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good morning everyone thanks for joining us we'll get started in just a few moments all right for all of you just joining us this morning good morning and thanks for joining us on today's webinar supercharge your team with automated business processes so before we get started I just want to go over a few items so you know how to participate today's event so you should see your attendee interface on your computer desktop and the upper right corner they're currently listening in or most of you are at least anyway from your computer speaker system by default but if you prefer to join over phone or have trouble hearing from your computer you can select telephone and the Audio pane and the dial-in information will be displayed so you'll have opportunities to submit text questions to our presenter Michael Callahan today by typing in questions into the questions pane of the control panel can also send in your questions at any time during the presentation will collect those and address them during our Q&A session at the very end so here's an overview of what we're going to be discussing starting with how small medium businesses are adapting to digital transformation how no colo code apps are driving digital transformation a firsthand perspective from cpa in business owner Michael Callahan and how he uses Kim Jones business application platform and then QA and next step so first we're going to take a poll and we're going to send some super sleek pin tone t-shirts history people who answer so please do you participate I think this is something that a lot of people can relate to or at least have some insight on so we're going to launch the poll right now so the question is does your company deliver a best-in-class additional experience for employees and customers i'll give you a few moments here to answer that hey just take another few min if you have an answer it already all right so unsurprisingly a lot of people said no our companies do not currently deliver a digital first experience to we do some parts but not very well it's not across our entire organization so we hear about a lot atkin shown so just wanted to get a pulse social transformation as TAS no matter the size of your organization but regardless companies of all sizes have an incredible opportunity become more nimble to expand and turn the tables on larger competitors when everything's digitize and tracks businesses can work directly with suppliers and customers while gaining more control over their business so how are small/medium businesses adapting to this transformation well nearly sixty percent of decision-makers believe that technology levels the playing field for small businesses versus larger corporation meanwhile just have a forty percent exercise as an advantage over larger companies are less able to take advantage of digital innovation in a timely way which that makes sense right having to overhaul a large organization and with multiple players multiple departments is definitely a more time consuming process that involves lots of different people and processes and of course company politics so this is ing to a sec commissioned IDC study and ing to that study there's a clear connection between digital transformation and revenue growth so fast growing small and mid-sized firms with over ten percent annual revenue growth were significantly more likely to indicate major progress toward transformation than slower growing herbs so there's lots of tools for dressing digital transformation lots of solutions toward becoming more of a digital transformed company that's delivered delivering a digital first experience for both employees and customers now one of the solutions that's becoming very popular is no code and low code business application so first let's explain what we mean by those ing to forrester no code typically means that you're working within a drag-and-drop platform for selecting field to design an application from something let's say like an Excel spreadsheet locoed goes a step further by getting users more power to modify existing JavaScript and other coach build really just about any business application they can that they can imagine for various processes and various needs of their company but whether it was built with no code or low code bizznessapps remain an agile way to work that enables you to thrive in a mobile and data-driven landscape with powerful features such as real-time reporting dashboard to improve decision-making exposing trends and managing projects new solutions can increase customer satisfaction and propelled digital transformation across an entire organization so let's take a look at one example American Electric this hawaii-based electrical contractor went from managing its business with individual spreadsheets to using business apps to digitize everything from finance Human Resources supply chain and production and the results are pretty staggering the results include increasing collaboration for over 40 employees and five departments working from the office and out in the field saving money by not using expensive and bulky operations management software and transforming disconnected email and spreadsheet driven processes with centralized casters and workflow so this is the perfect segue to introduce Michael Callahan who owns a Virginia CPA firm he's a fantastic example of how we took his technology needs into its own hands to create a seamless more efficient business and he joins us today to share how he made it happen so I'm going to welcome Michael let me just get him on the line here all right Michael welcome thank you so we're going to start by having a little introduction to how and why you started your company sounds great yeah so maybe you can give us a little walkthrough of what that looks like and what inspired you to start your company and kind of where things are at currently well I started the company about six years ago I was the manager of a large tax department for large corporation the corporation had changed locations from central the United States to the east coast and when they transition they didn't bring anyone from the tax department so they basically hired hire me is the manager of tax and I rebuilt the department and was able to automate a lot of the processes that they were currently using and weary staffed here on the East Coast with about half the half the staff that we had or the company