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[Applause] welcome to this week's guest interview on the accounting influencers podcast i'm phil to have with me today hugh walker from practice ignition hugh good day to you you know rob how's it going we're doing great you you're not from this part of the world where's home for you originally i i guess i gave it away with the very start of my you know pod right um yeah so i'm uh like i'm actually english born born near reading but grew up most of my life over in sydney um you know where pi i guess was founded um i moved back over here the the advantage of a global work uh global roles that i can kind of do it from anywhere so i moved over here november 2019 because i have just you know impeccable timing got here had a beautiful gray english winter and then along came this little cheeky virus and spent about two years working out of my flat yeah the joys yeah hugh i'm just getting a little bit of you tapping on your keyboard i don't know if you're looking at notes that you've made so are you okay with that we will edit that little bit of me yeah i i will keep it out sure and you for the benefit of people that haven't come across you just tell us a bit about your background and your areas of expertise yeah beautiful so uh so i actually started in this space oh coming up on eight years ago now i think um i actually got my start at uh receipt bank so dex now um over in sydney um and worked my way through i think i had five different roles there in about three and a half four years um before jumping across to to pi to sort of take over the customer success uh i suppose channel for us and sort of heading that up globally um so i suppose really yeah the focus for me is is customer success and i think a lot of that is change management but underlying everything i i'm a genuine like true believer in the like the sort of the ethos if you will that if we can make our customers more successful if we can make the businesses the small businesses that we're working with more successful as businesses that's really my goal like i'm here to help help our customers be more successful i'm pretty bullish that pi is a big part of that but that's kind of the core of of what i do and why i do it yes and people talk about customer success a lot customer experience client experience these are very much buzz words they fit a lot into values and websites and vision statements but it's fair to say a lot of fintechs and vendors and even accounting firms they play at it so just take that as a concept what do you see companies getting wrong with customer experience and customer success hugh yeah i mean i think you're absolutely right a lot of customer success can just be a buzzword um i'm gonna sound positive like a silicon valley reject here it does seem like it's a term that came out of silicon valley where they just kind of took the account manager role of you know like upsell to existing customers grow use of existing customers and then slapping on an element of what we would call internal like in tech and nps so like a customer that's a satisfaction for those that don't know mps yeah exactly so so it's essentially the sort of the buzzword side of it is very much just how do we like upsell how do we grow our customers get more money out of them and also keep them happy and that's i think why there can be that degree of like it always seems like kind of a buzzword bad sort of thing um but there's definitely sort of i suppose a subset of it where that belief and i think this is much more of a a startup tech side where the the genuine belief is more if we make our customers successful then inherently as successful businesses they will grow and inherently as successful businesses that are getting success as a result of our platform they'll continue using the platform yeah and that's much more i think sustainable much more organic and a much better experience for honestly both sides because the customer's obviously happy and successful and it's much more enjoyable to work with customers and actually grow them and help them succeed and seeing and sharing those wins with them that makes good sense and for people that are new to the customer journey do you see it as customer service then customer experience then customer success is it a continuum or a line or a some kind of circle how do you view it as a model i mean i think there's definitely phases of customer journey right okay um obviously the customer journey has to start with them because becoming a customer right so it's kind of on board yeah exactly but then really customer success i think is more of a mindset like cosmo says done right i think is more of a mindset or an ethos around from the very start of that journey right the goal should be make empower the customer make them successful and that just bleeds into all the different kind of phases into the onboarding into the continual like working with them in the first three weeks three months one year and then onwards and they are they're obviously different phases where you might have different kind of goals different outcomes you're looking to help the customer achieve and work with them on but underlying that all should be is this in the best interest of the customer and how do i make them more successful i'm hesitant there because i think it's an easy track to fall in to say how do i make the customer happy right but a happy customer isn't necessarily going to be a successful one because like the easiest the line of least resistance the line of happiness is often just to continue doing things as you are because change can be scary and change can be hard but i think to be successful you've kind of got to make those those jumps now and then yeah that's a very good distinction and you're presumably crunching a lot of data there at practice ignition do you know what the metrics are for customer