More frequently than ever before, we’re receiving calls and enquiries from accountancy firms like yours, who are unhappy with their current IT partner or service provider. And from these many calls, we’ve noticed a trend. A lot of accountancy practice owners and managers like you want more. More than you’re currently being provided when it comes to data security, IT that just works, and helps you to grow your firm (not hold it back).

Because most of us have had to significantly change the way we work over the past 12 months, it’s even more important that you have an IT partner who’s listening to what you need and want.

One who will actively find ways to help you do things in a streamlined way. Who will keep you as protected as you can be from security breaches. And one who will take the stress of maintaining a proactive and productive IT setup away from you.

We’re not in the habit of putting our competitors down. There are many good IT service providers around here who will do the right thing for you.

But sadly, there are also a number of firms that don’t seem to have the necessary levels of care, or attention to detail. And there’s a growing number of ‘bedroom warriors’ who simply don’t have the capacity, time or skill to proactively keep your IT running the way it should. And that’s without even talking about making improvements.

Thanks to the pandemic, many businesses like yours have realised that their current IT service provider is not truly a partner, but just another supplier.

They’ll fix things when they break or contact you when there’s a new product to sell. But there’s no real care or concern in helping you to avoid problems in the first place. That’s not what you should want or need from an IT service provider. What you should be looking for is an IT partner. And that’s exactly what we want with our clients – a partnership.

With this in mind, we wanted to share the top 5 questions accountancy firm owners and managers are asking, that we just love to say ‘YES’ to.

#1 Can we work together in partnership, rather than you calling us when things go wrong?

YES

In fact, we only work with firms in this way. We find it’s the only way to create a true partnership rather than just being another one of your suppliers.

In March last year, the world was forced into a lockdown, which meant many firms had to send their entire teams to work from home. They’d never done this before – especially not on such a large scale – so it’s fair to say that the majority were wildly unprepared.

When it came to contacting their IT support providers, lots of them found that they’d just sort of… disappeared. They didn’t have time to help them move their operation into people’s homes because they were simply too busy. Or under-prepared for such an event.

Either way, it left many people realising just how much they rely on their business IT. And what a disaster it can be when things aren’t set up correctly.

We want to work with accountancy firm owners and managers who understand the power of a more permanent solution to their IT needs. Then we can be the partner they rely on. As well as being there for day-to-day issues.

So in short, while we really do want to hear from you when things go wrong, actually, the proactive work we do between those times will minimise the frequency and scale of emergencies.

#2 Can your services help me to grow my accountancy firm?

YES

At the core of every business is its IT.

Every single one.

That could be something as simple as a phone system. But more likely, it’s an entire setup that is unique to you. It’s your network, your devices, your phones, the software, and applications you use, the way you share files, your security, your back-up… you get the idea.

It stands to reason that the more tailored your infrastructure is to you and your team, the more streamlined your business will be. And the better the product or service is that you deliver to your client.

As mentioned, we enter into a partnership with our clients. As an IT service provider, we only supply our services to accountancy firms so we know what IT accountants need. Our goal is to really get to know your team and your firm inside out. The better we know you, the easier it is for us to see how things can work smoothly, and what needs to be improved where necessary.

• What do you think works really well for you?
• What do your staff moan about every time you use?
• How would things look in a perfect world?

As we get to know you and your team, we find out things like this and fine-tune everything to make your systems work harder for you. So you and your team can get more done with less effort.

You get to make the most of your time, making you more productive and more motivated. That means your customers are even more delighted with the service they receive from you. Which keeps them buying more services from you, more often, and even recommending you to others.

#3 Do you work proactively, or just fix things when they break?

YES. AND NO!

We work proactively, because experience tells us that it’s the best way to keep your systems running at optimum levels. For allowing your infrastructure to grow and develop as your firm does. And most importantly, to keep it safe and secure from data breach or loss.

We do realise that there’s always a possibility for things to go wrong, no matter how proactive we are in our approach. Fortunately, for the most part, our clients usually only suffer minor, easily rectifiable issues every now and then. However, in the event that there is a major breakdown or a security breach, you can rest assured that much of the IT setup we have in place will minimise the damage caused. And it will also hopefully mean as little disruption to you and your firm as possible.

#4 Do you have a clear plan in place if our IT goes down?

ABSOLUTELY.

We’ve seen how detrimental it can be to an accountancy firm when an IT setup goes down and there’s no recovery plan in place. In some cases it can mean a little downtime. But in cases of a big data security breach, it can spell the end for the firm.

One of the first things we work on with our clients is disaster recovery. We ensure each client has an off-site back-up of all of their data, which is updated every day (sometimes continually all day, every day). And we regularly check and verify it to make sure it’s working, too.

A disaster recovery plan will be different for every business. So while we’re getting to know you and your team, we learn about the systems which are vital to you and the data you collect. That way we can identify what you can keep the business running without, and for how long.

As we get to know your people, we can help you to create a procedure for any potential problems or breaches to be reported. We can assign key contacts within your business to be a point of contact, and to get the ball rolling and alert us to an issue.

To make things fast we work remotely 99% of the time. But if and when somebody needs to physically be with you, we’ll arrange that as a priority too.

Basically, we react as if it were our own business with the issue, minimising both data loss and downtime as far as possible.

#5 Can you maintain and update our systems without disruption to the team?

YES!

Downtime is frustrating. We get it.

Not only does it mean you have a firm full of people who can’t work, but when things do get back up and running, it takes everyone a while to get back to what they were doing.

When you partner with us, we spend a huge amount of time working away in the background for you. We make necessary updates, check that data is being backed-up as it should be, and make sure there are no potential security breaches. It’s a long list.

And the best part? You won’t even know we’re doing it.

That means most of what we do has zero disruption to you and your team.

Of course, there may be the odd occasion where we need to get you logged out for a short while, but usually, this is only in the case of a suspected issue. We try and carry out maintenance at a time that won’t disturb you and your people.

We’re here to help you do more, not less!