Tag: Vipul Sheth

Posted on by Vipul Sheth

With the AdvanceTrack Outsourcing Conference a couple of months away, it felt like a good time to use my blog to set out what the conference is setting out to achieve and, more broadly, put that in context of what’s going on in accountants’ working lives.

The theme of our conference

Essentially, the easiest way of describing what our conference is looking to inform accountants about is ‘building back’. Practices must support their clients through a journey towards some semblance of normality. That means more ‘help’.

Now, I know that practitioners have worked incredibly hard over the last couple of years firefighting on behalf of their clients. They’ve provided with essential government advice and led them through grants, loans and tax deferrals.

But we know that as businesses come out of recession, a lack of cash and resources can see them collapse as they try to regrow. There are other external pressures – inflation, wage pressures, and a government looking to collect more tax more quickly.

Businesses need someone in their corner who will say to them ‘we can help you’ and then ask: ‘how can we help?’ Practices have an existing client base – alongside potential new clients – who want help to both survive and grow. Practices have to be efficient, consistent, and scalable where possible. The rewards for optimal accounting practices are potentially huge.

What delegates can expect

If we continue the discussion, then delivering what is required to the client means your firm will need new skills, new technology, new ways of working and potentially a new strategy. I like to think that we will offer great insight on all these things in the conference.

It’s never a ‘hard outsourcing sell’, that’s not how we work at AdvanceTrack and that’s reflected in the conference programme.

We will broach practice development, what you and your people need to do to be more relevant; to capture the client information (or conversations) that enable practices to serve clients better. Even in an increasingly tech-focused profession we will always acknowledge that if you don’t talk to your clients you won’t know their direction, and therefore be unable to provide them with the support they need. (I recently blogged about why outsourcing is in fact the opposite of ‘being impersonal’). You will hear about all these topics and more.

The near future

We think that our outsourcing services will help you be more efficient and scalable. This in a world where Making Tax Digital will push your practice to have clients with better-organised and up-to-date information.

The AdvanceTrack Outsourcing Conference is being held on 10 May 2022 at the National Gallery. A host of speakers are already confirmed. Please click here to find more details.

Posted on by Vipul Sheth

As the founder of AdvanceTrack Outsourcing, I get a unique view of what goes on in the accounting profession, and wider. I speak to practice leaders and their teams about how they run their operation, and understand that they want to provide efficient and valuable services to a client base that trusts them… but also wants more from them.

I am kept very busy – as they are. In a positive way, of course. But that can mean that I don’t spend enough time holding discussions about my views and experiences more broadly, to a wider community.

It then made me think that outsourcing can be seen as impersonal: that tasks and processes are ‘handed over’ to simply drive efficiencies, saving money. However, it’s the exact opposite, at least that’s how I see it for myself and the AdvanceTrack team.

First and foremost our tech and processes have to be optimal, in terms of how they work but also from a security perspective. But, AdvanceTrack’s people have to be great at communicating with the practitioner clients they work alongside. And, crucially, the efficiencies gained through outsourcing tax and accounting tasks isn’t merely about lowering costs. It frees up valuable resource within a practice, enabling leaders to change and adapt their offering to suit complex and deeper end-client relationships.

What is an accounting practice but a series of relationships between accountant and client? And the relationship is integral to AdvanceTrack’s arrangement with accountants.

This ties into my original point, which is you’ll be hearing more from me, AdvanceTrack and our clients in the months to come. Relationships and communication are, after all, central to what we do.

Vipul Sheth is MD and founder or AdvanceTrack. He can be contacted by clicking here

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Some the most popular and well-known advisers and experts have been speaking to AdvanceTrack and accountants about how to lead through the crisis, while reconfiguring your services – and people – in a locked-down world.

 

While physical conferences and get-togethers are currently off limits, that hasn’t stopped AdvanceTrack from running a “mini conference” online via Zoom.

On 28 April, we ran a “Beyond the Pandemic – The Customers Journey”, a 90-minute online seminar, in which experts provided insight about how best to structure your approach to support clients through the crisis, and beyond.

Innovate and communicate

Kicking off the session was AdvanceTrack MD Vipul Sheth. He said that accountants are in a unique position to provide real value to the people they work for – above and beyond a basic and narrow ‘service’.

But they must not rest on their laurels. “The wow of today is the normal of tomorrow,” said Sheth.