had previously which save the company probably close to a million dollars in salaries but it was such a large corporation that they didn't even really realize the savings and so over the years I've built a small clientele of smaller clients and had a lot more fulfillment from servicing their smaller clients and so I made the jump to go on my own again it's about six years ago excellent and so what kinds of processes three runs and make your business well work in a function we do text preparation text planning payroll bookkeeping and transactional taxes like sales tax pretty much a full service accounting firm excellent and what do you use to do those things we use a variety of different things we use a lot of our clients are on quickbooks online for bookkeeping and accounting it's a cloud-based accounting software we also use a cloud-based tax preparation software and before I found kenton we actually use a Microsoft product called one note 2 to try to manage clients and tasks and projects and it was it was very cumbersome yeah maybe go into a little bit more detail about what was challenging are frustrating about some of these evolution it was a lot of the processes were manual when a new employee would come on board there was a lot of training involved and it wasn't consistent for each new employee just because uh we kind of didn't remember what we did for the previous employee so we can't were flying by the seat of our pants and then the other thing about it is is things were in different places so if you wanted to find a project for a client you would go to one place but if you wanted to find the contact information for the client you'd have to go to another place and there was no correlation or no no syncing between the two so it was it just took a lot longer to get around for you know just basic tasks and and and so I started my quest for something to tell manage the process and we grew pretty quickly right from the beginning we were averaging it was just myself at first we were averaging seven new clients of months or growing really rapidly and it didn't take very long until I realized that if I didn't find a better way to manage the firm that it was going to really stifle my growth yeah so what was important to you then when you were about evaluating your options I'm sure that research process took some time but yeah what were you really looking for to make that shift to make that change so I wanted I wanted something that kind of did everything and instead of having things here and there I wanted to be able to manage everything from one place the in the accounting industry there are a lot of accounting specific project management software some from you know really inexpensive per user to some as expensive as like you know 500 or 600 hours per user and I and I demoed all of them and it was it was one of two things either it was inexpensive and it didn't do everything that I wanted it to or it was super expensive and not really affordable and then at the same time it still didn't do quite everything that I wanted it to do so one night I was on facebook and and the Kin tone advertisement popped up and and the rest is history pretty much excellent and so how are you currently using concern as a central hub for your business well we use it constantly we we it from anywhere from prospecting managing leads to once they become clients managing all the related projects with different clients staff training HR education for employees it time management it really does we use it for everything and in terms of time how much do you think antonis helped you save and the other benefits you are finding that Kent own has created for your business um it's I mean it's it's it's unbelievable we when I first got kin tuned because it took a little while to build the epson so once I had the apps up and running I think at that point we had about a hundred clients and I had a staff of about probably about six or seven at that point and so now three years later two and a half years later we have almost 400 clients and we're able to service those clients with the same amount of staff I think I've added one staff person so it's it's it's really hard to quantify how much it's it saved us but it's definitely I mean there's no way we could have grown that quickly without without Cantone excellent excellent so I think for people to get a better idea of what this looks like all the different processes that you run with can shown when I hand it over to you to go on a tour of your attention platform so that really see what it looks like so I'm going to hand the control over to you Michael thank you can see your platform all there sounds good this is kind of the main portal where everything happens you can see the different graphs we created to be able to manage staff tasking to know who's got more or less task to be able to to make sure that the projects are spread evenly I'm going to walk you through kind of the the journey from a new prospect all the way till they become a client these are these are different apps that we use on I'm going to I'm going to create a new prospect and I've I've created all these fields and it's a trial and error process because as you when you first start with kenton you don't realize everything that they can do and so it's it's a working process and it's really amazing all the things that you can automate with it so this is lemon you're using on a daily basis absolutely so be quick the other nice thing about concern is that i may or may not want staff to see all these different things how much i'm charging clients so on and so forth and so each one of these fields is customizable as far as who can see and who cannot see different fields which is which is great because I'd really didn't have anything like that I'm prior to this so i created and these process buttons again completely customizable to to my business and and it just kind of runs through the different processes that happen before someone actually becomes a client and again these are all and you can you can easily see when things happen in the process so again if if a client calls me and asks what's going on with my tax return I can just go to the task look right here and see exactly when things were done when things were followed up on and that's I think the one of the most powerful things about it so here's a new client or a newly came in we went through the sales process they became they