As we look towards what the next phase of Practice Ignition will look like, we know there’s one key element that sets the best practices apart from the competition: they put their clients first.
Exceptional client relationships should be at the heart of every professional services business.
So, what does this mean?
Client-centricity is the key.
To be truly client-centric, practices need to define and manage the context of their client relationships, understand how this impacts the services offered to each client, and how this changes over time.
They need the flexibility to define client billings in a way that makes sense for the context of the relationship, and make changes as the relationship evolves.
Most of all, they need one source of truth for all of this – instead of a mix of emails, documents and disconnected apps.
What does this mean for Practice Ignition?
Firstly, it means we recognise that our future relies on adding value at every stage of the lifecycle between your business and your clients.
A point-in-time proposal and signature is not the full story. We know that your client relationships are complex and changing. That’s why it’s crucial that as a firm, you have an audit-ready system of record for 100% of your relationships.
Secondly, we need to have at our heart, what is at the heart of your practice – your clients!
A client-centric Practice Ignition
So you can add even more value at every stage of the client relationship, we’ll be deepening our focus on the ‘client’ in Practice Ignition. Over the next few months, you’ll notice some changes in the structure and functionality of our platform as we roll out a series of releases.
These changes will allow us to deliver even more strongly on our core value proposition of helping you make the sale, get paid for your work and automate your business. Importantly, these updates will allow us to build on this value. We will support you in providing a truly exceptional client experience and insights to drive client relationship decisions.
Better visibility and greater flexibility
Improvements to the client view in Practice Ignition will provide unprecedented visibility into the context of your client relationships.
These improvements will allow you to see all future client billings, client service scopes and client payments in one place – no matter what proposal they come from. But, that’s only the beginning. We’re looking to build on this visibility and provide more client-centered insights and functionality to help you manage your client relationships at every stage.
We have also reimagined our proposal creation experience to increase the flexibility in how you define client relationships through proposals and billing.
This reimagining comes from seven years of learnings from accounting and bookkeeping firms like yours. You’ll appreciate improved support for many more recurring cadences, as well as variable (per hour, per head etc) fees. But again, signing a proposal is just the start of a client's journey with you. So, we have some exciting plans for what will be possible after a client becomes a client as well.
What next?
We’re introducing changes in a progressive and purposeful way. You’ll see some initial improvements to the client view, and then how we’re reimagining the proposal experience. Our focus remains the same as it’s always been – to help you do business with your clients.