CRM for Accountancy

EVOLVE OR BE LEFT BEHIND

The accountancy landscape is undergoing dramatic changes. Downwards price pressures and commoditisation of compliance services, digital transformation, increased competition and clients’ changing expectations are shaking up the profession.

Forward thinking accountancy practices have realised that they must evolve and innovate if they are to survive and flourish in this new commercial landscape. They must implement new business development models as traditional methods of network expansion are becoming harder to employ. They must efficiently attract new clients but also maximise the opportunities that exist within their client base. They must diversify their services and leverage technologies in order to achieve greater efficiency and drive a sustainable competitive advantage.

For many, CRM is the catalyst for change, underpinning the development and promotion of a sales culture across the firm and enabling best practices in generating new business and cross-sell revenue.

MORE NEW BUSINESS

Attracting and developing new clients is today one of the key business drivers for accountancy firms.To be successful at developing your practice, you need easy access to information, deep customer insights and the tools to close and onboard a new client, quickly and efficiently. You also need real-time data to drive quick and effective decision-making throughout the entire sales process.

This is where CRM comes into the picture. It offers a single 360-degree view of your prospects (and all your clients too). You can track and analyse all the interactions and transactions from the second a prospect shows the smallest bit of interest (like registering for an event, or downloading something on your website, or signing up for emails) all the way through to the day they become a client and beyond. You can assign responsibility for activities to the most appropriate person and set notifications so that no task is overlooked. You can track Key Performance Indicators (KPI) across your team and across business units. You can analyse individual performance, from partners to associate managers’ level. At the click of a button, you can answer who is proactive in identifying new business opportunities (and who is introducing new services to existing customers).

That is not all. You can segment your market and focus your narrative. You can target effectively, execute your prospecting campaigns quickly, automate many processes, monitor prospect and client engagement.

NEW REVENUE GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH CROSS-SELLING

Accountancy firms are uniquely placed to leverage the wealth of financial and historical data they have for their clients in order to identify and drive cross-sell opportunities.

CRM gives you a cross-selling platform, providing great visibility of what services have been sold to existing clients and identify those service offerings that have not yet been taken up – enabling firms to identify segments where they can cross-sell new services.

Visibility and insights can help develop an accurate strategy for growing a practice. It can help you define how to best engage with your clients to build deeper relationships and trust; and with deeper engagement comes increased retention.

SAVE MONEY BY FREEING BILLABLE TIME

Partners and managers are typically losing a lot of time hunting for phone numbers, emails and clients or prospects details – which could be immediately available in CRM.

CRM can be a catalyst for addressing inherent data duplication and data management issues that many firms face and provide a focus for the cleansing, maintenance and syncing of contact data. It provides the hub for the syncing of contact details and calendars with devices so that everyone in the practice can access the data anywhere, anytime.

A FULL ‘PROSPECT TO CLIENT’ SOLUTION

In today’s landscape, accountancy practices have to evolve, diversify and provide additional value-added services to their clients. They need to implement new business development models in order to retain existing clients, cross-sell services and attain new business. Those new models require a CRM system that is embedded within the day to day activities, across the entire firm.

With better visibility of your target segments you can market to those more effectively. As a result, you see increased revenue, an improved client experience, best practice procedures and productivity gains. Adopting CRM helps increase practice efficiency and improve the client experience.

The opportunity that is available to practices who choose to fully embrace CRM, is one where they can automate and streamline their practice, enabling them to improve their service offering and spend even more time with clients helping them to achieve their business goals.

Many accountancy practices are trusting Workbooks CRM to supercharge their practice and feed into their competitive edge. Don’t take our word for it. Find out what Colin Abercrombie, Partner at French Duncan has to say about using Workbooks.