You Can Do So Much More

This month we’ve profiled an example of the mutual benefits from this type collaboration between an Online50 partner and their client. We've also touched on two other aspects of ITIO's hosted Online50 service - business continuity and remote support - they're part of the package when you're in partnership with us.

Technology doesn’t stand still, and new possibilities open up every day - 87% of small businesses in the UK use email and 81% already have broadband, according to recent research figures from Lloyds TSB. Many businesses currently only use email to share the output of their work from software applications – now hosting allows different businesses to actually work on the same applications and live data at the same time, from anywhere.

In This Issue:

Remote Support is Free

"I used Screen2Screen this week for a three-hour training session with a client in Nottingham, which meant I didn't have to leave London." - Mustafa Goksel, Jeffreys Henry

Screen2Screen is a remote support tool, exclusive to Online50 partners, that enables you to take control of a client’s online accounting session to provide support and training over the phone.

Dayo at BRAL comments: “Until now we have been sharing data online, a vast improvement on previous practice. But now, with Screen2Screen, we can truly work on the same data at the same time as our clients. It is so much easier to provide remote training and support now that my client can follow my mouse movements on his screen while we talk through the process over the phone. Because I don’t need to leave the office our clients get immediate and efficient service when they have issues, and because we can provide immediate on the spot training with Screen2Screen we can show them how to avoid them in the future.”

BRAL pride themselves for being customer focused and for delivering an exceptional quality of service to UK and overseas clients. “With the enhanced Online50 service as an integral part of our approach we are raising our game to even higher levels.”

Business Continuity is Free

Stewart Twynham, from IT advisers Bawden Quinn, writing about business continuity strategies in AccountingWEB recently, said the following about this form of IT outsourcing: “Reliability goes up, costs come down (and are spread). Most importantly business continuity is built in.”

Stewart went on to list some practical suggestions on how to build business continuity benefits into your business processes – Online50 partners will recognise these as benefits they’re enjoying already:

• Use a data centre
• Encourage mobile/remote working by staff
• Back-up data online
• Maintain spare equipment offsite
• Keep records of all updates to software offsite.

As software becomes more complex, installing and maintaining it yourself makes less and less sense for certain users. As an example of what we mean by software maintenance, over the life of Line 50 v12, Sage released several patches, the latest being 'Hotfix 70' in October 2006.

Why does this affect accountants? If you're performing work on an accounts system maintained by the client, your ability to perform work in the time slot which you've allocated to the job is dependent on the client's IT system being available for you to work on, and their software being correctly maintained.

Your clients need business continuity, you need them to have it - and we'll help you make it happen.

Case Study: Using Hosting to Upgrade the Client Relationship

The company has always been a family run business, and looks for long-term business relationships with its suppliers and customers.

Booth Ainsworth, of Stockport, their long-standing accountant, had already been providing a monthly management accounts service for over 9 years, when they moved the client onto Online50 twelve months ago.

Booth Ainsworth and Robert Walker had a fantastic relationship already – so what did the switch to online accounting do for that relationship? Gary Cook at Booth Ainsworth explains: “We had been doing monthly management accounts onsite for several years, sending staff out to site to process the high volume of transactions entered by the client. However they had had problems with data loss on their existing desktop installation of Sage, and this was an opportunity to introduce them to online accounting with the benefits of built-in IT outsourcing and built-in business continuity.”

Neil Walker, director at Robert Walker said: “Moving over to online accounting was made very easy by Gary at Booth Ainsworth, now I don’t have the worry of constant backups and data checking etc. Another important bonus is that with a young family it gives me the flexibility to work from home when I need to”

So the client upgraded the quality of their IT solution and made gains on work-life balance – and Booth Ainsworth brought the client even closer to themselves, even after 9 years of working together in a certain fixed way.

But there’s more: simply by putting the client’s accounts online Booth Ainsworth regained control of their time – from eliminating time spent travelling to site to perform routine tasks such as VAT reconciliations, to knowing in advance how long a planned job would take – all because they had visibility of and access to the clients accounts data at all times. Gary says: “We estimate that time saved on this one job alone amounted to a quarter-day per month. We’re making savings with every other client we bring online too – savings not available to offline accountants.”