become a client I'm able to so now you can see their statuses there now a client these buttons are kinton allows you to basically create different records in a completely different app so rather than having one database full of potential clients and clients I what I did was I set up one app for my lead so I could easily differentiate between who is a potential client and who is a new client so once they become a new client this trigger creates a record in my client database which is going to completely separate app and then rather than having to re input any information I can just look up and all these fields will Auto populate with the information that I just put in so it saves it's on a time as far as data entry goes oh yeah and the same thing different fields on here are able to be kept from different users depending on how I set it up whether I thought want like an admin to be able to see everything or if I want a staff person to only be able to see certain things it's fully customizable not sure if everyone on here is aware of it the kenton works with directly with zapier it's a it's a a third party software that basically allows you to shoot information to other cloud-based software so for example when I just created this client I've set up is that that will send this information there the contact information it'll send it to QuickBooks Online my quickbooks for the for the firm and it will create the client in QuickBooks it'll also send it was at the information to Outlook 365 and update my contact list with all the clients information all just by pushing save here so it's it's it's pretty amazing all the repetitiveness that goes away when you use skin tone it truly has become your central hub right so high it all into one place and yeah you've been a really great example of how you are using it and like QuickBooks can also connect to other apps Gmail Google Calendar MailChimp really anything there's a huge long list of different things you to integrate with so yeah I'm glad you brought that up and you obviously you can see that you can make things that are required fields so that even if you've done it a hundred times and you forget it won't let you forget and the same deal here there there's a completely different process for this app versus my lead zip so I've got all these set up the same way so it takes the client so when I'm onboarding a client they go through the every client goes through the exact same experience and they're getting the same information again this sent out the zap to QuickBooks Online it's in it to office 365 it also sent one to MailChimp which sends out an automated email that welcomes them as part of our culture and just like a template email that says kind of things to expect by working with us it'sit's again it makes from clients perspective it feels like you're they feel like you're on top of everything and it's and I'm really not doing anything different than I did years ago but it's just automated yeah it's as if you've got like a hundred people working for you almost right exactly so now they're set up as a client again I would send it through this the process so that different things were set up mine is integrated with box so this is another key feature I think that is it's safe so much time because if a client calls me and I go here to their database I'm immediately like I don't have to drill down through my network to go and find where that clients information is it's right here so every time a client calls it normally would take you 30 seconds to a minute to find their folder on your network boom you come here and it's there so that's the client let me now show you so again there's these triggers so this is going to create a trigger that goes to my main app which is what I use to manage different projects there's a lot going on here it's probably a little bit overwhelming and most people probably wouldn't have all the information that we have on here but you'll definitely understand why we're able to to stay on top of things the way we are this lookup field looks up different tasks we've set up stock tasks for different things like payroll tax tax return tasks and based on the look up a lot of things auto populate so I can assign a state person a manager there's all these related links that are going to other apps kind of shortcuts again to to get two things quickly on the Box integration here and then the staff persons time so it's really easy for me to know how long things are taking if a projects going over budget or under budget it's easily it's easy to see because it's all in one place different fields for notes different statuses so again we know at all times where things stand and this this section here budget is auto populated from this this database of tasks that I've created so again I don't have to I don't have to spend time meeting with my staff to say okay this is a new project this is what the budget is going to be it's it's completely automated they know it immediately to look down here to see how long things are going to take and it saves a lot of that the back and forth and the meetings to to go through things so now we've got this task I'm going to make another task just so you can see some little related records and how they work and again these process buttons I have a super in this in this particular app I have a super complex process management set up so that depending on what this what the title is it takes the staff person through the process that's specific for that task so it really makes the business owner think about all the steps involved in a process and they set these once you you set these process management buttons up you you don't have to be there and you don't have to tell the employee or the staff person what to do every single time it walks them right through the process okay how much are you using your mobile device to check in when you get a update notification see how attacks is coming along it's some the I think what I'm use the mobile for mostly is for just communication internally because of the complexity of all the fields that I have it's it's really large on a phone but like folder because my leads app and my client app is not as complicated I can really use those constantly from a mobile device and and being able to like if a staff has a quick question and I get a notification of my phone I can quickly answer it and keep the process moving so that it's not stalled until the