James Parry, partner at Parry Welch & Lacey LLP, is a strong advocate of change. He switched to cloud-hosted Interactive from Quill Pinpoint and drastically reduced costs in the process.
“Our guiding aim was to find a more cost-effective solution,” explains James. “Quill’s software-as-a-service model is scalable, both in terms of capacity and pricing. You only pay for what you use. Also, there’s a much lower total cost of ownership. Unlike on-premise systems, there’s no hardware licensing and maintenance overheads. Our only hardware is our physical devices.”
Once interactive had been implemented at the practice, James seized the opportunity to perform an overall review of internal operations. As well as using Interactive, the firm employed a freelance bookkeeper to manage its legal accounts workload who utilised different software for the purpose.
“When running disparate systems, there are inevitable tensions,” continues James. “They don’t talk to each other, therefore retrieving and sharing crucial information around the business is much more complicated. It was a natural progression to move to outsourced support. Even more so with our existing supplier, Quill. Everything’s now performed in Interactive, from accounting via our Pinpoint cashier right through to time recording. Data flow is automatic and working life is so much easier.”
Aside from the obvious benefits of fully integrated systems and one-stop-shop support relating to procedural efficiencies, another advantage of Interactive is free accountant access which facilitates annual accounting and auditing.
“Interactive’s so user friendly, it’s easily understood by our accountant,” adds James. “The free licence is helpful when performing our annual company accounts. It’s a time saver not only for our accountant who’s able to log in remotely, but also for us because administration input is substantially less. We save time in other areas too. We don’t have it to manage ourselves and our legal cashiering function’s taken care of. This means we can focus on what matters most – fee earning and business development.”
As the epitome of change management, James offers advice for businesses on the brink of change:
“Organisational change can be daunting but, handled carefully, almost always leads to positive improvements. While changing our software and enlisting outsourcing support from Quill, we decided to make a clean sweep of everything. We revised and redrafted our office manuals so we’re much more productive.
“If you’re teetering on the edge, we urge you to jump. Embrace change but plan thoughtfully, openly involve all your employees, and set realistic and achievable objectives for change implementation. Afterwards, measure how successful the changes have been. You won’t regret a thing.”
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