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Why practice excellence is crucial

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28th May 2013
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Practice excellence is about more than just behaviours. It’s an ethos and vision that everyone at the practice buys into and is guided by, and without exception client consideration is at the core of it, according to Paul Harris of the Accountants Division at Sage.

AccountingWEB caught up with Harris to find out exactly what practice excellence means to Sage and why they were keen to get involved in the Practice Excellence Programme (PEP).

Harris explained that through his role at Sage he has visited and met with many practices, and that the ones that stand out are those that are focused on the needs of their clients and are genuinely interested in their feedback and changing requirements.

“It’s about going the extra mile for clients and continually adding value, and that’s the approach we take to our customers at Sage,” he said. “They know they can count on us, whether it’s when they first get in front of our software or last thing at night during filing season, ultimately it’s a partnership.”

Despite the most challenging economic period since the 1930s, Harris said that with the first signs of recovery filtering through, clients will be looking to accountants to help them navigate decisions around investment, growth and timings.

“These are challenging questions with the advice potentially making or breaking a firm, but best practice means knowing your clients, understanding their markets and being the person best placed for them to turn too.

“It also means you genuinely care about the success of your customers, and that vested interest provides the foundations for a true partnership to emerge. This is key to our approach with customers at Sage.”

Why the PEP?

Sage decided to get involved in the Practice Excellence Programme as they thought it was a “fantastic initiative” and one that every practice could learn from if they decided to get involved.

They also wanted to help accountants understand what’s keeping clients awake at night and how they could improve working relationships.

“No matter how well your business is running there are always areas for improvement, and whose feedback is more valuable than that of your clients and prospects?” Harris asked. “By harnessing our deep industry insight we are able to provide expert advice and guidance to our accountants that means they can be confident about the success of their practice today and in the future. Our focus is on adding value to our accountants’ business and we see PEP as another opportunity to do this.”

Client satisfaction

As a company that provides software and services to more than 830,000 firms in the UK, Sage explained that everything they do has been designed to make the lives of accountants easier and more productive, while helping them to deliver more frequent and better engagement with their customers.

Harris explained how: “We’ve only been able to achieve that by listening to our customers, taking the time to really understand the challenges they face and then developing simple technology that people can depend on to meet those challenges.”

He added that all their software has been shaped by rigorous testing and extensive customer feedback from day one.

“We give customers certainty: certainty that their investment is future proofed and that the provider will be around tomorrow, certainty that if they need support we will be there and certainty about the future of their practice,” Harris said.

Customer feedback

When asked to come up with an example of how customer feedback has shaped one of their systems or products, Harris said that ‘User Centric Design’ was a key part of how they approach software development. Everything they build is based on insights and feedback from customers, and guided by the principle of making their lives easier.

Harris added that the development of Sage Assisted Tagging, a new module within the Sage Accounts Production range, was an important development.

“We built prototypes of different designs for the tool, and asked our customers to use them in their day-to-day activities. From studying their interactions and listening to what they had to say we were able to pick a particular design, and then implement fine-tuning changes that made it significantly easier for them use the software effectively and realise its benefits,” Harris said.

“We simply couldn’t have created the quality solution we delivered without the valuable input of our customers.”

Find out about how your clients really feel about the service you offer. Register for the Client Satisfaction Survey and select either the free survey report or the full benchmarking report.

Replies (3)

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By User deleted
29th May 2013 08:40

Where does fixing outstanding ...

.. known problems that span multiple update releases and have not been address for many years stand?

Can Paul Harris really say that all Sage outstanding bugs/problems are fixed BEFORE making any new update releases - for example with the latest release of L50 one assumes that nothing was outstanding (whatsoever nature)

Otherwise all this is just meanigless rhetoric - clearly in the case of outstanding bugs '.. Customer Feedback ..' has been completely ignored in favour of a different agenda

Thanks (3)
By ShirleyM
29th May 2013 14:24

I agree, JC

Sage software isn't the greatest.

Still, you have to admire their spin/tactics, where they get customers to do a lot of the testing and selecting (I assume for free, or maybe they got discounts for a year?) It reminds me of those talent shows where the public vote for who plays the leading man/women in musicals. It is a sure fire way to get lots of customers paying for tickets, if you let them decide who they want to see.

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By johnjenkins
30th May 2013 09:52

About 25 years ago

I was really excited to go on a 3 day training course (Financial Controller), in Seven Oaks, at Sage. Well they totally lost me and most of the other Accountants in the first hour. OK we all got to grips with it, but I have never found Sage to be user friendly, that's why I use VT.

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