success you know all the touch points what can you tell us about the data you're looking at yeah i mean i have currently in my browser uh nine different tabs with google sheets opening with all the different sort of data stuff that i'm working on i'm just freaking out on that here aren't you i am probably the biggest sort of spreadsheet nerd in pi which is maybe saying something right but yeah like there's so many different facets of it right you can especially like a lot of it comes down to so usage so you're either using the different you know elements of your product um a lot of it comes down to not just sort of are they but how well are they doing it how regularly they're doing it a lot of different touch points and i think it's one of those things whether you never have a complete picture you're just always iterating and improving um and it's something i've spoken about in the past in recordings and conversation calls around sort of processes and developing a better process and it's always just going to start broad we're going to help them do here's the one main goal and then once you've kind of nailed that break it down and just keep breaking it down into smaller and smaller pieces which just makes it more sophisticated and brings in more elements which allows you to take in the edge cases and achieve that more overarching success piece yeah that makes sense let's just pan out for a moment and talk about covid it's obviously had an impact all over the world in the accounting profession and in the the fintechs and software vendors that serve them so what do you feel have been some of the major effects of kovid i mean everybody now is probably pretty good with zoom right um i think other platforms are available but yes yes absolutely uh zoom and it's a equivalent um and i think i think there's all there's always like as long as i've been in the space for eight years way longer than that it's been this kind of conversation around the move to tech and the adoption of tech and i mean kovid has inherently accelerated that um this is the digitization movement isn't it exactly right like stuff like client meetings face to face um even i suppose from a more practical practice ignition minded sort of perspective signing a contract signing engagement letter you're no longer going to print it out and deliver it to them um you no longer like there's no people might not be in the office i'm going to have access to a printer to print out an email pdf to sign so there's definitely been a growth and a sort of acceptance of the digitization there yeah accounting processes have changed as a result haven't they massively you you've got to right especially working from home where you can't we might not have access to a server with desktop product the the cloud is really showing its huge advantages i am interested to see how it changes postcode or as coveted kind of not necessarily saying that there'll be a postcode but as as we maybe it normalizes or it kind of dies down to a degree um i i'm not going to name names i was at a conference in last year where there's a panel about sort of the future of working and working in a sort of post covid or living with covert world and the very first question the panelists uh one of the audience asked was i want my junior staff to get back into the office five days a week how do i make that and but they don't want to do that they want to work remotely and they're leaving because i'm trying to force them into the office every day how do i get them back into the office every day wow and i thought that was quite indicative of a of a certain mindset um and interesting to see what sort of impact uh not necessarily impact but like what whether this maintains whether this sustains this kind of working from home working remotely cloud uptake peace or whether people do naturally kind of revert back um because there's all there's massive benefits either way right um and it's kind of finding that i think finding that kind of middle ground um that works to enable us all to work most effectively and get the facetime there are so many arguments on each side of the remote working argument and social health and mental well-being is on one side for sure and not having that commute but also the camaraderie of the office building culture there's a lot to consider isn't it yeah absolutely um and i think it's going to be interesting to sort of see the different ways different companies approach it and what works and what doesn't um i think i'm i'm very happy with how pi is approaching it um and i think we've gone for a sort of a model where people can kind of select which is going to work for them with certain guidelines and boundaries um personally i'm gonna be working out of the office probably two three days a week which is which is great allows us to facetime allows kind of the meetings um and the the conversations the camaraderie but means there'll be a couple of days where i can just be at home on my computer and just smash some work out for a day there's some talk about the vendor agenda here and to what degree software fintech vendors are pushing their products and platforms onto accountants that are perhaps not as descending as they could be in making good decisions but regardless of the technology one of the biggest challenges for professional firms is implementation of software how critical is that to what you're doing at practicion it's it's it's massive um if we look at sort of customer success customer retention all of that the first like the start of the journey is the most crucial part right it's when the when people are most engaged and the the biggest uh roadblock to change the rear roadblock to successfully implementing change isn't just using like typically a project doesn't come to a screaming hole and just collapse at a certain moment the projects have failed they typically fail because they just