Webinar On-Demand | Beyond the Suite: Is Best-of-Breed Technology Your firm's Future?

[Music] well good morning everyone we are uh thank you for joining us on this sunny Wednesday morning um my name is Phil Hopton I'm the UK product lead here at silverfin uh we're going to be chatting to you a little bit about Beyond The Suite is best of breed technology your firm's future uh we'll give you uh we'll give people a few minutes to to dial in because I I appreciate that um you know it is just gone the hour and normally people are rushing off to get that cup coffee and do everything else that they're going to do first thing in the morning um I'm joined by uh two fantastic guests this morning and I will introduce them to you in a second but we'll give give people another minute or so just dial in uh meanwhile while you're doing that feel free I think the chat's unlocked so I think you should be able to kind of chat in the chat but um feel free to drop a chat over to just let me know where you are in the UK and you know are you having uh you know what degree of 30 Dees are you closest to at the moment because certainly uh down here in the Sussex where I am it's baking uh and I've put my webinar shirt on especially for this call which means I'm I'm super hot I I mean I'll be honest and say I am still wearing shorts though so I'm doing that that classic like I I call it the covid move where people were like smart up top and and Casual down the bottom so um look I think we we we'll get started I'm sure a few more people would join us as we get going so uh welcome to this silver F webinar on the street is best to breed technology your firm's future as I said at the top of the the call my name is Phil hton I'm the UK product lead here at silverfin and I've been working with accountants uh and technology for about the last 10 years to help them Implement technology uh launch service lines and and kind of transform some of the key functionality that they do in their practice today I'm joined by Sarah Gardner who is a partner at Shaw Gibbs and Richard sergeant who's the managing director of principal Point limited I will go to Sarah first to do a quick intro and then Richard I'll jump over to you thank you Phil and so as you said I'm one of the partners here at Shaw Gibbs and I head up our Outsourcing division um and really we have used that division as a catalyst for change across the whole organization with a key focus on the Tex act uh that we're adopting we are A40 million pound business now um across 10 offices um with around 400 team members joining us marvelous and and someone that it's fair to say I've worked with a couple of times in the past so always good to have you here on a webinar with me and then uh over to Richard hi everybody my name is Richard Sergeant I MD principal point and I run a small consultancy business that works almost exclusively with software vendors who are building products for accountants and bookkeepers so my interest here is really not necessarily to kind of tell people what they should be doing but to try and give a bit of kind of my perspective of what's kind of going on in the market I also heavily involved with accounting web intelligence so I need to give them credit because we might lean on some of their research and to kind of give context to some of the discussion as we go through perfect and I've just realized that I'm actually quite unbranded because the head shot photograph of me on the uh on the slide is actually the same shirt I'm wearing now so now actually only looks like I'm wearing I have one shirt in my entire wardrobe um which is not the truth so uh brilliant so let me set a bit of a scene recently I ran a poll asking UK accountants whether they consider their firms to be taking a best of breed approach to technology um and here's kind of what they told us and and I guess on on screen you're seeing the the key headline on that 93% of firms consider themselves to be taking a best of breed approach and we're going to show a little breakdown on some of the areas around that but what was really interesting is when you start to dig into uh best of breed it actually turns out that that whilst best of breed is certainly the intention it's probably not the execution because as you can see here if you look at e signing software whilst 55% of firms were were leaning towards DocuSign as their chosen provider 28% was still embedded within their Suite if you look at internal comms tools 30% were using uh slack 33% were still embedded in their Suite practice management 25% were were using carbon and 32% were embedded in their Suite so for sure there's definitely a a desire to have a best of breed approach but we're finding that the execution maybe isn't as simple as that and I'm gonna give Michael Ford from from um past away a credit here because I put a post out about this this webinar and he said is it best of neede uh best of breed or is it best of need and that really got me thinking actually is maybe really you know is this a best in need approach so we're going to dig into that across the next 30 to 40 minutes and I'm going to talk to Richard and Sarah and get some of their insights on some of the data that we found and you know some of the the ideas behind that but before we do that I want to ask a quick poll and this came from a conversation that we had uh when we were kind of talking about the webinar and the poll is this would you use the same technology in your firm if given a choice today now uh my wonderful Silver Fin assistant is going to run that poll in the background there we go um at that perfect and now I can't vote on this but uh we will kind of have a look in a second so when we get to around 75% of people answering that we will uh flip the results out um Sarah I think this this kind of um we were talking about this uh and kind of ask that question and what would what would your answer be you know if you could if you're starting up a firm today what would your approach be to to the technology um I completely agree with that comment best for need um you know reverting back to the pie charts you had