Blog Article

Plain sailing with IRIS OpenSpace

By Sam Thomas

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By Sam Thomas

Author

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Updated 27th January 2020 | 4 min read Published 27th November 2017

Developing long term relationships with clients is of crucial importance to all businesses. However many practices become ‘stuck’ providing the same service to their clients year after year. The real challenge is to evolve from a single transactional relationship to one with an emphasis on customer retention, satisfaction, and lifetime customer value.

Analytics and reporting is an essential element to business success, without it business leaders are prone to make assumptions based on an emotion or a feeling. Analysing historic and live data places leaders at the front of the curve and gives a deep insight into the data.

The Client Engagement Matrix is one of many reports that can be produced within IRIS CRM. This powerful and informative visual interface helps identify the white space and gaps in the services clients take from a business.

The easy way to upsell services to clients

IRIS CRM collects the fee data from Time & Fees on a nightly basis, providing CRM with up-to-date fee data on each service line. From this report it’s possible to identify the total Gross Recurring Fee (GRF) per client. The report is also capable of filtering across client grades if selected.

With this valuable insight readily available it’s possible to deliver personalised, targeted email campaigns to clients with pin point accuracy, creating new sales opportunities and informing clients of valuable services they are missing.

Another benefit of the Client Engagement Matrix data is the high and low performing fee analysis. The report highlights average service line values which can be compared against other firms or across industry sectors.

The Client Engagement Matrix helps business leaders to make more informed decisions, target the ‘underperforming’ clients and service lines allowing for speedy resolution. It can:

• Analyse data across all elements of your business

• Trigger campaigns directly from reports

• Identify gaps and weak points in your business and service

• Plan for the future and respond to changing events, fast!

• Provide instant data reporting… No time-consuming data-mining involved

Ill informed decisions can have a negative impact to a business with serious consequences to finances, reputation and future growth. IRIS CRM allows business leaders to collate meaningful information, make better informed decisions and take steps to successfully develop their business.

It’s often said Information is the life-blood of modern businesses. However, information alone is not enough - what’s more important is the ability to share information simply, easily and without undue impediment. It’s important this flow of information is as efficient as possible within the practice and with clients.

Sharing files by post is slow, costly and time consuming. It can easily take the best part of a week to print and mail a tax return to a client and for the client to review and return the signed copy to the accountant. IRIS OpenSpace eliminates the cost of mail and accelerates the whole approval process.

Improved client interaction

IRIS OpenSpace enables your practice to collaborate with clients securely, using the same levels of encryption you expect from online banking. Using the e-checklist list feature you can request details from clients, or show them what you already know for them to confirm quickly and easily. Collecting tax information this way ensures you have all you need before you start working on a tax return, making the whole process more efficient.

Faster approvals

The efficiency continues with the approval process which can be easily managed with e-approvals. There is no need to jump from software package to software package. As letters of engagement, tax returns or final accounts are completed they can be shared with the clients at the push of a button for single or multiple client approval. This smooth workflow leads to significant efficiency gains.

IRIS OpenSpace can be fully branded with your practice logo and colour scheme and incorporated into your practice website allowing your existing clients access via a secure login. It’s also possible to setup a customised enquiry form on your website to allow new customers to submit an enquiry directly via IRIS OpenSpace.

Simpler, smoother workflows

IRIS OpenSpace is a simple yet powerful cloud-based product that directly integrates with our desktop products IRIS, PTP and Keytime. Practices can upload documents directly to the client portal as part of a regular workflow. The integrated nature simplifies the workflows in a practice delivering tremendous productivity gains while the e-approval function makes the whole process as efficient as possible.

With simpler workflows, greater efficiency and improved client interaction IRIS OpenSpace is an essential way to improve practice effectiveness.

Learn more here