kind of run out of steam just peter out and you know you forget a meeting you forget two meetings suddenly nothing's been done for a month or two it's like well i guess this project is now dead right that's typically how we see how projects and change management initiatives tend to to die um and and yeah i think momentum and engagement early on is is absolutely critical so with implementation execution using the software you need champions you need someone pushing the agenda keeping the momentum going keeping it front of mind and obviously making the business case for busy accountants to get on with it and do it yeah i think there's a number of different sort of key facets to effectively manage change right um i mean this is a conversation i'm having with cust like with with my team particularly around the world with you know seasonality as it is for different markets um kind of constantly but i think one of the big things is that people are always waiting for the perfect time there's always like oh if we don't do this now it might be a better time in the future there is i i mean i've been through enough calendar years and financial years to see that there's never a perfect time there's never a moment where every the stars align and if it is it's probably like great i can take a week off and go play golf or go sit in the sun somewhere it's not gonna be great now i can implement this user software right so i think it's understanding there's never gonna be a perfect time is a crucial part of it um but then there's so many different elements right one of the big things we see often is a decision maker will be like boom we're going to implement this this is now the new thing right and then just being like all right team go this is happening let's do it you go and do it yeah but and i think there really needs to be more i i don't want i don't mean to be critical to people but i think a degree of leadership around like hey this is what we're doing but then you need to give them the context you can't just be like this is happening take it and deal with it this is happening here's why it's happening here's the problem we're looking to solve here's the this is happening and here's the why right yeah here's why we've chosen this particular piece of software for instance exactly yeah and and here's the benefits you're gonna get out of it and get them like the team needs to be brought in or it's going to crash and burn right um and i think they need to be supported and empowered you need to have someone maybe it is a decision maker maybe they get to delegate and some you know another member of the team gets an opportunity to kind of showcase a bit more of their their talents um but they need to be supported and along the way um and i think they also need to be properly backed up right if you're going to delegate to somebody you need to basically empower them to be like go away and do this if i need to be involved in decisions to let me know but also like hold me accountable and if there's parts where i need to be part of these conversations bring me in because too often we have these conversations like oh i was asked to implement this i don't really know why don't really know what it is and every time i need to make a decision i need to go away and chase my manager for a week before i can make a decision and you were involved well this is just going to be a struggle for everybody got it and you talk to a lot of accountants here i'm sure you're getting messages of overwhelm anxiety overload you must try and help them wherever possible to automate their admin and and focus on what really matters talk to us about some of those conversations well i mean we're recording this very late january so i think now is the peak time right for certainly in the uk for sure in tax season but all over the world they have the seasons you mentioned and the seasonality in this industry particularly is brutal with with all the various tax seasons how much financial year ends um but it is how can i get time back how can i automate some of the median immediate what's the word the menial tasks you got the word there so you must help them with that and have conversations around productivity hugely and i mean like not like admin tasks tend to be great for automation i think because they're kind of two two big facets one is typically admin like any sort of admin task is something that's repeatable and it's typically going to be the same every time right it's going to be complete this form create this client in this software change this setting like send an invoice whatever it may be so it's going to be fairly uniform and repeatable which is always something that you need easily would have made and the other big thing is no one actually likes doing admin typically or it's not so it's not someone's been like oh great i get to spend all day you know looking envelopes and typing out writing addresses on them or something so it tends to be something that people aren't uh worried about sad to automate it's something people like yes i don't have to do this anymore this can be taken care of automatically and it's something that and typically can easily be via some sort of automated process um and there's so many like a lot of the different tools in the industry practitioner being obviously one of them but i'm not really here to sort of plug that too much um i'm there to automate different elements of this and then there's other tools they can do heaps more um rob you may be aware of something listen to everywhere ever talk of zapier zapier is essentially like an admin automation tool that kind of automates all of the admin that sits between different products yes so the super basic example um might be um when you get a new client to sign up and they sign up you can use zapier to trigger um an email that goes out automatically to them with sort of like a welcome pack with