next time I can get in front of our computer and see the notification so it's it's really helpful as far as communicating with staff so we've got a new QuickBooks client task here we've got a a tax return task for the same client here and you can see the way that I've set this up that I can see all the related tasks that are related to this client so I can see this task on the on the tax return task I can see that there's also this book EP task and that's really helpful again to know how much you have for this particular client its client calls I can easily see everything that's going on with this client let me go into the process management a little bit mm-hmm how are we doing on time doing great we've got about five minutes okay I yeah and it takes a while though because I've got so many steps in the process management that it takes a while loads of apologize for that but i think i think i've got probably i don't know close to a thousand steps in here it's pretty so these are all the different steps for a different tab out yeah these are all the steps for different tasks and you can see i mean they're super long and this is again it's fully customizable to whatever business you're in all these steps you can assign a different people and it really is you don't need to know anything about technology as far as coding or anything like that it's you know pluses dropdowns it's really simple to set this up and again it makes you think about all the steps that are involved so that you can really set this up and kind of take yourself take the owner out of the picture and so you can focus on growing your business and and managing your business versus just being in the business so much yeah and that's part of kin zone to our consultants and engineers will help you think about your process you know a lot of time we get spreadsheet sent to us you make this a nap it might be a little messy or the owner of the line of business manager might not really know or have their process clearly defined and we'll do some basic work to clear some of that up so that you're really making him she'll work as best as possible for you so that's the that's that's the tasks i want to show you I've created this separate space for employees for them it's a completely separate app for training it's got different cards which is kind of like the overall thing that we want them to learn and then within those cards are different skills and so if someone has a question or a comment about something and it's a skill that they've already learned or mastered and I can quickly see who's done what by these different graphs that I've created if they if they have questions about it rather than me spending more time to go through it again I can quickly send them to the skill and they can relearn it and it's Satan again it takes me out of the picture and kind of puts things back on them to to to learn and understand which which has been very helpful this is something brand-new that we just implemented okay and it's the same these are my assigned skills it's the same thing I've created separate process for these different skills and again I can easily see what's going on with them and then there's notes related to the skill you can see who has done the skill through related records it really helps standardized everything in the company from a learning perspective go back to the portal we also use I've created a separate app for appraisals to that on a quarterly basis we can evaluate our staff on different on different areas you can see you know there's tons of different graphing functions which will which make it you know real easy to see how people are doing how the company as a whole is doing and you can see the different staff people and how they rank it's so competitive yeah exactly and it's in its bitten in some people don't always like to just see the numbers and and they they can get a better feel for things visually and that's why I like the the ease with which to set up these graphs and and give a different perspective on own looking at things and in even minor things that you don't really think about like for example I created a separate app for managing laptops and monitors the firm are my firm's 100% paperless so everyone has laptops everyone's got multiple monitors three and four monitors they work from the office they work from home and they I can easily see all the equipment who's got what equipment that's and just I mean it probably took me 10 minutes to to create this app and to do it in Excel will be really cumbersome and or you know some other type of like a word document or something to try to track this it would be it would be real real pain okay the another huge thing with kenton is is the communication being able to get notifications either on your computer on your mobile device it's it's so easy to to know where everything is and kind of key like I said keep things moving you can see all the different notifications that we have if someone mentions mentions you you can answer questions you can set up you can set up reminders that automate if something is taking too long or if something is overdue you can see like this test has been on my list for seven days you can send it up to be you know 15 days 13 days what I it's again it's fully customizable and that's one of the one of the main reasons why I wanted to use skin tone because again when I when I try that all these different software some did some of it and others did different things but none of them did everything that I wanted to do and it was frustrating because I didn't want to have two different systems simultaneously working to get it all done I wanted one so that staff can really focus on decline and being able to service a client and you've done really well thank you I think that's I mean unless the I think that's pretty much the whole suite of apps that we use on a daily basis and again we're in here it when people first come in the office this is the first place that go there in it all day and it's the lessees they go when they're done at the end of the day excellent thank you so much Michael that was an excellent tour I'm showing the multiple features of pin tone and really just how someone is actually using it for their business and to do multiple things and using it on the go like I didn't realize you're using it for equipment to track your equipment and how easy it is to build an app on the spot like that and it's really