Amidst the digital transformation currently sweeping the world, no professional or firm can afford to fall behind. Add to the mix the ongoing changes to the workplace, shifting priorities, heightened expectations, and increased competition, and staying the course isn’t going to be enough. The future is now. Finding, implementing, our upgrading to the right digital solution is crucial.
Though planning how to incorporate automation and technology into your business plans can seem like a daunting task, approaching it systematically can help you improve your operations in these three critical areas:
1. Keeping an Eye on the Entire Client Life-Cycle
Using the proper technology, client information can be easily stored or retrieved from any location, shared with employee colleagues, and updated for accuracy.
Housing everything inside a centralized, cloud-based system that is capable of handling all of the basic but time-consuming aspects of engagements such as managing
- – Accounts receivable
- – Billing,
- – Work in progress, and
- – Project management tasks
can help you dramatically improve the efficiency of your engagements.
A system that also includes items for helping you monitor forward-looking activities such as
- – Business development and
- – Project forecasting
can also prove profitable. With the basic tasks more readily handled via a catch-all digital platform, you can do a deeper dive into how to better maximize the value of your professionals.
2. Maximizing Your Value
As the need for professionals to focus on the plug-and-play aspects of their engagements diminishes with the increased use of automation, you can rely on your systems to aid you in analyzing items such as staff productivity and project realization to make sure the right people are being assigned to the right engagements and are being utilized in the correct capacity.
Where you note that someone now has more bandwidth to take on higher-level tasks, those professionals can be developed to assume more meaningful activities, making for happier employees who feel they’re making a more substantial contribution and more satisfied clients who perceive greater value in the services they receive from you. The dual benefit of increasing your employees’ productivity is that it simultaneously helps you retain those employees you’ve already invested in longer than you otherwise may have as well as the clients they serve.
By adding to the value proposition of what you offer your clients, you can give them more of what they’re looking for from a provider including a greater degree of one-on-one client service which secures your team members’ reputations as trusted advisors who contribute both to the effectiveness of your clients’ businesses as well as their bottom lines.
3. Maintaining and Expanding Your Geographical Footprint
Especially since digital transformation extends the geographical reach open to those looking to add new clients to their rosters, you may experience more competition than ever from firms outside of your immediate area who now have the ability to service that same potential client just as effectively as you can, but from a distance.
If you are able to increase your operational efficiency through automating certain tasks and keep costs down by increasing the realization on your engagements by using your professionals more effectively, you gain the ability to offer your current clients more reasons to stay with your firm.
These advancements also give new clients the ability to get the same great work product and service you’re known for plus a few new bells and whistles that competitor firms may not be offering such as:
- – Client-ready reporting that’s easy to create and present (without your having to reinvent the wheel every time)
- – Up-to-date legislative guidance you can be alerted to through the systems you establish
- – Electronic invoicing, or
- – Access to a dashboard through which your clients can easily communicate with
These are just a few of the benefits of how digital transformation can help you improve your operations. If you’re interested in assembling a digital transformation plan and need assistance navigating the technological features that could best set you on a path to future success, request a demo of PracticePro 365.