on your screen a second ago sha Gibbs and our current guys would fit into the other um slice of each of those those pie charts and so I think it is very much best for need if I were to start a firm again tomorrow um would I choose most of the technology we're using absolutely um but I think Richard will come on to talk about some of the cost implications of that I think it's fair to say as a firm if we could start or have one piece of um kind of full service we would it just does not exist currently for a business of our size unfortunately excellent um uh silverin my my my wonderful silverin assistant I don't know if you can uh show those um results for me uh from the poll uh if not maybe just copy and paste them and pop them into the chat that be great uh but I think what we'll do now is we we'll probably drop the slide deck and just go over to uh us to have a conversation for a period of time so I think you kind of indicated Sarah and I think it's a really good point that you know there are certain challenges that come with a best of breed approach and of course one of them is is cost what are the kind of other maybe actually let's take a step back and I'll ask you both is best of need really the right way to look at adopting technology within a firm now Sarah you said I think it's a very good point if there was an all-in-one solution that did everything you needed you would go for that and I'm assuming there's a cost and need and I'm sure you can talk about that but is is this kind of is this something that you would want to do or is the best of breed approach actually something that we're having to do because the technological solutions aren't out there certainly for us at the moment I feel it's something we're having to do however I would caveat if there was one full sweet option available I would be concerned about the risk to that of us as a business and and putting all eggs in one basket but want to a better phrases certainly the challenges for me as a head of division and those of us at are senior level it you know it means we're having to speak with multiple vendors having to go through multiple selection phases and and negotiate multiple contracts so it does come with its challenges but we're also very privileged a firm of our size now that we can achieve the return on investment and going through those additional processes to find the the best for our need it's an interesting point u i I guess I don't think of it from from the buyer perspective that that you're not just dealing with one decision you're dealing with a multiple decisions and and certainly off the back of an event uh where you go and you talk to 20 different vendors um about 20 different solutions you're then having to have 20 followup conversations and all of this is is taking away from you know the actual work that your team are there to deliver right uh Richard what's your take on on kind of this this best in breed best in need conversation well I I agree with Sarah to the extent that I don't think there's a single house option out there really and even for the smaller firms I think what options are out there are fairly limited I would say that also accountants are still and I think this is for this is a positive rather negative still have to be very client l so you have to also adapt to the needs of your clients which means that you know you do have to have a few options out there to kind of suit and to wrap around Ser the service around the clients so you know what kind of feeling is that we've it's been a long time since there has been like a single house option best to breed and and as a term has always worried me a little bit because it implies there's the best one out there somewhere when in reality I think it's always been the best that suits your practice so the needs part has always had to predominate which is why there's Choice out there in the marketplace I would say though that the the the general picture of the amount of software that firms have had to adopt or feel that they need to adopt has accelerated considerably and that leads me on to come ations and thoughts and discussions around cost and value for which I'm happy to go on to when you're when you're ready but I think it's an important part of the story yeah I think Sarah you make a really good point like you are privileged because of the size of firm you work for and so implementing at scale is easy is maybe not the right word because You' got the complexity of yeah no because you you've got additional complexities that you're also acquiring firms at this point so you're you're bringing firms in with different technology stacks and different approaches and eils so that's a I guess that's a another level of complexity on top of everything else but from a a price and implementation perspective you you can go through that whereas maybe in in smaller firms it that becomes a lot harder because potentially you are the person that makes the decision you are the person that has to implement you are the person that has to have all of that and actually that's uh yeah it's almost a job in itself right um so Richard actually you know what it's probably a good time to to to talk a little bit about that that cost implication I think you did accounting web insights did some great research around the cost of Technology right do you want to talk a little bit about that yeah so it's uh Cy of intelligence is part of cting web that surveys about 500 firms for each of its kind of topics and then the producing data that's played back primarily to the vendor Community that's what it's there for so but actually what I was really interested in is around this idea of how the cost of technology and the hypothesis was that over a period of time the cost of servicing clients has increased and this impacts relationship on that firms have with vendors but also with their clients and the the results of that came back and said yes absolutely was the main metric that we looked at was um the cost of serving servicing clients expressed as the technology line on the p&l as a as a percentage of Revenue and The Benchmark going back