Citing the exponential improvements in Amazon’s service provision and constant innovation, he explained that day-to-day consumer experiences influence what people expect from professional services organisations – and they must step up.

“Don’t compare yourself with what other accountants do – consumers and clients are driven by other experiences they have – that represents their expectation,” he said. “So why do you do what you do? You have to deliver value.”

While the coronavirus crisis has proved incredibly disruptive, it has forced accountants and clients to communicate more – albeit via digital online platforms.

“The importance of relationships never goes away,” said Sheth. “And now we see our people increasingly moving up the value chain – with clients and in our business. If you weren’t using Zoom or Teams a month ago, you are now – and these tools are helping you have conversations.”

You might have had two or three client meetings in a day; now you can have ten or 15 – hopefully all incredibly valuable to you and clients, explained Sheth: “Being digital allows you to do that. You’re doing things a lot quicker, communicating more – so take the digital journey.”

Invest in relationships

Karen Reyburn, founder of The Profitable Firm, gave an inspirational talk focusing on the relationship-building you will inevitably be doing at the moment. And that, while billing and charging is a difficult and thorny task at the moment, you are investing in potentially keeping clients for a lifetime.

“Some things have changed in the crisis, some things haven’t,” she said. “Relationships… it’s always important to invest in client relationships.”

Putting yourself ‘out there’ will also engender positive sentiment towards you and your firm from potential clients and other working partners.

“So many of you are already spending time on the things that build relationships – sharing information, blogs, videos… just get it out there! You will get enquiries if you’re doing those things. You are on the front line of saving businesses,” Reyburn added.

Some firms are fearful of giving too much valuable information away in the public domain, via their website or on social media. However, Reyburn’s approach is very simple: “Give information away, charge for implementation.”

If people think that undertaking a task will be exhausting or difficult, they will come to you, whether you’ve given them the basic information or not, she suggested.

“The more you share, the more they’ll want to work with you,” she said. “Use content to build assets. What can I build so that when they have problems, this is the tool they use? This is why video is so powerful: you’re connecting with them faster – the number of accountants who are realising that it doesn’t have to be perfect, but doing so builds relationships faster.”

Efficiency and trust

As founder of presentation training business Speaking Ambition, and MD of Blue Arrow Accounting, Alexandra Bond Burnett is well placed o talk about how you build trust with existing and potential clients.

“How do you give someone the green flag that you’re the best person to choose to help them?” asked Bond Burnett.

Breaking down the elements that are required to create trust was a key part of bond Bond Burnett’s presentation.

The trust equation is: credibility; reliability; and intimacy.

  • Credibility – “Demonstrating your experience, be that talking about things you know and understand, having conversations with people and presenting your qualifications.”
  • Reliability – “This is about ‘showing up’. Doing what you said you were going to do. To be there so your clients don’t need to worry.”
  • Intimacy – “You can be credible and reliable, but you have to build that level of rapport. People make logical decisions but with a dollop of emotion. How do you make someone feel? Safe, challenged, that they can do anything?”

Bond Burnett pulls this together by discussing ‘self orientation’. “It is a funny phrase – but essentially we’re considering who do you think about when you’re communicating?” she said. “It’s more than likely that it’s ‘what will someone think of me?’ Don’t focus on yourself – turn it around and think about the client.

“How can they be helped right now, and then next week and then the week after that… then start communicating that to them. The hero is the client; make them the centre of the story.”

Service clarity

“How do things get done?” asks Trent McLaren, global head of accounting and sales at Practice Ignition. Accountants need to be clear about understanding the work entailed both internally for your practice, and what you do for your clients.

For McLaren, this ultimately means you are looking for a balance between the work your people undertake, the technology used as a tool and the processes put in place to make the work flow.

“When the customer and employee experiences work well, then you as a practice gain a competitive advantage,” he said.

“It means you’re completing work faster, with fewer resources, improving quality and hopefully improving customer satisfaction.”

Another key task is to ‘map’ the customer journey. Do you understand the path a client takes, and the touchpoints they have with you, as you work together? From them becoming a lead/prospect to becoming your client and beyond, think about how you communicate with them and the services you provide.

By doing this you create a ‘blueprint’. McLaren referenced an article by the Nielsen Norman Group on this very topic, which can be found here.

 

 

 

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Growing practices need support to drive efficiencies, improve processes and create value. AdvanceTrack has been integral in helping firms achieve their goals for nearly 20 years. Here’s our story, and where we (and you) are heading.