any documentation you might want any forms you need them to complete to get their information and it's just you know that it might be a one two three minute email for a member of staff to send out but it means that staff member has to be told to send it out remember to send it out take the time to send it out and just be like oh i guess i have to send that email now and again if it's a two three minute task it probably becomes more than that with the difference of people being like hey i've just signed this client can you send this email how to do it think about it set find the template send it but if you're doing that let's generously say two minutes for one client and you've got 100 clients that's 200 minutes saved over three hours for you know that you can just have back and when you save accountants time with your practitioner software what does they what do they spend that time on hugh what really matters um i i would like to think given how overworked so many of the the firms that i've worked with i'd like to think at least some of them are using that time to maybe see the kids or have a beer or a glass of wine recharge the batteries huh yeah exactly uh my suspicion is it's probably more along the lines like of focusing on client work um like if you're not going to do it for yourself i would always encourage you to be trying to do more sort of as as business growth right um and and using that time getting that time back to either find more ways to save even more time to automate even more or to be finding more ways to to grow the business and make your business really successful yes that does make sense one of the problems that accountants always struggle with is pricing positioning which leads to scope creep and getting paid on time every time any thoughts or tips on that you yeah i mean a lot of that i think is uh engagement letter focused really the the scope has to be so clearly defined in your engagement letter that you could always you want to have something you can always refer back to right and just be like you asked we agreed you're gonna pay us this much to do x y and z you're now asking me to do w it's clear to find that we aren't going to do that so i'm not going to do that or i can do that for an additional fee and bill and you know we can then send you an upgraded proposal data letter engagement to get that done one of the pitfalls i'm not sure when this has started one of the people i definitely run into is working with firms and they come to us and be like oh our letter engagement will say instead oh like we these are things we're not gonna then we'll define we won't do you know abc for you and um and i think this is very much like a personality type thing but i've worked with a couple of um different firms of quite often sole traders who are kind of getting their feet and kind of learning and becoming more confident in their abilities and in in what they do and don't offer um i just remember helping one particularly back in australia um and and she had a custom one of her clients who had her buying things for them on ebay and answering emails for them because in her letter of engagement she had a list of all the things she wouldn't do and she had specifically stated i will not do your ebay shopping for you and i will not reply to your emails and they're like well can you do this for me and she had looked like another and be like i guess i can i guess i am going to do that for them then um so i think being very clear and essentially saying in your terms the only pieces of work i'm going to do for you are these ones explicitly stated and then you know having that to refer back to and keeping that sort of front of mind so then when those conversations come up and the scope create comes up you can refer back to it and have that conversation about well we didn't agree to that but we can definitely do it for you know an additional x amount of money yes and then i think the other kind of key piece with that scope creep doesn't always happen as a suddenly the client will be like hey can you also do this it's just these kind of like you find yourself over a year over two three years gradually doing more and more for them because it's kind of comes naturally to you to do as well and that's i think the other the other side of things and that's really just about like uh getting into a habit of probably every year maybe every two years reevaluating reviewing all of your engagement letters reviewing all of your current client relationships and what did we initially say we're gonna do for them and for how much and are we still doing that what else are we now currently doing for them do we need to you know update this beyond just the the standard price increases every year or two that should happen as well yeah this is excellent hugh and uh let's ask briefly about practice ignition if accounting practitioners list in and that's the majority of our audience all over the world with our 20 000 listeners if they're not sure what practice ignition is how would you put it in a nutshell what you guys do i would say practice ignition is a client engagement and commerce platform um primarily focused on this sort of accounting bookkeeping space um it's really around helping them win more clients provide a better sort of upfront client experience clear engagement letters uh very defined services templates to help them save a lot of time and automate a lot of the admin around creating that and off the back of that automating all of the payables piece so the invoice creation the payment collection basically taking away all of the kind of accounts receivable dead a days sort of piece how are you better and different from any of your competitors out there that are in this space i don't i i'm not that sure i really like sort of talking about a sort of a feature conversation with competitors um because i don't want to negatively talk