to 2010 was 4% which was pretty standard at that time really before the explosion of cloud in particular and now at the end of 2023 that gone up to a mean score of 7.6% which is almost a doubling I would say that the interesting part is actually well there is that is the what interesting point itself the detail was also very interesting and so much the larger firms seem to be hovering around that 78 and maybe nudging into the 9% whereas the smaller firms were much more likely to be pushed up into Beyond 10% so 23% of the firm said they were paying 10% or more which to me was really you know quite an i opener and it came back to really I think the dip that discrepancy when we looked into it and that the larger firms had more resource to deploy you know it's more heads to think about it and to kind of implement you're also better at kind of gaining the marginal gains aspect across a broader client base you could just amp things up a little bit and create a bigger fact and also the ability to negotiate neate price so just being able to get better discounts effectively so the reverse of that is then true for the smaller firms and that's slightly concerning because effectively what you're doing is you're accumulating cost without necessarily translating into because you can't translate it into direct Revenue benefit and I think that's kind of the picture where we are at the moment so I think it kind of shows in reality that firms are out there one of the the struggles across firms of all sizes is really how do you extract the most value out the technology that you've got and that will I think it also becomes an important influencer in terms of your attitude to adopting new technology where it fits in and just some of the choices that you can have to make yeah that's a that's really interesting point I've got a couple of interesting questions from Andrew in the chat that I'll come to in a second um Sarah I just want to pick up on on one thing around the challenges the approach that Shaw Gibbs has when you're looking at first and the challenges because I'm imagining that sometimes you you're you're approaching firms that have very different EOS to technology to to um kind of the way they go to market and I guess is it fair to say that that then becomes a contributing factor in what you're looking at in terms of those acquisition of firms yeah absolutely and as we've grown as well over the last 18 months it's become a larger contributing factor I would say because it makes practices who are on a wildly different text act to us more difficult to integrate however what I would say it's a very clear indication of firms have adopted any Some Cloud technology like culturally they're already starting to think about going on a journey and it will make that integration and the conversations with us much much easier that's interesting so um two questions both from Andrew in the chat I'll pick up the first one first because I think it's relevant to where we are in this conversation at the moment doesn't the multiple contract challenge mean we need to seriously look at the number of apps in our stack with a view to reduction and maybe some compromise best of need is a good definition of use so actually Richard is is the answer to driving down the cost of all these different technological solutions to actually go do we need everything or actually is there compromise to make and are we doing stuff too quickly maybe oh BL me um I mean that that question was on the pre not was it no I mean why what what can I say to Andre blim um I would ALS I don't know I think it's kind of horses for courses a little bit isn't it um I'm I don't if this excuse me if this doesn't answer the question exactly I'm not of the view that firms buy technology they don't need I think the as buyers generally were more sophisticated than that uh the the the challenge of handling multiple contracts I think is a real one Ian God knows how long Sarah actually spends and looking over Bits of Paper and contracts and thinking about slas for a small firm you don't really have the time the the energy the inclination to kind of do that when you're kind of delivering on client work as well so I think the more General point is that that actually kind of uh managing your suppliers is is generally can be quite challenging and actually want to kind of get on with it I don't know whether or not simplifying stat makes as a general rule kind of makes sense but I don't think everybody kind of goes into life to make it more complicated for themselves it might actually kind of just to kind of make an adjacent point to that it might actually be an indicator that the promise of Automation and and the promise of Integrations between different systems isn't being realized and I think that could be more of an indicator of you know we're too much to handle and we were wanting to simplify I I would expand on that that question ever so slightly so we have taken it Back to Basics within our Outsourcing division because some of the new teams that we're working with are going through so much change um so we've really stripped it back to to Dex to zero and silver finin and building that as our core text act to then build out over the years to come um it's it's it probably doesn't help some of richest clients but we certainly take a much firmer approach now to not entertaining approaches from from other apps around that periphery until we have that really embedded um so there's far less scanning of my QR code at D and accountex than they used to be you're one of those people that the walk around it covered over or put a sticker some people put a sticker over right um and and rightly so uh you but Richard you touched on Integrations as a potential Challenge and this is an interesting one because this is something that within the UK product team with silin I've been looking at and and and trying to work out actually if we can make software work better together can that deliver better value for the firm both in terms of the cost of Technology but the use and the way they adopt the technology right so is integration something that