Accountancy practice management software has come a long way. Today, features like automated billing and reconciliations are easily integrated into the day-to-day practice workflow of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting UK customers.

Our employees work side by side with our customers to create and manage these solutions – driven by a deep understanding of their needs and addressing the rapid changes in their environment.

However, it’s often hard to look beyond improving performance in day-to-day operations. Amid Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and other disruptions, accountancy practices and their clients are dealing with an unpredictable economic landscape. Future business planning can appear daunting.

However, technology can support accountancy practices (and their clients) in making informed business decisions, and planning for the future. In the first part of our Accountancy Practice Management for Future-Fit Growth series, we’ll explore how they can use technology to define and easily track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Doing so gives practices closer control of performance tracking, and deeper insights that will inform strategic growth plans.
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Saving Time

For several decades, business technology platforms have enabled practices to track performance metrics that they have customised. This highlights areas that qualify for improvement and underpins strategic planning.

Contemporary technology, such as CCH KPI Monitoring, makes setting up KPIs faster and easier for accountancy practices than ever before. This is vital today. The current business landscape demands that firms assess and amend KPIs more frequently, based on fresh market variables. KPIs such as client retention rate and business time-to-recovery have become increasingly prominent performance indicators in the past year. If clunky technology makes KPI management difficult, practices have less time and insight to plan future growth.

Reducing Risk
CCH KPI Monitoring makes it far easier to track KPIs and report on them. This is fundamental in minimising risk. For example, if a KPI is set to track and escalate debt filtered by overdue dates, the ability to easily set alerts and automatically generate reports is critical to practice performance management.

Some practices are manually running monthly reports to measure KPIs. Others are running real-time reporting engines, a key feature of CCH KPI Monitoring. This latter solution allows practices to review essential data at any time – covering both performance management and compliance requirements. They can do so remotely or on-premise.

This means that firms can assess issues before they become problems, and thus act proactively. Real-time reporting is a true asset in building a future-fit practice.

The Proof is in the Practice
A number of Wolters Kluwer customers have been using CCH KPI Monitoring for several years now. Our customers look to us when they need to be right. Ryecroft Glenton has successfully integrated CCH KPI Monitoring with its own system. This consolidates information from several sources, including CCH Central and CCH Practice Management.

“We can use the year end date to trigger a sequence of reminders. Have we asked for the books? Have they been received? If a request to a client has been outstanding for a certain period, the partner will receive an alert via email. For limited companies, we can monitor the corporation tax and Companies House filing deadlines – as well as the different deadlines for pension schemes”

– Ian Smith, partner at Ryecroft Glenton

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

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Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

Whilst this year has set challenges that no one could imagine, the accounting sector has battled through, rethinking strategy, and accelerating digital transformation. Firms have adapted and are coping. As we approach the end of this year, let’s move forward and start 2021 afresh. So, how can your firm hit the ground running with a business growth strategy that strengthens and builds on what you have already set in place?

Cleansing data is a good place to start. A data-driven solution can provide your firm with the edge giving you the vital insight into key relationships that are essential for business growth. Here’s how you can achieve quality data without lifting a finger to data input.
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Real-time data cleansing
Data cleansing is a chore that no one enjoys, but with a swift installation of Client Sense it is automatically done for you. From the moment the solution is installed (we install the solution quickly and remotely) the software works behind the scenes tracking all emails sent out from your firm and monitoring the reply traffic.

Immediate visibility to grow key relationships
Within days after installation Client Sense is helping your firm manage, protect and grow the relationships that drive revenue. The easy to use exports based on current activity allow your relationship managers or marketing and business development teams to have the data they need to identify more opportunities, improve client retention, manage referral sources, improve cross-servicing capabilities and revisit dormant clients. Client Sense gives marketing access to contacts’ email addresses which may not be updated in a Client Relationship Management (CRM) system and would previously get overlooked for cross selling and marketing campaigns.

For example, in the event of a planned or unplanned unavailability of an employee, you can quickly identify external relationships most likely to be impacted. Then you can identify who else in the firm knows the same contact and may be able to maintain the client or referrer relationship.

Client Sense can identify external staff changes on your client side that may impact your ongoing commercial relationship. Acting on this information can help you to protect the client relationship before it strays. You can also leverage this knowledge and act quickly if an external contact changes organisation. This potentially opens a new and welcome opportunity for the firm to engage with the contact at the new organisation.

Client Sense quickly identifies cross-servicing opportunities based on prior contact. You can then assess the best contact internally to make an introduction and identify where these beneficial introductions have and have not been made.

Relationship managers can clearly see key clients, prospects or referrers assigned to them. For each of these key relationships, a contact threshold is set, and because Client Sense is automatically connected to your firm’s email systems these are identified in yellow or red as they border or breach those dates.

For practices either in the process of choosing a Client Relationship Management (CRM) system or firms with or without a CRM already installed, Client Sense provides a complementary software solution for professional services firms.
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Data-driven strategic capability
With Client Sense you can rest assured that you and your team, even when working remotely, know who is in contact with who. With real-time communication information you and your firm can perform much more strategically to increase and maintain revenue.

If you are interested in discussing how you can enhance your firm’s business development capabilities, please contact the team at Symphony for a Client Sense demo.

Dec 2020

A CIO perspective on learnings from the Covid_19 pandemic

When we all put away the Christmas decorations in January this year who could have predicted the change in all our lives over the rest of 2020 and beyond. It has been a challenging year on many fronts with familiar names disappearing from the High Street and people being subject to restrictions on their lives in a way most of us have never experienced before. The loss of lives of over 61,000 lives in the UK from the Corona Virus is truly shocking.

How big companies are making a difference through their IT Disposal

Every business wants to ensure their staff have the best tools to do their job, but unfortunately when it comes to technology, this can result in a lot of waste. E-waste is one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world, with manufacturers pushing out more and more new technology each year, however almost half of the world remains cut off from the digital world.

Moving Pay Portal technology to the next level in accounting firms

Pay Portals have been around for a number of years now and accounting firms - like society in general – have begun to adopt them as they offer practices benefits in a number of areas.

How to get strategic management information with no effort

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

A CIO perspective on learnings from the Covid_19 pandemic

How big companies are making a difference through their IT Disposal

Moving Pay Portal technology to the next level in accounting firms

Accountants in IT stimulating collaboration

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