Although the COVID-19 pandemic certainly amplified the need for companies to operate remotely, 88% of professional services organizations had already begun transitioning to the cloud well before 2020. Unfortunately, many firm leaders and professionals are struggling to finalize this transition due to uncertainty surrounding two main factors: how to create a connected, cloud-first firm, and how to recruit the best talent to support both their own firms and their clients.
On June 24, Mark Holman, President of Accounting and Consulting and Chief Strategy Officer at Intapp, led a panel of experts during a webinar, “Cloud Transformation as a Driver of Firm Value and Growth: Two Key Considerations.” Holman and the panelists spoke about the evolving expectations of clients who are looking to move their businesses to the cloud, and explored how cloud-based solutions can improve collaboration between both teams and clients.
Read on for some of our key highlights from the panel.
Increasing Efficiency by Decreasing Administrative Work
When discussing client demands, Holman revealed that most modern partners are looking for firms that can provide strong collaboration, accommodate client demands, provide real-time insights, and — perhaps most importantly — decrease administrative work for professionals.
“Partners are always looking at tools and technology to help remove the administrative burden,” explained Holman. “Partners are putting pressure on their firms to deliver the tools, processes, and teams that can help them operate as a more modern firm.”
Matthew Greenberg, Principal of the Digital and Analytics Practice at Beecher Reagan Advisors, concurred, adding that partners also expect firms to meet not only their in-house requirements but the requirements of their clients.
“[Partners have a] laser-like focus on delivering value to their clients, and they’re increasingly thinking about the tools and capabilities that a potential firm brings to the table to allow that,” Greenberg said. “They want to know, ‘What [are the tools] that enable me to be successful, integrate quickly, and make larger client impacts?’”
Promoting Collaboration Across Organizations
In addition to decreasing administrative work, partners also need to boost collaboration within their firms. A lack of collaborative tools and connected firm technology can slow down processes, lock data in silos, and decrease an organization’s overall efficiency and profitability.
“Typically, the frustrations around this digital world aren’t coming from the jobs themselves; they’re actually coming from the inability to work in the way [people] want to work,” said Georgina Pawley, EMEA Region Partner at Beecher Reagan Advisors.
Cloud-based solutions address the problem head on by allowing users to work wherever and whenever they want and to collaborate with others in real time. “Firms are shifting their investments from physical infrastructures to [cloud] technology to help them provide real time visibility to professionals to become a more agile enterprise,” said Holman.
As Pawley noted, becoming a more agile enterprise helps an organization win new business and ultimately leads to a higher client retention rate. “If you’re joining an organization that doesn’t have a collaboration capability, that’s going to impact your chance of being successful and it’s ultimately going to impact the retention of people coming into the business,” she explained.
Implementing the Right Technology
Due to the pandemic, the need to deliver services remotely has increased substantially. Jose Lazares, Senior Vice President of Product and Business Management at Intapp, explained: “[Firms] need to integrate more effectively and create a digital work product [via] technology [rather than the] traditional work product they provided in-person.”
Finding the right digital technology that meets the needs of both a firm and its clients can be tricky. Luckily, Holman provided a list of factors firms should consider when purchasing technologies to help them enhance every facet of their delivery strategies:
- Profitability
- Risk management and compliance
- Client experience and success
- Talent and culture
- Partnership and organizational structure
- Strategy development and execution
- Business development
Intapp offers industry-specific, cloud-based solutions that meet all these requirements. “We at Intapp provide a platform that services the consulting industry with tools and technology to help better enable the management of firms,” Holman said.
Firms interested in using a single, secure platform can migrate to Intapp — our industry-specific, cloud-based software — deployed in in the Intapp Secure Cloud. The Intapp Secure Cloud also supports mobile access and provides the highest level of data security.
Download the full recording of the panel to learn more about creating a connected firm using cloud-based technology built for the complexities of partner-led firms.