that that software companies still have work to do on to to maximize how things can work together do we do we basically need to get into a room and start talking more building work excuse [Laughter] me being live and being at home and the home office excuse me going store uh yeah the whole Integrations question I think is absolutely fascinating and I'll take it from a personal perspective and and also from an Evidence perspective so from a personal perspective I just don't think the promises of this stuff working together seamlessly generally across the market Marketplace is is being is there is being realized um and I think you know it kind of adds a complicating Factor sometimes going back to the evidence the the capacity challenge study from counter of intelligence which we ran in the last year when it's was looking at why accountants say they're they are busy the the reasons why I doesn't me the reasons why part but the kind of how to what extent does technology help was helping in leaving the challenge scored actually really poorly and the things that they were saying would make their life easier and better were things like better Integrations be ability to kind of get a proper through flow of data kind of a more kind of collaborative approach to from the software companies to kind of make things happen and then we saying what aren't you getting from your software vendors at the moment and it was you know we're not getting the Integrations we're not getting it was just the kind of the you know the complete Vindication of that underlining of that so I think generally the the technology is not there and some of it all to do with the political will to make it there there's not the kind of commercial motivation to make it kind of work sometimes and I think these are complicating factors and it goes back to this idea of how do you get value out of your technology stack so we're accumulating costs the software is not kind of doing the complete job for us doesn't feel like a nice position to be in that's interesting Sarah what's your your take on the the Integrations and and and what rich is talking about in terms of that that that kind kind of flow of Technology within a practice um I think it's better I think it's evolving in the right direction um and certainly we've really valued is how closely silver finin have been willing to work with other partners um but I don't think we could make the same statement about all of our vendors and particularly those that aren't cloud-based um it's utterly fundamental to us ultimately you know if you think about how we're now working across multiple offices we need that integration piece um and as much as we've gone somewhere on the journey there is so much outside of the core accounting if you look at our CRM system and how it takes to practice management it's cumbersome it's still cumbersome um and increasingly we need that data I just say I wonder just just to go back and there I I painted a somewhat negative picture but I agree with Sarah I think things have improved I really do and I think there is the you know there there's client pressure now on vendors to do more and to do better and long make that continue to be honest because we're paying good money for this and if we're going to continue to be a customer I think we can afford to be demanding of our of our suppliers as well so I would agree totally with say and say that the it is to a certain extent up to buyers now to kind of exert more about what it is that they want now they're kind of familiar with the environment if we're not getting it then that might be our motivation for change yeah it's that that's a really it's a really interesting one because I think you're right I think we have come a long we've come a long way and I think there's still a long way to go on that but things are definitely moving in in a in a better direction and you know I've I've seen it from some vendors where they're reaching out to us and saying actually we'd like to build this with you or we'd like to do this with you we'd like to do this with you and that's great because people starting to talk I think I always question when the inevitable annual price rise ccle hits and certain social media platforms blow up with people both for and you know defending and against is it really is it really people saying I don't want to pay x five 2% 3% 4% more or is it that actually you haven't delivered that 3 four five 6% value more and actually things aren't moving on so that point about kind of Integrations is a great way to I think to add value to what you're doing because actually yes eventually all prices are going to have to go up it's just the nature of things but actually if you can provide more more more value for integration through things working Better Together from the time saving that potentially brings then actually that kind of justifies to a point some of those inevitable price Rises and softens the blow a little bit uh I think um good okay one of the questions we've talked about when we were uh prepping for for the webinars we talked about the the vendor side um and I guess one of I think we've touched on it a little bit here already but you know do vendors need to do more to support accountants and practices to roll out technology because it's not just it's not just taking on a piece of technology every piece of technology is a change process it's it's upskilling it it's um reskilling it's changing what you do internally and clearly and I've seen it in my time some vendors are are better deliverers of this and other right so Sarah from your perspective how important is that relationship with the vendor within that kind of rolling out of the technology and what impact have you seen both kind of negative and uh positive and otherwise within that yeah it's hugely important um I think we were guilty a year or two ago of having quite passive relationships with some of our vendors because the the tech was established that the stack was established and we were using it in in ba coming back now to Rolling things out to a much larger organization we genuinely need a