 

While technology is integral to what we do, outsourcing on behalf of accounting practices requires so much more than that. It requires a commitment to collaborative working, absolute prudence and rigour in terms of IT security, and a focus on client service. These criteria are borne of a mindset that comes from our own experiences working as part of – and with – the accounting profession.

 

MD Vipul Sheth: About myself, AdvanceTrack and Inside Outsourcing

AdvanceTrack provides critical outsourced accounting and bookkeeping services to many UK accounting practices. Working with the accounting technology you know so well, we offer the best combination of IT and qualified people to free practices up to provide a better and more valuable service to clients.

As for me? Well, I trained with a great firm as an auditor and business adviser, and understand the challenges and rewards of being an accountant.

I eventually ended up in what is now EY. I remember thinking that, with my smaller firm training, it would be difficult to cope in a ‘big firm’ environment. However, I quickly discovered that my work to date prepared me better than I could imagine. I already knew how to deal with everything from a technical perspective, but now I focused on the value-added service of tax.

 

Understanding the ‘process deficiency’ in accounting practices

Going back to practices and workflow. My biggest lesson was realising that EY didn’t have 400 ways to produce a file (I’m guessing the numbers of partners in the firm then), but just one way.

This was the lightbulb moment in understanding what differentiated the firm I trained with and the Big Four firm where I now sat. And when I left, I then realised that a client is transitioned very quickly from yourself to another very capable colleague with almost no difference in client service.

A few years later I put this learning into what we all now know as AdvanceTrack.

Finally, Inside Outsourcing is AdvanceTrack’s monthly publication where we share insights on practice management, usually with a tech focus, and highlight the work we’re undertaking. A print version is available or you can view it online at www.AdvanceTrack.com.

 

AdvanceTrack and founder Vipul Sheth – the journey so far

2002 I left practice with the ambition to start up an outsourcing business. I spent several weeks in India meeting people and concluded that it could be done, and successfully. Having met people in the accounting industry, I knew the technical capability was there – but I wondered if the technology was as well.

 

2003 Formally set the company up and sought to build an online platform immediately. Being someone who used IT rather than creating it taught me many lessons. Most importantly, it taught me that staff need careful management, and I needed to build the technology to run the business.

 

2005/2006 I found some developers who demonstrated incredible focus and enthusiasm for the project. I told them what I wanted was to build something accessible on the internet (they hadn’t called it ‘cloud’ at that point).

 

2013 Security and quality accreditations were achieved. This was without making any material change to any of our processes. The security accreditation just demonstrated how the whole process was designed to deliver higher quality in a secure way.

 

2016/2017 Despite many improvements over the years, we ripped up the platform we had spent over a decade building and refining. It’s hard to do, to take something that has helped deliver great service and growth for the business and consign it to history. We bit the bullet and put a team together to deliver a brand new platform for the business.

 

2018 There were good reasons to rebuild the platform, particularly the need to comply with new and exacting data protection legislation (GDPR) that was brought in across Europe. Our early planning helped ensure that with plenty of time to spare, the platform was ready for GDPR and the challenges that would be undoubtedly coming, particularly as technology in the industry was changing so quickly. We can be sure that we’ll need to continue making changes.

 

2020 While other outsourcers are beginning their cloud journey, we’re proud that we started our journey more than 15 years ago. We’ve reimagined it time and again but sticking to our core values. With the pace of change increasing in the sector, we know we have to constantly re-invent ourselves to keep relevant to the customers we work with.

 

Beyond 2020 We won’t be making big announcements until they have happened. We don’t make our commercial strategy a public manifesto. It’s fair to say though that we’ll drive technological advancements faster and more thoughtfully than ever. Our clients expect us to help them lead the change.

 

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Premium service will come in useful for practices that use outsourcing strategically

“If you commit to AdvanceTrack, we’ll commit to you.” That’s the message from AdvanceTrack MD Vipul Sheth, having launched a premium “Amazon Prime-style” service for its top clients at its annual conference.

“The new service is aimed at clients that use outsourcing strategically, rather than just an overflow capability,” Sheth told the 120 attendees at AdvanceTrack’s annual June event in London.

“We’re saying to firms that if you see outsourcing as a strategic delivery resource, we will support that with a higher level of service.

“What we’ve seen is that the firms that use us regularly and strategically grow faster and deliver higher levels of service. The irregular, overflow users, haven’t fixed their workflow and process problems.”