truly customizable to your specific needs so again yeah you've done a really great job of using multiple parts of kinto that's the beauty of it its platform with really solid pre-built features so kind to dive into some questions and if you haven't asked yours already just head on over to the questions pane and your attendee control panel and I'll give just a few moments here to formulate your question and we'll start answering it looks like we've got some questions coming in this first one so how much set us is out of the box and how is a platform initially customized to a new customer so perhaps you can talk from your perspective Michael how long it took you to get can't own up and running it looks really complex a lot of the things you're doing and I know there's a variety of you know no code to low code needing some more customizations so if you talk a little bit about that process sure it didn't take long to get the initial the initial apps set up I think I mentioned earlier that you don't realize how much it can do until you actually start setting things up and really thinking about how else can this help me automate things and make things easier I think probably I was live within a few weeks and Aggie and I didn't have when I started using can turn I was the only only user so I was doing all things everything myself if you had a staff person that could help get it set up it would be even faster plus I was trying to run and grow my business at the same time I was trying to create this so it definitely doesn't take long a lot of the cans the canned apps will do everything you need to get started but again once you get in there and start realizing all the things that you're doing repeatedly or you're having others do repeatedly it it's so it's all its constant were working process and it's and I still change things or I figure out something else that can do that I didn't realise probably on a every other month basis it's it's really it's really awesome how customizable it is yeah well fed and yeah as you mentioned there are things right out of the box and we've got a marketplace of apps that you can use immediately enough the no code part and you can even customize those if you have specific shins that you need you can build on top of those and we also have really excellent sales engineers being that this is a customizable platform to make sure that it's Taylor fits your specific business needs so our sales engineers are ready to help customize it to whatever your specific need is from the get-go excellent so great first question let's move along to our next one here let's see all right do you have a client portal to upload doc stands and enter data on forms I can take that one we sure do we allow outside people like contractors for example to use can't owned by using our guest space which allows you to collaborate with external partners who are members of your portal so guest users can view only the information in the sketch base that they've been invited to join they can't access the rest of your kin chillin platform so all your guests face is where you remember show up in the spaces check section on the right of the portal homepage so within that then yeah you can upload docs and enter data on forms and collaborate with people outside your organization great question right here another question how does control and compared to an app like what I don't know if I'm glittering this icims or the Dyson no I don't have a answer to that but I can definitely ask the sales engineer and follow up with you I've got your contact information I'll make sure after the webinar that I go ahead and answer that question for you see what else do we have here we've got another question and let's see Caillou skin tone on my phone yeah and Michael brought that up earlier and can use it from any mobile device ipad smart phone we have a native iOS and Android app that comes included you download it right the map store and it allows you to access and manage your team's applications quickly securely and from anywhere so you can update update workflows bases and threads in there you can view and interact your data and what a lot of people use it for for receiving push notifications to be instantly notified we have team members or partners customers sending you personal messages or they mention you in comments or need you to request approval on workflow so it's really it's been really useful for a lot of people especially working out in the field to be able to move things along as Michael mentioned to make sure there's not a kink in your process than that and keep things keep things moving forward a great question let's see got time for one more question and yeah so someone wanted to know a little bit more about outside services at integrate with Kim zone so we do have JavaScript API which introduces various AP is that can use with JavaScript files so this gives can shown access to connect and essentially communicate with other databases and programs and as Michael mentioned you have a partnership of zapier and it's a service that connects databases to web app you already use and allows you to do so much more with Kim shown so you can connect things like QuickBooks MailChimp different Google applications and many others to automate pedia staff in your workflow so great question there and that is all the time we have for questions but if you're not if there's something that went unanswered for you I'll either follow up with you after this webinar and you can also send me questions at nicole atkins own calm all right so just to wrap it up teams build business apps and data base act with can't own no coding is required so thank you so much Michael and thank you to everyone attending today's webinar and one more time if you've got any other questions don't hesitate to reach out I'm Nicole at kim jong kham and with all this information at fresh on your mind it's the perfect time to sign up for a free 30-day pension trial so cocky building out some workflows just head on over to kim jong kham / trial and after you leave today's webinar you'll receive a follow-up email within the next day including a link to view a recording of today's webinar so that can kind of break down maybe some parts that you wanted to take a closer look at or if there's any questions that come from that again we're here for you alright so thank you so much for joining us and have a fantastic rest of your day you you