true partnership um and I will I will speak with Silver Fin you know at least once a week if not more um and that's really really valued you know most accountancy practices quite rightly are still run by accountants and nowhere in any of our train training are we necessarily Tau through change management it's huge Richard obviously you work a lot closer with on on the vendors and and the vendor piece yeah what's your thoughts on this because I know you're working on another study for um accountant web intelligence kind of broadly around this topic if I'm right yeah yeah well yeah it's exactly on this topic really um my personal experience is that vendors generally want to do a good job for for their clients it it underlines you know the commercial imperative was more anything else you want to Happ your clients you want to look after them I think there there are times in where they kind of that commercial imperative is a bit skewed more to the should we say the marketing and sales part and impation part rather than the longtail bit and so I do think there's more work to be done in terms of helping firms of all sizes actually kind of understand the value and get more value out of out of the soft what they've got generally I don't think it's anyone's intention just to kind of you know sell them piece of software and dump them and leave them I just don't think that exists any more really um but but it is you know it does present vendors with certain sets of challenges about how they resource that what does it mean in terms of their their revenue potential and so forth I would also say reputation is extremely important so I'm sure Sarah would you know out of their ears of Silver Fin in any of other having conversations with her peers about you not necessarily to you and those are important part of the Assurance process and the and the the quality kind of like Control process that I think accountants have with each other so I think the the kind of customer part the relationship part is an important aspect of vendor behavior and influences ultimately how your customers and potential customers will talk to each other the the about change management Sarah mentioned there I thought was you know extremely good point as well and and I think it's not just I'd perhaps suggest I would give more more um be more positive on accountants kind of ability to can handle change management because they live in an environment where change is constantly happening around them and to them but I do think it's more difficult at the moment with the proliferation of Technology around them and and the proliferation of technology that you're using so how easy is it to swap one piece out and exchange it with another you know it's that's a very difficult risky it has to be well thought out kind of like process I think they're not easy quick decisions to make and need careful handling and I think you need sympathetic and empathetic vendors in order to to manage that Richard I think you're right I don't think anyone sets out with that intention to do a bad job of implementing and helping the software I think quite often it's that resource piece right when especially with some of the smaller venues when you're when you're starting out you're growing to therefore most of your resources on the sales side because you're trying to acquire the new customers then when you get the new customers you scale up the customer success side and then ultimately the thing you do at the end is you always scale up the support side which is probably the thing you need to scale up first because well without the customer success side that becomes really critical um well Phil actually can I can I just just add that I'm going to disagree with you slightly oh okay oh I like that because actually I think what we what we what we're discovering is that with especially with like New Kids on the Block very patronizing but know new vendors are coming into the market the closeness that they have with their client with their potential clients and their early adopted clients is really important yeah and the enthusiasm for those products is often driven by Sarah and her talking to each other and I think it's that kind of the the the fact there are very few steps between what you'd like the product see in the product and being able to talk to the people who can actually make it happen to you is very very empowering actually this isn't working oh we fixed it over the weekend yeah you and you kind of lose a little bit of that as you kind of grow because I think there has to be more structure more distance and and then you kind of come back to a little bit later on so I would say a lot of these products gain their oomph because of that closeness that they can for and I I completely agree with that I think you're right I think um like you've seen it with with products like socket from um from Jonathan G right like he's working very closely with his early adopters they're already out there talking very highly about the product so therefore when it launches it's got great traction so no I think you're completely right in that and and Richard to your point picking up with Sarah about the conversations that you have outside of is shot of of the vendors you're obviously part of of dfk and I'm sure that that as a as a networker know the network very well for my time in Industry as the network you sit down have very open and honest conversations about vendors and decisions will be influenced highly by what you think as a kind of a core and and kind of significant member of dfk right so so those conversations do happen they're very important yeah absolutely I completely agree you know we we've gone out to the market now for a um payroll piece of software um and as much as the team went through a very structured and lengthy tender process first thing I wanted to do was understand who else is using it and when can I speak with them yeah and I think that's super powerful and in fact if anything I think you've got probably the best way to to take that first tranch of Technology off the table by speaking to people and going well what's