Oops… I did it again! 

egress

Accountancy practice management software has come a long way. Today, features like automated billing and reconciliations are easily integrated into the day-to-day practice workflow of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting UK customers.

Our employees work side by side with our customers to create and manage these solutions – driven by a deep understanding of their needs and addressing the rapid changes in their environment.

However, it’s often hard to look beyond improving performance in day-to-day operations. Amid Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and other disruptions, accountancy practices and their clients are dealing with an unpredictable economic landscape. Future business planning can appear daunting.

However, technology can support accountancy practices (and their clients) in making informed business decisions, and planning for the future. In the first part of our Accountancy Practice Management for Future-Fit Growth series, we’ll explore how they can use technology to define and easily track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Doing so gives practices closer control of performance tracking, and deeper insights that will inform strategic growth plans.

Saving Time

For several decades, business technology platforms have enabled practices to track performance metrics that they have customised. This highlights areas that qualify for improvement and underpins strategic planning.

Contemporary technology, such as CCH KPI Monitoring, makes setting up KPIs faster and easier for accountancy practices than ever before. This is vital today. The current business landscape demands that firms assess and amend KPIs more frequently, based on fresh market variables. KPIs such as client retention rate and business time-to-recovery have become increasingly prominent performance indicators in the past year. If clunky technology makes KPI management difficult, practices have less time and insight to plan future growth.

Reducing Risk
CCH KPI Monitoring makes it far easier to track KPIs and report on them. This is fundamental in minimising risk. For example, if a KPI is set to track and escalate debt filtered by overdue dates, the ability to easily set alerts and automatically generate reports is critical to practice performance management.

Some practices are manually running monthly reports to measure KPIs. Others are running real-time reporting engines, a key feature of CCH KPI Monitoring. This latter solution allows practices to review essential data at any time – covering both performance management and compliance requirements. They can do so remotely or on-premise.

This means that firms can assess issues before they become problems, and thus act proactively. Real-time reporting is a true asset in building a future-fit practice.

The Proof is in the Practice
A number of Wolters Kluwer customers have been using CCH KPI Monitoring for several years now. Our customers look to us when they need to be right. Ryecroft Glenton has successfully integrated CCH KPI Monitoring with its own system. This consolidates information from several sources, including CCH Central and CCH Practice Management.

“We can use the year end date to trigger a sequence of reminders. Have we asked for the books? Have they been received? If a request to a client has been outstanding for a certain period, the partner will receive an alert via email. For limited companies, we can monitor the corporation tax and Companies House filing deadlines – as well as the different deadlines for pension schemes”

– Ian Smith, partner at Ryecroft Glenton

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

A new data breach hits the headlines every day – and the repercussions are only getting more serious. According to the latest ‘Cost of a Data Breach’ report from Ponemon and IBM, companies pay an average of $3.9m per breach. 

Preventing these incidents has become a challenge that’s consumed the time and financial resources of security and IT professionals around the world. And when you’re not working to protect your network and data from external attacks, you’re often busy dealing with breaches caused by employees! 

We’ve spoken to numerous accounting firms with one common problem: they’ve all had data breaches caused by staff emailing information to the wrong person. Frequently, these incidents included confidential client files – and not only did the firm have to deal with the loss of sensitive data and repair the damage with that client, but they also had to handle the concerns of the client(s) who received the information and were worried about how their own data was being handled. We’ve also heard from many firms where the same staff member repeated the mistake again in future. 

What if the right email was sent to the right client every time? 

Education and awareness about this issue can only get you so far. In our experience, the team member didn’t knowingly cause the breach. They didn’t intentionally set out to send an email to the wrong person – but often they were rushing, feeling stressed or were tired. So, while you can ask them to pay more attention and be more careful in future, there’s no guarantee this is going to work in the long term. After all, people are always going to make mistakes. 

So, what now? 

Well, it’s time for technology to step up and solve this problem. In fact, advances in machine learning and DLP technologies have made it possible to identify when people are about to accidentally leak data – warning users and administrators in real time that a breach is occurring, and even preventing certain emails from being sent altogether. It’s also possible to spot when an email doesn’t have the correct level of security applied and enforce encryption or ensure channels like TLS are used effectively. 

The use of this technology can not only reduce the likelihood of a data breach but it also significantly reduces any impacts should a breach occur. The ‘Cost of a Data Breach’ study shows that use of security technologies such as encryption and DLP were associated with lower-than-average data breach costs. In particular, encryption had the greatest impact, reducing costs by an average of $360,000, while security automation that leveraged technologies like machine learning and analytics reduced the cost by an impressive average of $2.5m. 

New cyber-threats are constantly emerging – so it’s time to put an end to that frequent exclamation of “Oops… I did it again!” and ensure emails get to the right people every time. It’s important your staff can work securely and efficiently, and it also enables you to focus on other risks. 

…advances in machine learning and DLP technologies have made it possible to identify when people are about to accidentally leak data 

Aug 2019

Should accountancy firms now be investing in a modern, cloud-based Electronic Content Management System? 

Do accountants need Electronic Content Management Systems (ECMS)? It’s a question that, sooner or later, every firm is going to have to address. Firms are faced with increasing challenges around the growing volumes of data that they have to store, much of it email, and the necessity to demonstrate convincingly to clients that their data is held securely.