interaction requires commercial judgment, sensitivity, negotiation or expertise, it should move seamlessly to a person who can provide it.

The objective isn’t to automate the greatest possible number of interactions. It’s to create the best possible outcome from each one.

Communication is part of operational performance

This way of thinking also changes where communication sits within the business. It stops being something that happens around the “real work” and becomes part of how efficiently that work gets done.

In litigation finance, where matters can be complex, involve multiple stakeholders and continue over long periods, there is considerable value in reducing unnecessary friction. One well-managed interaction can prevent several follow-ups, clarify responsibility, surface an issue earlier or simply give the right person the information they need to make a decision.

Multiply those small gains across an organization and they become significant. That’s why leaders should start treating case progress as a productivity lens.

Not another metric for the sake of another dashboard, but a simple discipline: when we communicate, are we creating momentum or merely moving information around?

From measuring work to measuring value

Businesses have spent years becoming better at measuring activity. Technology has made it possible to track almost everything: calls, emails, response times, tasks, tickets and workflows.

The next step is to become better at measuring what all that activity achieves.

For litigation funders, that means looking beyond whether an interaction happened and asking whether it helped a matter progress, protected valuable expertise, strengthened a relationship or removed work further down the line.

Because being busy and being productive are not the same thing.

And ultimately, the most valuable conversation isn’t necessarily the longest, the fastest or even the most complex. It’s the one that gets something done.

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Eric Schurke is CEO, North America at Moneypenny, the world’s customer conversation experts. He works with legal firms, litigation funders, and professional services to transform how they manage and qualify inbound opportunities. Eric is passionate about helping organisations strengthen deal flow, improve first impressions, and deliver exceptional client experiences from the very first interaction.