your experience been with this and you could have those open and honest conversations Sarah we we talked a lot about um the implementation of Technology previously and kind of you talked about the ability to create playbooks and go through that process and change management do you want to just dive a little bit into that because I think it picks up really nicely on on Richard's point about know how we Implement how we roll out and the challenges that we face yeah absolutely and and it goes back to the question earlier about really stripping everything back and going back to basics so we firstly take a very software agnostic approach to really mapping out our our operating model and what we want to achieve um and we almost invest more time as much time in that as the software selection process itself so we're starting with you know inputs through to outputs and then looking at which piece of technology can best support that um so alongside then the Run books we will have the software manual that supports us achieving that goal um and then we've worked so so closely with your team um so very much based on a a train kind of train the trainer type approach across all of the multiple offices so silverfin were phenomenal bringing together a team of Champions and we met in the office in London and just really built some energy and enthusiasm in the project um I then took quite a bit of time out of my own diary with with one of my other partners from the Northampton office and we spent time going to each location working with silverfin and really explaining why we're adopting something not just we will be adopting um and that's been met with genuine real enthusiasm despite the fact how much change we're we're asking of of people um and I think that investment of time from the outset and from your leadership teams is really really crucial and and actually Richard it's an interesting one right the why piece do do do us as vendors sometimes lose the why or does the why sometimes get lost within the conversation because I've I've seen I was at some of the rollouts with Shaw Gibbs and having senior Partners stand up and and give the vision and strategy of why we're doing this and you can see people in the going okay I okay I get I get the why we're doing this now do you think do you think actually sometimes we undersell the why when we're we're launching and rolling out technology oh uh good question as they say um well I mean good Al good good implementation seems I think Sarah kind of elated beautifully there is collaboration piece isn't it shouldn't be one person or another I think the challenge really is outside when you've kind of got you know really good and and quite a large team or like Sarah has when you've got smaller team is to actually your window to communicate with the rest of the practice is actually very small it's a tiny little letter box you're going to go shout through and you relying on the person who has been given the responsibility for implementation that may or may not have been the budget holding decision maker themselves it could be someone else to what extent have you got the Rapport and relationship with them to what extent are they able to convey and to kind of motivate and to push through in the same kind of way as SAR and her her leadership team were able to do with the rest of their organization and there is a limit to the kind of access that some Benders gets to the preparers you know rather than just the the directors and and and the decision makers and and I think that's an important constraint I think around the relationship I don't think it's necessarily anyone's faults because being in practice is is about being very very busy actually you know and doing the job so you know and I and I and I do believe that also it's not always the most appropriate person who's given the responsibility sometimes you know and I don't think it's always the case but I think sometimes it is the case it's like the kind of you know marketing was always given to the partner it wasn't in the meeting that month it was that sometimes it feels a little bit like that we've made a decision the hardest part is making the decision and now we'll get through and you know from your some of your roles feel that coming out of a meeting a very positive meeting is oftenly the beginning of all the pain isn't it you know made decision oh now we're g to make it work and now we're gonna get most effici when when a when a firm says yes I think the hard work begins at that point right like I I I've always said that it's like the the as difficult as sometimes as getting the decision is getting the um then going from that decision to the execution to to the success and I've seen it before where you have those great meetings of great intentions the roll out's really good but then the product never gains traction for whatever reason be it's not fit with the the customers or it's not fit with the internal teams yeah you're right that the hard work I think always starts after the yes rather than rather than before it I just had one other little thing around that implementation part I think the thought of implementing something new is quite a challenge actually which is why I think there's a fantastic opportunity for around optimization you know we'd like the stuff that we've got to work better I think this is you know speaking to Silver Fin as our host I think this is the one of the tremendous advantages of working with Silver Fin because actually what you're doing especially from a client level you're asking no clients to change you know to that part of the piece which is incredibly challenging and also you need often have the the right or the authority to change client's technology and disrupt them in that way so actually trying to optimize the fact that you've kind of got all these different ledgers for example from clients the diversity of your client base I think it's tremendously powerful and I think there's much much more that can be done in the sense of making what you've got work better and creating a layer that brings things up so you can work with it in a