about anybody else or talk down about anyone else um i don't think there's anybody out there that does everything that practically does okay we do the full engagement letter piece a lot of the sort of workflow deployment piece and also the payment collection all in one platform um and the benefit of that is i mean it's it's all tied together it means you don't have to update two systems it means you don't have to pay for two systems um we have i think 87 of our customers have been able to cancel other subscriptions um as a result and cut down the number of different subscriptions they have and different tools they're using but beyond that if we come back to that scope create piece let's say you've engaged for a client for an engagement loader and then you know a year later two years later you need to review at that time you then need to remember if you have separate systems for the different for the bill the engagement letter for the management of the client if those are all completely disparate you have to remember to update all of those every time you're going through and updating the engagement letter rather than having that automatically done and again huge amount of time and effort an admin just saves automatically plus obviously the the human error can slip through and you might have a client sign a new engagement and forget and you know an admin person kind of forgets to add them and update their payment details and update the amount they're getting paid for um we're collecting payments from them yes and uh people listening can go to uh the practice ignition website take a look if they want to have a conversation with you hugh what's a good way for them to reach out to you um me personally i'm on linkedin and i'm on twitter um linkedin hugh walker twitter i think it's a hugh underscore s underscore walker because there's apparently a lot of you walkers out there um but i mean any if you reach out through any of the sort of practice ignition website channels social medias we you know i'm always very happy to have conversations with customers i like i do what i do generally because i love helping our customers and and love having those kind of conversations with them so very very open to any of those conversations if you want to reach out and practice admission have made this offer available to our listeners using the code air 21 to receive a 25 off all plans for your first six months you just need to go to info.ignitionapp.com forward slash aip for the accounting influencers podcast that's info.ignitionapp.com forward slash aip so that's a lovely offer and we'll ask you one last question just to finish you talk to us about the importance of first impressions we know that accounting clients are switching firms promises haven't been fulfilled the customer experience hasn't been right their accountants have not been proactive enough or maybe haven't got the expertise to deal with the complex covered world that we're in right now so first impressions count what are your thoughts on that yeah absolutely i mean i think the biggest thing is there's a like the industry is definitely getting more and more digital more and more tech focused um and a lot of the sort of the clients and the other spaces out there are doing exactly the same right and looking for looking to work with firms who they who give that impression and and speak the language of technology right and i think the first impression like our first impression rob is basically having this kind of conversation right but when it's with a with a client the first impression they're going to get of you and the first impression they're going to get of your business are typically two different things because of the first impression of your business and how you work is going to be more around how you like how almost the engagement process itself um and i think there's a huge difference in hey here's a pdf i need you to run through print out sign scan it and send it back to me versus and then we're going to send you an invoice versus hey here's a digital platform you can go into review everything in the one place digitally signed put in your credit card or your bank details to automate the payments and it's giving that client that prospective client the it's giving them the right signals that you are using tech and you understand tech and you're talking their language and not only that it's if they're like a typical um small business looking for an accountant it's not going to just be like hey i'm going to talk to this one account and get a quote and see if i like it they're going to talk to you know four five six different and compare and if there's four or five out there that are sending over these pdf engagements old you know slideshow proposals and then you're sending this beautiful digital platform it's got payments built in which is something that these clients are already used to in everything they're doing in their day to days it just really sets an entirely separate first impression and differentiates you from the crowd right yeah and that's how you grow your business that's how you get successful is you you are a step ahead and you're using tech in the right way to give you those advantages there it is you heard it there you accounting practitioner she walker that's been terrific thanks so much for your time and your insights today absolute pleasure rob thank you so much for having me um yeah it's been a pleasure [Music] you've been watching or listening to the accounting influencers podcast featuring hosts rob brown and martin bissett with key interviews what's working in the accounting profession and news from the accounting and fintech world that helps you do your jobs better we go out to 144 countries over thousand unique listeners with a hundred thousand downloads and it is accredited for continued professional education and development thank you for tuning in