The use of outsourcing frees up practices’ best people to spend time with clients, rather than entering data. “As a result, they deliver more and better value to the client base,” said Sheth.

AdvanceTrack has made a number of key investments in recent months. The outsourcing specialist has increased the number of
account managers working with its accounting firms, while upgrading its core systems.

“Investment in tech is helping us manage differing levels of service so we can do so consistently and grow headcount to help,” said Sheth.

 

Grow with our Academy

Also announced at AdvanceTrack’s ‘The Client Journey’ conference was its Growth Academy, in partnership with Paul Shrimpling.

It’s about deep, habitual, systemic change to set up your firm for a bright, profitable future, and is for 1-5 partner firms that want profits and the capital value of their firm to change.

The academy is focused on two main areas: accountability and motivation. You’ll be held accountable with regular calls and visits to review the actions you’ve committed to and to agree any next steps.

Not only that, but the academy will have a profound impact on how you and your team feel about the core work at your firm, which will in turn help your team enjoy the work they do.

Firms that have gone through the academy have experienced tremendous results: increased staff retention, improved profits, extra work and higher fees. If those are the results you’re looking for, and you want to make a change to remain competitive, then this is the next step for you.

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It’s safe to say that AdvanceTrack’s 2019 conference was a great success, with the most attendees ever at one of our now annual events

This year’s theme at AdvanceTrack’s 2019 conference was about building a first-class client experience. A range of speakers, including Paul Shrimpling, Iwoca’s Richard Sutton, The Profitable Firm’s Karen Reyburn and My Accountancy Place’s Paul Barnes, spoke at length about how digitising processes and thinking carefully about the interactions you have (or don’t) with your client will have a massive impact on how they value your service.

MD Vipul Sheth gave the introductory speech, talking at depth about the “journey that data takes through your organisation”, in tandem with how you deal with people.

“It’s about creating time and opportunity for you to speak to more people, that’s what AdvanceTrack is here for,” he said.

Sheth added that most firms’ staff, in five years’ time, will be technologically adept, and that bookkeeping services and management is “essential in terms of delivering a regular conversation”.

 

Building an onboarding process

The Profitable Firm’s Karen Reyburn gave an inspiring talk on using simple technology to build an onboarding process. She referred to the importance of “drip-feeding” information back and forth between yourself and the client during the process, and is not to be rushed so as not to overwhelm them.

Paul Barnes, founder of firm My Accountancy Place, spoke at length about how to set a pricing strategy.

Using GoProposal methodology, alongside bundled pricing, Barnes spoke about the importance of discussing the needs of a potential client face-to-face. When their needs are understood, the bundle can then be moulded to meet their needs. If required, the offering can be itemised so they can see exactly how much the range of services cost.

“If they were to hire an accountant in-house, we use that to contextualise our costs,” he explained. “You’re effectively an outsourced finance function.

“We’re iterating our services and pricing almost daily. Value pricing isn’t easy,” he added. “So make sure you charge on factors and outcomes.”

Nikki Adams, of practice Ad Valorem, said the conference “was great” for two reasons: “I was enthralled with some of the sessions where industry-leading specialists were able to paint the picture of the next stage of the cloud accounting transition for practices of all sizes; it also helped to benchmark us against, and network with, other forward-thinking accountants. We came away buzzing with ideas.”

Wood and Disney’s David Rudd said: “The AdvanceTrack conference re-affirmed that we’re on the right track but have more to do to digitise and optimise our processes. [It had] great speakers and [it was] good to catch up with friends old and new.”

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AdvanceTrack’s webinar series contains lots of insight to help you set out the direction for your practice. We round up a chat with Receipt Bank’s Sam Horner on ‘the future is now’ for accountants, and highlight our other online discussions

AdvanceTrack has a great catalogue of webinars for practitioners. Topics range from how to approach bookkeeping, through to credit control and even marketing advice – in conjunction with some of the UK’s top accountancy experts.

We’ve included an excerpt from a webinar with Receipt Bank’s Sam Horner: The Next Generation of Accounting. This wide-ranging discussion sets the scene for how and why advisers must look at their practice’s operations as part of a strategy to develop value for a modern client.

Sam is joined by AdvanceTrack MD Vipul Sheth in the chat.

