Accounting

Why is finding quality IT Support for Accounting Firms so important?

For the accounting industry, time is everything. That’s why quickly responding to your issues and getting you back up and running is so vital. From CPAs to support staff to clients – urgency is the word of the day.

Lots of IT support companies claim to be able to get you the result you need, so why is it that so many accounting firms aren’t happy with their managed services provider and have a nagging feeling that there is something lacking.

It boils down to the process that your IT services vendor uses to manage your firm’s technology.

99% of IT support vendors are focused on fixing problems. You would think this would be a good thing, and for some industries, this approach works just fine. But fixing the same problem over and over again, no matter how fast they fix an issue it still sucks away focus and efficiency, the lifeblood of profitable accounting practices.

You would think they would fix it right, once and for all but here is where the problem lies – as long as your managed services provider is solely focused on fixing reactive problems and they can send you a bill for every problem they fix, where is their incentive to correct issues once and for all.

Nevermind getting ahead of the environment and preventing problems before they happen.

This is the reality many accounting firms live with – constant and repeat problems, calling back, again and again, to get problems fixed all the while wondering why it has to be this way.

We used to struggle to provide IT Services for Accounting Firms

Back in the day, we used to focus all of our time and resources on resolving issues as fast as possible and hoping that we could stay ahead of problems.

We would assign a guy to a few clients, hope they could stay on top of all the issues, and, if possible, keep the documentation updated, implement our best practices and, provide strategy and guidance. RIGHT!

Of course, this didn’t work and our customers got the same results they did from all the other “me too” Managed Services Providers out there. We were jumping from one emergency to the next while “non-critical” items fell by the wayside until we had a few extra hours – but those extra hours never appeared.

For years we thought the key to making all this work was just finding the best people, carefully documenting our process, and training them well. We thought that with the right people we could make this work, someone that was good a “multi-tacking” who could smoothly juggle multiple competing priorities all while giving top-notch customer service.

We wasted a ton of time and effort trying to fit all the pieces together to find the perfect configuration for a Managed IT services company all in the hopes we would hit on the magic mix of staff members who could deliver support smoothly and consistently. It was as frustrating for us and it was for our customers.

A fundamental shift was needed…

You wouldn’t think it would be so dang hard to provide Managed IT Support for accounting practice. From the outside, providing IT services looks easy!  Thankfully, giving up isn’t in our nature but sometimes you need to throw away what you have, start with a clean slate in order to make dramatic leaps forward.

It wasn’t until we looked at each work role with a microscope, and put people in dedicated roles, all focused on driving results for our customers were we able to start making progress. Put another way – you can’t have your front-line customer support team also doing documentation and procedures and giving guidance when they can fit it in – because you never get those empty hours!

Hiring and training a major part of our IT support staff to step into (and stay in) purely proactive roles was the secret. Dedicated people in dedicated roles, everyone with tight processes and metrics, focused on driving specific results for our clients.

Having everyone doing everything is a recipe for disaster – simply because to deliver complete IT solutions for a business, it takes different people with different levels of experience and different approaches to deliver the right solutions accounting firms need today.

Finally, Managed IT for Accounting Firms delivered the right way

Handling your day-to-day IT Support needs is one thing, but properly managing your technology to prevent issues is another. That is where the right IT Partner, one built around a process aimed squarely at predictable performance can make a huge impact on your practice.

As your Managed Services Provider, Technology Associates works with you around the clock to ensure you’re always functioning at your absolute best. We know that in accounting firms, it often gets hectic and there’s a lot to balance.

A complete Managed IT Services solution includes:

• Metric driven support team that gives your staff the IT Support then need and ensure your issues get resolved quickly
• Ongoing monitoring to help spot problems quickly
• Layered security suite to bolster firm security
• Best-practices that allow us to help spot risks you might not know you have
• Regular Technology Steering Meetings to review your technology budgets and roadmaps

Working with Technology Associates is truly like having a complete IT department in your firm.