very consistent way I yeah Jo that's a really interesting point I think I think there are two very different challenges with rolling out software in internally and rolling out software externally I I was never part of that initial rolling out of of some of the new Cloud ledgers when they came but I can imagine that the the pain Journey with like I I always give the example my dad was a farmer and his definition of keeping a receipt was it would be thrown on the floor and hopefully someone would pick it up and put it in a shoe box and at some point hopefully that shoe box would make its way to an accountant and then and then and then right so that change Journey piece is yeah I'm ful to be to be working with accountants because yeah it's another level of change to then take that to elevate to to to customer level sah you've been through that right that must be um must we've absolutely been through that we've got the scars to show and being really honest you know we are a slightly larger F but we're absolutely still going through it um and I think it goes back to one of the points you made earlier you know that we are private Equity Bank a number of our counterparts now are not even run by accountants anymore you have very different people running your Outsourcing divisions than than you have in the past actually what we can do is keep pushing the vendors to help us make that Journey more seamless yeah I love that I think and I think that's a really really important point and in fact I think when when when practices and businesses stop pushing the vendors that would concern me um you know we get requesting all the time for we want this we want this and we want this if that dried up overnight I'd worry about the engagement and and the use of the software because it doesn't say to me we've got it right it just says that people are now not using it as much so maybe that's a thing so I guess I guess what we're saying then is this isn't really a question of of best or breed of f site or you know but rather what technology in vend that is best in your needs and I think maybe that's the kind of the takeaway from this is that best of breed doesn't really exist but maybe best of need is and within it's about the technology but it's also about the vendor and the implementation and the roll out as part of that and Technology doesn't stop when it's signed up actually that's the start of the journey do you think that's a fair there a relatively fair takeway from this I think it's very fair and I'm not going to tell you which service line it was in we we went through a selection process and there was one piece of technology which was clearly best of breed we've chosen another um because of the feedback on the implementation team and the customer success team was so poor on the the the most fit for purpose that we've gone with the other so you've absolutely hit the nail on the head we cannot of Interest be working with vendors who cannot support our roll out and and I guess it's it's also having vendors that that are because the majority of vendors I work for I I think back at some of the businesses I've worked for um in the past they've dealt with everything from top 50 to uh you know one person firms around the corner and actually just because you're of a different size smaller doesn't mean the the roll out the implementation or the the the the attention that you need is any different and actually having a vendor that can also balance a suite of clients as well I think is actually quite important Richard you must see this a lot right like that ability to be able to to work with a Gibbs but also be able to work with a smaller firm and and be able to manage the challenges of both sides of both sides of the business yeah uh yeah it is I mean they are different though there there are you know you do need different things dealing with sure gibes you do with somebody who might be just two or three members of Staff the fundamentals don't change is it how you feel as a customer how you're being treated as a customer how fairly you think we treated how you're getting good value out of your investment do you feel like the event your partner wants you to be a success and get value out of it you know I think the fundamentals of being a good good supplier and feeling like you're valued as a customer are at the heart of it really um just so one last question for well question less more of a comment from Andrew and I think it's a a pretty fair one getting a single source of Truth on the practice side is still difficult even with the integration automation that's available I think there's a long way to go on that as an industry stre to to to be able to pull things together and have that single source of Truth um I don't know if there's anything you want to add on that one Richard but but certainly I you know I agree it is still still not there no no and won't be for a while and actually I think is one of the complicating factors when people starting thinking about AI as well and to what ex I mean I'll be fascina to hear what Sarah has around on that particular issue I know it's another webinar in itself but this idea that actually you can use technology to gain a sing single point of truth I think it needs a lot more thought and understanding the question kind of promises it to a certain extent but again it's complicated by the factor about where it's going to sit at the kind of client level or is it going to sit at the practice level and I think that needs some careful consideration and also is it something that you do as a practice or is it something you rely on certain vendors and with different tools and different competing Technologies I know everyone kind of claiming use of things like AI within within that got to be really careful about what you're you know what you what you're selecting and what you're expecting from it so yeah I I think we're some way off I think we're on a journey I think there's a lot more thought to happen yeah Sarah any thoughts on that before I uh I I ask it would be interesting to regroup again wouldn't it in 12 months time 24 months time and see