Anne Brady McQuillans DFK

A History of Service

“Here at Anne Brady McQuillans DFK, we pride ourselves in dealing with our clients on a one-to-one basis and becoming actively involved in clients’ businesses so they gain the full value of our experience. By holding regular client evenings and seminars, we can keep focused on our clients’ needs and wants.” Anne Brady - Partner

Key Issues at Anne Brady McQuillans DFK
Practices like Anne Brady McQuillans DFK are under pressure due to increased regulation and compliance, while at the same time suffering from more competition. While fees tend to be fixed, clients are always demanding higher service levels. In these circumstances, finding and retaining key staff is always an issue. Furthermore, now that audit thresholds have increased, there is an increasing need to provide additional valueadded services in order to remain competitive.

The main problem with their existing packages was the multiplicity of databases that occurred. Anne Brady was using a variety of packages including TAS Accounting Plus, Tax Pack, Act, Sage Time & Fees, Relate Company Secretary and Multiple Excel Spreadsheets.

Maintaining more than 5 independent software programs meant that client information was spread over multiple systems as well as the manual files. IT administration was taking up too much time and dispersed information was difficult to back up.

Anne knew that one central and reliable client information system was essential if the practice was to expand and maintain its competitiveness and to take full advantage of its expensive resource and many skills. Anne also wanted protect the long term partnerships the practice had built up with its profitable clients.

“Making the decision for DRIVE was not difficult. A review of the software suppliers market showed us that the only product to cover all the required aspects of managing a practice and that also gave excellent value for money was DRIVE. All the modules of DRIVE were developed from scratch by the same people in the same modern language and on the same standard database. The result was a fully integrated system with a single user interface that demonstrated a consistent look and feel. So the staff had only to learn one application.”
Anne Brady - Partner.

What did they require?

• Asingle integrated accounts package to cover all the main areas – Internal accounts, Time & Billing, CRM and Database management.
• Flexible and meaningful reports that allowed them to pull important information about clients. This would result in making better informed decisions about the firm’s direction and strategy.
• Asystem to help them remain competitive was needed, to stay on track of all activities and to deliver the best service to retain and grow their client base.

Implementation of the Software Centralized Client Database The main benefit that the practice experienced was being able to get rid of their multiple databases, packages and excel spreadsheets. They now have the one fully integrated database, DRIVE for Accountants. The centralized client database enables Partners and Managers to have complete transparency on the progress of jobs and client deadlines. The firm can review both client work and the performance of the practice as a whole, thus facilitating better customer relationship management. Immediate availability of client information is an important feature.

The firm logs phone calls. It also records faxes, manages word and scanned documents and maintains memoranda on the status of prospects. The diary facility records and gives reminders about diary appointments (tasks, meetings and events). Each of these facilities can update the timesheets automatically.

The partners particularly like the alert system that ensures reminders are not dropped until dealt with, unread communications are not forgotten and uncompleted communications with specific follow-up dates are alerted.

Time & Billing Management, Financial Management

• DRIVE’s comprehensive time and billing modules has led to bills being raised more efficiently.
• Increased control over time (using time manager), recoverability of time and expenses, job costs and
  budgets.
• Integrated and reliable financial management software.

“DRIVE provides a single solution for all our practice management needs, provides improved access to information, improved efficiency, and fast, flexible reporting. Prior to this we had one system for Time Recording (Sage Time & Fees), one for accounts (Tas) and a contact system (ACT/Outlook) for our diaries and emails.”
Anne Brady - Partner

Document Management
“We are particularly pleased with the document management system within DRIVE, which is a highly costeffective method of reducing paper and gaining efficiency. We are rapidly approaching a “less paper” office.
Overall, there is much greater accuracy, which has led to quicker and better responses to queries. Real-time work-in-progress and financial information is improving cash flow. More automation is leading to a reduction in non-chargeable hours.”
Natalie Kelly - Partner

Staff Buy-in
A critical factor for the practice when deciding on the software was staff buy-in. The partners have found that, in general, the staff are much happier with the new system than with their previous solutions. Employee performance has improved as staff can now give clients instant answers without searching across multiple databases and systems.

“On-going training is a must – not because DRIVE is complex or difficult to use, in fact it is extremely flexible and user-friendly but because there are so many features within it and people tend to start using the different features in incremental stages.”
Natalie Kelly - Anne Brady McQuillans DFK