Customer in the spotlight: French Duncan

In this month’s ‘Customer in the spotlight’, we discover how CRM helps chartered accountancy firm French Duncan to save valuable admin time and positions the business strongly for future success.

With 200 staff and 15 partners working across five offices throughout Scotland, French Duncan is a busy, fast-growing chartered accountancy firm with around 9,000 clients, many of whom are in the hospitality sector.

Workbooks has helped French Duncan move with the times in a fast-changing sector, where the commoditisation of compliance services, digital transformation, increased competition and clients’ growing expectations are shaking up the profession.

Not long ago, French Duncan accountants might have met clients once a year to discuss their annual accounts, but now clients have an open communication channel to the firm that they might use at any time. And when they do, they expect a quick response. Workbooks has given the firm a mechanism to record these transactions and the advice offered, as well as charge for this value-add service.

New business prospecting at French Duncan is also being transformed by CRM. Workbooks’ sales and marketing automation capabilities mean senior partners and practice managers can efficiently prospect for new clients and cross-sell/upsell to existing clients. For example, the firm uses Web Insights to track who’s visiting its website and generate prospects based on the material they view there.

One of the key factors that set Workbooks apart for French Duncan was the customisable single client view it offered, providing a way to view all the key data for each client on one screen. Workbooks also helped the firm consolidate and centralise its client records. At a conservative estimate, this saves each person in the firm ten minutes per day of searching for client information. That equates to about £500,000 per year in saved time alone.

Feedback on Workbooks from French Duncan staff has been excellent. They love how easy and intuitive it is to use, how straightforward it is to tailor to individual requirements, and how well it fits into each individual’s workflow.

For more information about how Workbooks helped French Duncan get in shape for the future, view the video case study.