where we all sit on that point then I think for us clearly working with silver film we're choosing to work at a practice level um so integrating as many different pieces of bookkeeping software as possible into that single source of Truth and and that one large data lake so uh brilliant well look um I'm gonna kind of wrap up now um clearly I think you know it's obvious that this isn't a cut and dried solution and and one of the things I would love is we are running I'm running uh a little survey at the moment um we're giving away a free coffee or a coffee voucher cuz I'm not going to come around to everyone's office and give them a cup of coffee um You probably don't want the coffee the way I make it either um and it'll be with milk it's not to everyone's taste so vouch is the easy way around this but if you scan the QR code it'll take you to the survey it will take less than five minutes to complete there's 11 questions um and you know you'll get a cup of coffee out the back of it but it's helping us to dig into this this idea around best of breed versus uh full Suite so you know I think any think that if you're willing to do that that would be great um you know I'd like to thank rich and Sarah for joining us before we go uh just for anyone that doesn't know and doesn't know anything about us uh just to give you a little bit of info on silverfin so silverfin is cloud accounting uh sorry Cloud software for accounting firms with live client files connected workpapers and AI you can trust and we used by 30 of the UK's top 100 firms but actually firms outside of that as well uh serving over 34 40,000 client files and 850 accountancy firms across 15 countries so you know we're always happy to have a conversation with you if you'd like to find out a little bit more about how our working papers as well as accounts production and corporation tax can help uh kind of you know change the way you're working and maybe address some of those datas and obviously Sarah you've been very kind with some of your your thoughts and Richard as well around how Silver Fin work and and obviously you know we always bring on clients that you know going through the experience and you know are comeing happy with us it'd be really weird to bring on clients that aren't but actually you know we have um a really good product MPS score and really good kind of feedback from our clients in general so it's really lovely to hear that but in reality the proofs in the pudding and you know we love working with firms like Shaw Gibbs that that actually are taking their practices on that journey and bringing seen as part of that I think that's really important so one quick last poll from us are you happy for a silver team member to reach out and say hello yeah would you like a bit more information about us uh like simple yes or or no answer um so if you'd like to find out a little bit more about silverfin please do uh click the yes um if not then you can click the no hopefully you'll click the yes uh and we'll can get someone to reach out I always like to drop just this little bit just at the end of the webinar because by that point we've kind of talked about the content and everything else um Richard any final thoughts from you on the whole best of bre topic or best in need as I'm now calling it yeah no I I mean my final thoughts really are the fact that you know being a buyer is hard and but you are more sophisticated than you probably think I suspect so best of need to me says you know your practice you know your clients you know you know what your approach should be and there's some great vendors out there and I would put s him very much in the top tier of that that can help you think about you know what changes can be made that are that are least disruptive to your practice that can deliver real benefit so I would Echo some Sarah's thoughts about about both the best and need approach and also her views on on silverfin and I would also like to say Sarah I think it kind of shows you know almost like an a class version of especially firms of her side their approach to implementing and looking at software and I really enjoyed learning about her approach too so thank you Sarah perfect Sarah any last thoughts from you um I think ultimately echoing a lot of what we've already discussed today there's a huge amount available to accountants at the moment you know recruitment is difficult um there are lots of other challenges that people also have sat on their desk so do strip It Back to Basics just focus on where you think you can achieve the most value um most quickly um and I suppose the most important point that we said earlier is accountants are willing to talk with one another um and perhaps if the accountants in your local town or your local networking groups aren't willing because they think it's a little close for comfort do reach out um like we said we're part of dfk international don't be afraid to reach out to myself start the conversation because we're usually all very honest with one another amazing um and I I literally have nothing better than than what you two have just said on that one so um you can scan the team uh scan the QR code to book a call with our friendly team I like the way we we we we had the friendly bit in but they are they genuinely are I just want to say thank you all for uh joining us today hopefully you got some insights into the best of breed best in need approach and conversation uh it's always a pleasure to talk with you Sarah and to talk with you Richard um so thank you both for joining me on this webinar today and and I'm sure if you want to find out more about Sarah or Richard they're both on LinkedIn and both active on on LinkedIn and and and social media so I'm sure they'd happily have conversations with you on that and clearly if you want to connect with me I'm also there on LinkedIn as well so thanks for joining us today it's been an absolute pleasure to spend the last 50 minutes with you all and uh we look forward to speaking to you again in the future thanks very much [Music]

2024-09-11 09:25

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