Practice Management Solutions Suite Implementation Case Study

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PKF Australia - Chartered Accountants & Business Advisers

Mark Carmichael - Chief Information Officer
Tel: +61 2 9251 4100
Email: mark_carmichael@pkf.com.au

Products in use:
Advance Practice Management, Xcede Professional Accounting (XPA), Practice IQ, Advance CRM (Client Relationshiop Management), Desktop Super, Worksite Document Management and Advance Vigilant.

Number of users:
Approximately 1000 users in total

Key Comment:
“Advance is a great product on a great platform and it is entirely complementary to our own systems. When we started with APS in 2003 we saw a suite of products that had promise; PM was well defined while Xcede Professional Accounting and others were getting there. They showed us their vision in 2003 in the form of their Roadmap and six years on they’ve met their promise, it’s become a reality.”

Snapshot:
“I view APS as a strategic business partner. Together we are building a professional, profitable business.”
Mark Carmichael, CIO, PKF Australia

General

When did your firm implement its APS Advance Practice Management system?
“PKF first took on APS Advance nearly six years back, in 2003.”

How many users do you have and over how many offices?
APS Advance is now in use across our national network. Some offices were early adopters, others have come on more recently. We’ve scaled up usage from there.

We now have approximately 1000 users on the system.

Is each of the offices set up independently or in an integrated way?
Currently our Brisbane office, two Sydney offices, our Central Coast office and our Melbourne office are incorporated into a single system which all staff can access locally or via Citrix.

Brisbane and NSW implemented APS in 2003 however at that time they were locally installed, so when moving to a single system there were some challenges in fine-tuning the way the two offices had their versions set up.

Melbourne had been using Sol6 PMA until 2008 and there was a degree of concern with the change - as there is with most change management. The migration of data went smoothly as we expected.

How did the Melbourne implementation go? – practices often worry about the conversion and training process; but how did it turn out in reality?
Traditionally, people always fear a software change for all sorts of reasons but with APS we were confident the transition would be fine – APS is a very mature product so we had no conversion or data problems there.

The potential for loss of data was understandably in the minds of the Melbourne team who had been using Sol6 PMA for many years. Ultimately the Melbourne office was easy to bring on board from a software perspective. Once users see their data is all intact, they relax. The rest was all down to training – and we continue to do that. The Advance suite is fully bedded in now.

To give everyone a sense of staging the roll-out, we introduced software applications in stages. Advance Practice Management came first, then Tax and Xcede – all in a series of manageable steps.

Which Advance suite applications does the firm use?
We use pretty much the full range of Advance applications covering Advance Practice Management, Tax, Xcede Professional Accounting, Practice IQ, CRM, Desktop Super, Vigilant, Worksite and Document Management.

As a firm that has invested heavily in the suite, can you tell me what you see as the benefits of using a single, integrated solution?
From an IT and business process perspective, using one company and one supply line means a lot to me. From a support perspective it’s the ideal situation with a single point of contact for both users and for our IT team.

We always knew this would be important for us. Looking back for a moment, we went the APS route originally back in 2003 after MYOB took over Sol6. We were a Sol6 incumbent and so we asked MYOB for a product development roadmap – but they could give us no clear direction on an integrated solution that matched our own Microsoft pathway.

By comparison, APS had the full roadmap. While each application at that time was somewhat stand-alone, we knew from the APS roadmap that they would fully integrate all those applications; while MYOB may have said something similar, the reality was that they were a long way behind APS.

So, since 2003 we’ve been on a journey with APS and what they promised in that roadmap really has come to life. The applications are built to work with all other software in the suite – it’s all been done for a purpose.

Conference

Mark, you’re a regular attendee at the APS Annual Conference. Can you give your views as to the value of the Conference and how it helps PKF and you personally?
I attend more from a networking perspective. I like to spend time with the APS team – from Brian Armstrong (CEO) to Sam Allert (National Sales Manager) , Nigel Boland (Product Director) and others. We’re a large client of APS and so to be able to get together with their team, have a beer, a talk and clearly explain what we are trying to accomplish, it helps both us and APS to see where each of us are going.

So, yes, for me its all about the networking opportunity.

From a user stand-point, I also encourage key users in the firm to attend and spend time with the people who are building the products. It’s important to influence the next releases wherever possible and APS encourages that.

Service & Relationships

As a firm that has used APS for some years now has the product and service met your expectations? If so, please tell me about it…….
Advance is a great product on a great platform and it is entirely complementary to our own systems. When we started with APS in 2003 we saw a suite of products that had promise; PM was well defined while Xcede Professional Accounting and others were getting there. They showed us their vision in 2003 in the form of their roadmap and six years on they’ve met the promise, it’s become a reality.

At the beginning of course, you have to make a call because you’re trusting the roadmap and you’re at the mercy of their team – at the outset you have to ask yourself ‘will they achieve what they say they will?’.

We felt they would and, yes, they have.

APS prides itself on its ability to listen to its customers regarding their business needs and business aims and its commitment to then work closely with customers to meet and achieve them. What’s you experience of working with the APS team?
We have a great relationship at a senior level and any concerns or issues we have are always quickly dealt with. That said, there is always work to be done and, as far as configuring some elements of the software for our own needs is concerned, we’d like APS to go a step or two further.

Tax is an issue for us in terms of early-release for lodgements – we would like to see APS move to issue an interim release of its annual Tax update. We’ll keep on pushing for that.

Functionality

Looking at APS from a product perspective, what are the most important factors from a functionality point-of-view that provide you with the return on investment you are looking for?
Easy. A singular interface via which all software and all data can be reached – it’s the whole integrated suite that does it for us.

This is so important when you consider our need to up-skill our people when they join us: we go through a major recruitment cycle and it’s a huge investment – so, once your new people have started, you want to gain productivity out of them quickly.

If we used multiple products we would need to have multiple training sessions. With an integrated APS, training requirements are reduced and we are effectively only teaching our people how to use a single suite. It’s a big plus.

Ease-of-use

Ease-of-use is important in any software – how does the Advance suite rate from your perspective – and why?

All of APS’s Advance products look like the Microsoft products we are all using every day. So you just feel at home with APS software – which breeds confidence and makes it easy to navigate.

Taking it a step further, we’ve designed our own internal interfaces, such as our intranet, to fit in with the same Microsoft style look and feel.

Future Development

What would you like to see APS add to its product suite in its next releases of Advance that will assist your business? What does it need to do to stay ahead of its competitors?

The big thing we would like to see is ‘Mobility’. We have people all over the country so we have a growing need to access data on the move; it would be great to see Timesheets work on a Blackberry or similar PDA, and giving our staff a mobile real-time client contact list too would also be incredibly useful.

Before we finish, what’s the single most important thing that APS and the Advance suite brings to PKF?
If APS didn’t add to the bottom line or help with increasing profitability, we would have looked elsewhere.

For us to use Advance, it’s a given that the whole system has to perform and give all users the information and data they want, when they want it.

We need all our software to give us ease-of-access and profitability – and APS does this.

And Finally.........

“I view APS as a strategic business partner. Together we are building a professional, profitable business.”

Mark Carmichael, CIO, PKF Australia

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APS - Advanced Professional Solutions specialises in solutions for professional service firms that include practice management, business intelligence, CRM, business process automation, document and email management. For professional accountants these solutions also include tax and accounts production.