 

Starting point

Vipul Sheth:When we talk about the cloud, an indicator of how far a practice has gone down this path is the number of apps and add-ons they use alongside the core bookkeeping product. It’s an indicator of how far you’ve gone down the cloud journey – are you giving clients real-time information?

Sam Horner:The issue we see with early adopters of the cloud is they take on the bookkeeping service and see it as a silver bullet, but the cloud is more powerful when combined with everything – whether that’s apps for accounts, invoicing, chasing debt and so on.

VS:Real efficiencies come from using other add-ons. And optical character reading (OCR) is a key part of data capture.

 

Factors driving change

SH:MTD does have a say in this, but a lot of the change is being driven by clients. It’s about the way millennials and Generation Z communicate and live their life. Conversations I hear where ‘we use our phones for an alarm, go downstairs and listen to Spotify, tell Alexa to change TV channel, get in the car and it tells you how to get to work, then at work everything’s offline’… The tech stops and they don’t engage with cloud apps in the same way as at home, so the drive and shift is coming from how they operate in their personal life.

VS:If accounting practices have a great relationship with long-standing clients, then they must appreciate that their clients’ business will hand over to their kids – and they’ll expect information over their smartphone. They’ll question why financials aren’t available online. So, firms need champions who can at least have conversations about how their firm’s going to develop.

SH:There is a big question about ‘how do I get clients to change’ and educate them? But you might be surprised, there can be preconceptions about established clients – the previous generations.

VS:The real difference we see with working with clients online is that with regular interaction, your firm can spot gaps where things are missing, rather than getting well past year-end and find things are missing. Then you have to make assumptions on behalf of the client.

We see MTD as just another button to press, for those that are on cloud. However, some think that if you’re making processes automated and ‘easier’, the client will actually want fees lowered.

SH:Well, then you have to show the benefits of the technology. If you can give a client their accounts by the third of the month, then to the client it’s as close to real-time as possible and helps them make decisions. One of our practice clients made this move and offered a premium service to their clients: 30% took up the premium service. But, in reality, the partners aren’t really doing anything different but have created more revenue.

And firms are having conversations where, after adopting tech, they put clients onto fixed fees across a period, and the client is happy.

VS:But where it frees the accountant is for other services: R&D reviews, tax planning meetings and so on. These things were hard to do, but now all clients can be seen because you have access to their data in real-time.

This morphs into CFO-style services. Many businesses can’t afford a full-time accounting professional in their firm. But real-time access enables them to have better conversations, almost as their CFO. I know a practitioner who specialises in a sector, and can now benchmark the client base.

 

The next generation of job roles

VS:Lots of firms we’re working with can perform the CFO role; using tech to capture and process information. They then use our team in many instances to do the bits that technology can’t. We call this ‘systemising the unsystemisable’.

SH:At Receipt Bank we say ‘it’s great to have badges and logos on your website of products, but they just enable you – don’t dine out on them’. They just power what you do. The tech is there to make yourself easier.

For the next title: Chief Data Officer or analyst. This role comes as the government is getting tighter and tighter in the risk management side of sharing of data.

VS:This role is about making sure the integration piece is properly run and tested. In smaller firms these roles or ‘hats’ are worn by the same person – you have specific roles when it comes to larger firms.

SH:We’re seeing firms recruit staff without an accounting background: 18+ year-olds with iPads in their hands, employing them because they understand tech. Clearly it’s also about mindset rather than age… but in reality for many there’s that ‘desktop memory’ in your mind, which isn’t there for someone starting fresh. Junior staff are helping with onboarding, for example.

VS:Yes, we’re seeing conversations being pushed down in the firms – not all partner-led… more of a team-based approach. Your age and experience aren’t limiting factors on who you can have conversations with. The person who’s comfortable sitting in a room having conversations will be recruited.

SH:There are other emerging titles: relationship manager, business development and software support for clients. Firms are investing in people and skills. You used to be able to hide behind numbers, but firms are saying: ‘We need to look at how to upskill our team to have conversations.’ There is still a need for technical specialists and software won’t replace them. But there’s going to be more face time, and that’s where we see the shift.

 

How to change your practice

VS:Fundamentally, you need clean data coming in: from OCR, bank feeds and so on.

SH:It’s about having a single process for a single task. If you standardise processes, you’ll reap the rewards – and allow you to scale-up.

VS:The cloud and digitisation allow you to gain an authenticity of data. However, if you don’t standardise processes you will have very stressed staff through MTD.

