Overcoming migration barriers

Overcoming migration barriers in the face of regulatory changes brought about by GDPR and MTD

@RossBrooke

Jenny Bowden, Outsourcing Manager,

Ross Brooke Ltd

Jenny oversees the firms online offering across its three offices in Newbury, Hungerford and Swindon. Jenny enjoys learning and sharing technical developments. Jenny acts as an experienced advisor for online accounting to clients across many sectors and internally to her colleagues.

Embarking on the digital journey should not be seen as a challenge but as an opportunity. Embrace next generation technology and see the benefits...

Increasingly clients see a

key differentiator between accountants as those that are digitally enabled and those that are not.

Despite Xero gaining 150,000 UK subscribers in the last 18 months, there still remains a substantial number of practitioners who have not yet woken up to the benefits of small business cloud accounting.

Ross Brooke have a strategic growth plan which involves acquiring small practices many of whom have no cloud experience. Our team are keen and have attained much experience in overcoming the fears of the most cloud averse clients. Our acquisitions strengthen our position in the marketplace and we have become one of our area’s leading online accountants.

When Ross Brooke adopted Xero in the practice we initially shared concerns along with many other Xero advisors over security, fee recovery and lack of resources.

When a client challenges the

security of Xero, we reassure them that Xero uses top-tier, third party data hosting providers, Amazon Web Services and servers located in the US.

For our clients that have concerns about the transfer of their data from the EU to the US, we explain how Xero have agreements with their hosting providers that use European Commission model contract clauses to satisfy the EU Data Protection Directive and the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation.

Furthermore we reassure them that online data stored on servers in secure data centres with encrypted connections is more secure than storing manual records on your own business premises.

It is our best practice to adopt twostep authentication to add an extra layer of security at each login. We remind clients that this is the same concept adopted by most internet banking services and HMRC to

We recognise support around

conversion is critical to our clients use of Xero and their satisfaction. When we first started conversions we provided them free of charge, with the support of Move My Books. Now we charge as clients recognise the value in the advice we provide.

For our fee sensitive clients we suggest they use Xero’s onboarding journey as a self-set up tool; we offer our services on an hourly basis and these clients welcome a time spent billing basis where they pay for what they get.

To contrast a lot of clients appreciate a fixed fee basis. Initially we had a steep learning curve and suffered some losses as a result of training delivery, add on advice and customised invoice settings; these have now been overcome as experience has increased efficiencies in practice.

Regardless of the pricing model chosen, once conversion is complete we perform regular “health checks” to make sure that things are running as they should. With the assistance of the new Xero HQ activity feed it is easy to review the last user login, number of unreconciled bank transactions, status of sales, purchases and VAT.

Ross Brooke found various solutions to initial challenges

of 600+ eco system add-ons it is by working closely with the Xero enablement team in the early stages. A project lead was appointed and, communication

the Xero champions and the Xero account manager. Xero certification was mandatory and upholding the accreditation continues to be a priority.

The team are familiar with Xero Help and training tools, they regularly read the Xero blogs, attend product release webinars, attend Xerocon and other relevant events and they communicate with our Xero account manager to prevent the project lead fielding all their ‘how to’ queries.

The team all understand the firm’s client base and can all identify conversion opportunities. They are confident at delivering compelling demonstrations to a wide variety of business sectors and communicate a clear message to non-Xero staff.

Another key differentiator between accountants is those that are willing to provide advisory services and those that simply offer compliance.

At Xerocon 2017 Gary Turner presented the drivers for change over the next 5 years. Obviously key in most practitioners’ mind are the forthcoming changes surrounding Making Tax Digital (MTD).

Perhaps unusually we don’t see MTD as a problem but as a real opportunity to drive the migration of our clients to a cloud based system and it has so far, been a real aid in gaining client buy-in from the less enthusiastic. Once clients begin to see the benefit of seeing accurate and up to date financial data, they collaborate with us to help them make timely business decisions and thus increase our billable advisory work.

We were early adopters of Xero and although its implementation wasn’t perhaps as planned as it should have been we gained invaluable experience along the journey. At the time we did not have the benefit of the Xero Migration Certification that has recently been launched. The purpose of the migration exam is to help set out the scope, timescale and segmentation of clients to target and provokes thought for standardising workflows, addon’s etc. Practices considering mass migration will benefit from undertaking this accreditation.

Ross Brooke have an optimised Xero advisor directory, which helps us grow our client base and win clients outside of our local area.

The majority of our Xero clients are owner managed businesses. As a long established firm of trusted advisors we help our clients with their growth strategies, succession planning and tax planning. Each business owner’s needs are different and with the flexibility was key between management,

possible to provide tailored services for each client.