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Matthews Hanton Ltd: West-Sussex based practice saves on costs and receives better support by switching software provider

17th Jun 2019
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Award winning Digita Software from Thomson Reuters.

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Based in Bognor Regis, Matthews Hanton Limited have rapidly expanded their practice and now has a team of fourteen staff members. They currently serve over two-thousand clients, ranging from big corporates to the self-employed. New technologies have also helped them attract some international trade and become a success story.

Guy Witcher has worked for the firm for fourteen years, having joined after finishing college and manages smaller business clients. In particular, he has a detailed knowledge of HR and Payroll and is heavily involved in the IT side of the business.

Prior to working with Thomson Reuters, the firm were working with another major software supplier but were facing mounting frustrations, mainly around poor customer service in times when they needed assistance the most. Too much of their time and money was being spent on resolving these issues previously. Guy explains:

“We had lots of delays in getting problems resolved, like bug fixes, and we had major issues with their administration where they were making mistakes and we would end up arguing with them.”

Their ex-software provider was also looking to increase costs at a time when the Matthews Hanton were looking to be more financially competitive. So, when a discussion was had with Thomson Reuters in 2017, cost and customer service were the two most important subjects covered and these factors led to a new business relationship starting. Guy says “We were trying to be more cost-effective, so the big question was whether we could make more money using the Digita Professional Suite than the previous software, and this has been the case. They quoted for a similar service to what we enjoyed previously but at a reduced price. This [happened] at a time when our previous supplier was intending to increase their fees. So that’s how things started.”

Although Matthews Hanton are relative newcomers to Thomson Reuters, the impact on their business has been easily identifiable to Guy and the team:

“So far we’ve been very impressed - the customer service is superior to anything else I have experienced in the field.”

Guy also comments on the strong relationship he has with his Account Manager: “Ben is always available to manage requests and is friendly with it, which I think is important. And if he is away then we are given another contact to work with, which is key to us because previously our Account Manager wasn’t always available - when he was away, we had no replacement contact.”

The Welcome Services team who carry out the onboarding and migration process were extremely beneficial: “[The team] were very helpful and friendly, and we were given a dedicated contact who would be the go to person alongside Ben. Everything was clear and quickly organised and we were grateful for that.” Guy continues, “We were provided with extensive training and guidance on what we needed to do to our existing database to make sure it was ready to migrate over to Digita."

With a large migration comes challenges, but Guy found them to be identified and fixed: “Of course there were a few teething problems, which I would expect with the amount of data being imported as we have over 2,000 clients and a lot more historical data on top of that that we have to keep. But we worked with the relevant contacts to get many of those issues resolved quickly.”

“The tax software is by far the best I have used, and the user interfaces are easier to get used to than all other suppliers on the market”.

These aspects have impressed Guy the most, and he has expectations that the firm will continue to benefit further when the software becomes more familiar to the team.

Guy says the move to Thomson Reuters has already offered Matthews Hanton better customer service, lower costs and more intuitive software. He contributes this to the firm generating and saving more money, which they can pass onto their increasing client list. Guy is in no doubt the right decision was made:

“If someone starting up asked me what I would recommend, then I would definitely recommend Thomson Reuters. Every time.”

Read more about how Matthews Hanton Ltd. has saved money on their monthly software subscriptions and benefitted from having an approachable and proactive account manager.