Summary

VS:Technology is the key to scale and profitability. Standardisation, repeatable processes… the more you can do that, the more you’ll be in great stead.

SH:And make sure you do it for the right reasons. It’s not about MTD. You need to understand the ‘why’ before the ‘how’. Why are you making the change? Get the tech in and let us do the processing. It’s about improving the conversations and then your team becomes much more valuable because they have those client relationships.

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To start the new year we’ve put together a comprehensive guide to how you should approach outsourcing, from ‘what can I outsource?’ through to the key questions you should ask of your own practice’s strategy and operations. AdvanceTrack founder and MD Vipul Sheth fields the questions from Kevin Reed.

 

What is the ‘starting point’?

While outsourcing as a concept is well understood, practices can struggle to align that concept with the running of the business. Unless you see outsourcing as a strategic part of delivery for your firm, it won’t work.

For example, do you understand how you’re utilising your current staff and that outsourcing could create great (and positive) change to them?

Ultimately, do you want your people and practice processing data? I think that, instead, you’ll make more money spending time sat in front of clients. Using an outsourced service can help you spend more quality time with clients. You’ll bill much more per hour and it will make you a proactive adviser in the eyes of your clients.

Your staff will be involved in those client-facing conversations and earn more money for you. And as their own value increases, you’ll have more satisfied and better-paid staff. And happier clients.

 

What can a practice outsource? What are the most popular or standard types of outsourcing that take place, and how is that evolving?

In principle, any task where someone is sat at a computer and inputting manually has the potential to be outsourced, from tax work to bookkeeping and accounts production. What’s unlikely to be outsourced is the conversation piece with the client, unless there are some basic forms of administrative-focused communication. What tends to be outsourced early on, with relatively low risk, is year-end accounts – a popular choice. You have nine months to file a set of accounts so there’s ample time to check without the client requiring visibility during that process. The information is not being changed live as it would be with bookkeeping. It sits in its own silo.

As for evolution, well, the biggest change happening is the need for real-time data. As a result of this, areas such as bookkeeping in the cloud are increasingly being demanded by the end-client. So, if they want real-time bookkeeping, how do you deliver that at scale?

And that’s where we come in, helping to systemise in order to scale that service upward.

Once their information is processed consistently and quickly, you’re moving to real-time information. So, the achievement as a result of MTD compliance is you just need to press a button.

 

What types of practice outsource, and why? Do certain types of practice outsource certain types of process?

It’s not really about size, it’s about attitude. Big firms would do it more because of their scale, but because of their size it means a lot of buy-in is required from a range of people. It can be done by them but requires a much more involved process.

When I meet the whole partnership, they’ll have gone through the whole ‘why?’ journey; any change project requires leadership and sponsorship. And it can also fail with small firms, if someone in the chain doesn’t go along with the plan.

How long can it take to get a process or function outsourced? Why does it take that long – or short – a time?

I could ask, “How long’s a piece of string?”, but it can be fairly quick, relatively speaking. Again, it depends on both attitude and the will to harness technology. If a group of people understand tech and are prepared to standardise (which will require change in an organisation), then it will happen.

One of our most successful clients used outsourcing to standardise their working files. Instead of a different approach by client, office or partner, they said “this is how we produce a file to support accounts”. So, when that data comes to us it means that we know exactly how it has to be prepared.

 

How does the arrangement work between outsourcer and practice? What is the process and how secure is it?

For bookkeeping, we can work with cloud tools that are collecting client data and we sort it, then push it into accounting software and make sure it’s fully reconciled. An accounting firm might have someone continue doing this, but instead of looking after ten clients that person can now manage, say, 50 clients. Their work will also change – it won’t be about processing, but their time will be reviewing the outputs (while understanding how it’s put together) and work at greater scale with their end-clients. This also frees them up to speak to clients.

Once the initial work is done, some firms get us involved in undertaking management accounts and reporting on behalf of their clients. It requires skill to understand what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, but it can be systemised as well and enable you to speak to your clients in a consistent manner.

As a firm you can move to a subscription-type service and start having great conversations with clients. You’re not reporting history.

On security, some in our industry believe that just because the outsourcing staff log into a firm’s network, they think there are no other GDPR or data protection requirements; we have lots of protocols required to keep client data secure. You can’t just say, “we’re working on your servers in London”; there is a separate requirement to undertake impact assessments around how that data is being accessed.

