For a deeper look into Intuit Practice Management, register for the webinar, "Learn How to Have Full Firm Transparency with Intuit Practice Management" on November 30. You can register here.
It’s always a reassuring thing to see that something you invested in for your firm is working and proving its value. You feel relieved that the gamble you made paid off. By our definition we create decisions that are made upon hours of thought, research, and sometimes silent struggle. We like that balance that comes from a nicely wrapped up tax return or debits and credits that come perfectly aligned. Taking a chance with a new piece of technology is a wager for us; it means an off-balance to what we know, the dreaded change.
Change means we must realign our chart of accounts and once again do that tax update. It takes time, it takes energy, and it takes focus. That’s why it’s so nice when implementations go smoothly. You made the investment for this piece of technology in the hopes that the change would be easy, painless and improve something for the better in your firm.
Trying to bring it all into one place for my team seemed like a pipe dream in my journey to get here. All the trial and error to get to this point at times seemed like a pointless exercise. Looking back, it wasn’t, it just made us more certain of what we did want out of the platform we chose to manage all our clients.
The results are in for my latest implementation, Intuit Practice Management. My team is using it, I am using it, all connections were brought in smoothly and we are seeing a difference in the way we work. We still have some habits to change and some work templates to sort, but the results so far have become integral to how we work.
This is how a successful implementation should feel. Problems are getting solved. New, more efficient workflows are forming and the whole team is involved, even if it is just you! A half-hearted use by one individual will be a bottleneck in your organization, whomever that individual may be.
Intuit Practice Management has allowed all of us to provide better value to our clients. Our response time is faster as we are no longer having to search the various places we used to. Our audit trail is much cleaner and it’s easier to hand-off work when help is needed.
Another sign of a successful app onboarding is when you see the possibilities that are ahead of you and that it is reasonably easy to do, just a question of time to do it. Schedule it. Chances are that your implementation plan is not complete and your vigilance at this moment should not waiver. It’s very easy to relax and let the first euphoria take over. Schedule it and proceed to finalize your implementation. You are almost there! Visualize the finish line. I always visualize that moment, when the last piece clicks into place and balance has once again been restored.
Successful implementations are great when they happen. Sometimes they don’t go so well. Along the road to get my firm in order, I went through 5 unsuccessful implementations to arrive at the final pieces in our app universe. Some my gut knew right away, but I stuck with it longer than I should have. The others, the app was not truthful in what it did in functionality and what did integrate with it. Those were easier to back out of but damaging in the time lost to take that path.
When the results come in of use, ease, automations, and the correct formula of integrations the whole team can sing and perform their best. My favorite part with any successful integration is the growth you will now see develop since the fertilizer has been placed. There will now be time. Time to show your value. Time to log out. Time to look ahead. Time to speak with each other on not where to find things, but time spent to learn new things together and get better at what we do.
For a deeper look into Intuit Practice Management, register for the webinar, "Learn How to Have Full Firm Transparency with Intuit Practice Management" on November 30. You can register here.