Planning successful cloud

Planning Successful Cloud Conversion in Your Practice

@Blue_Hub

Matt Flanagan, Co-Founder,

BlueHub

Matt Flanagan is an industryrenowned cloud business systems specialist, working in close partnership with forward thinking companies, Xero and Receipt Bank. Matt has over 15 years’ experience in business systems, focusing on change management for organisations such as HMRC and the NHS.

We often hear about the firms making waves with Xero accounting, maximising client conversions and onboarding new clients to grow their practice. They are confident and proficient with their offering and they understand how to leverage the Xero ecosystem to the benefit of their clients and their team...

But how did they get there?

What did they do to excel in a space so full of new things... new systems, new processes, new services?

Planning.

You may have heard of the 7 P’s... Prior Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Well it really hits the nail on the head.

The more you organise and develop your internal processes the more success you will have with your cloud conversions and the more

new clients you will gain along the way. There are a number of reasons that the planning is so important:

Vision and Targets

You need to know where you want to go and how you’re going to get there. Using SMART goals will help you be really specific, not just about how many Xero clients you want but the time frame for each stage and how realistic these targets are.

Knowing your audience

Once you know where you want to be you can start to look at your client base and see how you can segment your clients into the stages for conversion. This might be by year end, so you can discuss and prepare clients for the change in advance, or by sector, letting you learn a few appropriate apps by sector rather than tackling the ecosystem head-on.

Many practices haven’t looked at the clients in this way before and do not have an up to date database ready for segmentation. If you need a hand, give us a call and we can work with your data and show you how to use it effectively.

Responsibility and Resources

Getting your internal processes tuned up for the new way of working is vital. It isn’t as simple as assigning accountability, there needs to be set communication systems in place so that any barriers to change are discussed and overcome.

You will likely experience a number of issues, particularly as your team gets to grips with onboarding clients to Xero and other financial and operational systems. These need to be seen as learning opportunities and not walls that divert people back to manually working.

The planning phase is the best time to be reviewing your current skill base against the vision and goals for the future. You will have people in your team whose job is likely to change significantly so it is important not only to make sure you manage that change but that they are the right person to make it a success. Being prepared for a team restructure, to get the right people in the right places, is best managed at the planning stage and in open dialogue with those effected.

Keeping records

Once you get started it will be too easy to be distracted by the ongoing tasks. It’s best to set-up your reporting systems in the planning stage so you have time to really record.

First you need to establish your project checkpoints. These meetings will help you identify how well your Xero conversion project is running and ensure that any bumps in the road are dealt with swiftly and effectively so that

nothing derails. All these issues are opportunities to refine your processes, getting slicker as you gain experience. You will need to set these checkpoint meetings up at regular intervals, manage and record the discussion and report on the outcomes. These records will increase your effectiveness and profitability over time so don’t side line them.

You also need to identify the KPIs you want to monitor. As a minimum you need to record how many clients of you existing clients convert to cloud and how many new clients that join the firm are put

consider what it is you want to Check out approvalmax.com straight onto the cloud. These are different conversion stats as they will show how much your practice is growing as a result of your cloud services.

Need more details?

This article is designed to give you an introduction to the planning process but there are many more points to consider before you dive in. The more detail you put into the plan the better it will work as a manual for your conversion project. So don’t just pay it lip service.

You can get a lot more details from our webinar recording on better planning for your client to cloud accounting conversion project, you can check out my ‘take-aways’ from the first webinar session or book a call to discuss more formal ways of developing your project plan with us and ensuring you have the best data to get you started. You’ll find everything you need at go.bluehub. co.uk/planning

I cannot stress enough the importance of preparation for a successful conversion project. This is even more important for the Cloud Champions in the larger firms where there are more changes needed and more people will be effected. The more time you spend considering the stages of your Xero client conversion project, the better your customer experience will be and the more efficiently your