Then, beyond that, the protocols must be secure. We can work on a firm’s network, where firms have their own IT staff, to do work to ensure data accessed by our team members is locked down and things can’t be abused.

 

What are the key advantages from a cost and process perspective that outsourcing can bring?

This may sound odd, but even in ‘year one’ of the project (even when factoring in internal time) you’re probably looking at break-even from a pure cost perspective.

But I’d say that, longer-term, what you can achieve is more client-facing time, and as a result they bill more.

They’ve also changed the type of person they recruit, not someone to work in an engine room but instead be comfortable sitting in front of clients, and talking sensibly and confidently about that business. They’re not having to talk to clients’ FDs about deadlines and accessing information. And it’s a totally scalable process.

 

What else should my practice consider?

When I sit down with practitioners I say: “You need to have a standard workflow.” So whatever is sent to us by whomever, it looks pretty much the same every time, while appreciating or understanding where there will be exceptions. Get standardised yourself and then expect that level of process rigour from the outsourcer.

 

 

Key questions to ask outsourcers

  1. What experience do you have in the outsourcing space?What credentials does the outsourcer have in place, and are they interested in how your practice operates? Try and speak to existing clients. This is all crucial as it will impact directly on your working relationship.
  2. Do you also run an accounting firm?It’s not unknown for some outsourcers to also provide their services directly to what would be considered end-clients. Therefore, are they actually competing with you and, if so, are you comfortable with that?
  3. What credentials do you have that give me satisfaction that you’re trustworthy and reliable?Accreditations should be asked of the outsourcer. What are their processes and general approach to security and reliability? Where are their operations based, and can they be visited?

 

Key questions for the practice to ask itself

  1. Do you want to grow your business?Simply hiring more staff is a way to help you grow, but getting staff competent at processing complex accounting and tax data means they’re sought after. It’s also difficult to improve margins. Lastly, will this approach work when attempting to provide data to HMRC more regularly, and will clients start asking for better and more timely services?
  2. Do you want yourself and staff to be more client-facing?If you’re looking evolve your offering, then your staff will be vital in achieving your goal. Freeing them from processing provides an opportunity for them to help your practice evolve.
  3. Do you want to make more money?Improving margins and profitability requires you to improve your processes.
Posted on by Vipul Sheth

 

A webinar featuring AdvanceTrack MD Vipul Sheth delves deeper into outsourcing: future technological developments; its impact on accountants’ skillset; and his approach to working with clients

A joint webinar between AdvanceTrack and Practice Ignition looked to deal with the important topic we’re covering in our main feature: What should you be outsourcing?

AdvanceTrack MD Vipul Sheth and Practice Ignition’s Trent Mclaren explored the future of outsourcing, while highlighting how practices are currently driving their business forward by using tools to help implement their strategy of growth through high-value services. Here’s a taster from the session. Make sure to listen to the whole webinar, which really delves into some of the most relevant details behind outsourcing strategy.

Trent Mclaren: How has outsourcing changed since AdvanceTrack was established in 2003?

Vipul Sheth: A big change is that outsourcing is much larger as an industry, and more professional. But the biggest game-changer is technology – whether built by us, or by [software providers] in the market. There’s a massive difference in how we put together accounts even from just five years ago. The way we access data and information from the cloud is very different to receiving an Excel sheet or backup file… we still get those sometimes. We’ll continue to change – we have our own developers because we want to be an efficient and reliable services provider.

TM: People say that technology makes jobs redundant, but it also helps to create more jobs as well…

VS: Outsourcing [and automation] creates an opportunity for firms. We see within these organisations a bunch of skilled people who have client relationships, and [tech] allows us to have deeper relationships. That’s where we come in – they can use the data from an outsourced provider to have those conversations. The challenge is that clients see a set of accounts as a transaction, something they have to pay for. In that sense they’ll look for the cheapest option. But what you do with that information will be the reason they keep coming back.

TM: Who is the ideal customer for AdvanceTrack?

VS: It’s not about size of firm, it’s about leadership of the firm – how invested are they in growing their business? Because then we’ll be talking about outsourcing for the right reasons. The work’s undertaken in a lower cost economy, which will help to save money, but is outsourcing a strategic part of your delivery? The leadership have to want to deliver more to clients. Then you ask: Do those below leadership level have the skills to not be the introverted accountant… can they talk to clients and advise them?

You can visit our Webinars page to view the recording of our webinar with Practice Ignition.

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