S02 E02: Selecting an Operational System For Your Firm: Do’s and Don’ts

Roman Villard
All right, it is 2024. Here we are. And in 2024, there’s a lot of people who are likely going to be reevaluating how they think about their firms, how they grow their firms, and how they manage them. So today, we get to deep dive on the topic of how do you select a practice management system? How and why is that the core of your firm? And what are some do’s and don’ts and things to look out for along the way? What’s the process that you should employ to select a practice management system? And on that note, we have Stacey Feldman here to help us navigate this topic. Hey, how are you doing?

Stacey Feldman
Good morning. I’m doing really well. Yeah, topic 2024. We, ourselves went through the whole process of goal planning, figuring out what we want to do for the next year. And a lot of that is systems and software’s and how we want to optimize our workflows.

Roman Villard
So you’re already knee deep into this already, you probably started that process in 2023. But from what I understand, you went through this massive analysis to select a practice management system in 2023. Before we get into that, I want to hear the little elevator pitch of who is Stacey, what do you do in and why are why are you here talking about this?

Stacey Feldman
Sure. Roman, you and I know each other really well. My name is Stacey Feldman, and the COO partner at Full Send Finance, I work very closely with Roman and my role at Full Send, which, at Full Send, we’re a finance and accounting firm that services, early stage growth companies. But my role is to own the operations of the company, find efficiencies, build the software to build the team, and make sure we’re executing on our deliverables to clients in a really strong way. So a big part of that is our software. So our software package how we’re doing our work day to day and how we’re reducing our reliance on memory and a lot of the work that we’re doing.

Roman Villard
Yeah, and along those lines, as a CFO of a very small business, that also means you wear a lot of hats, it’s not just hey, I’m singularly focused on selecting a practice management system and running that you wear a lot of hats. And as we look to grow and scale the business, what we do today, and how we employ new software’s new systems, new tools for the business, will will materially impact how we grow and scale tomorrow. So when you jumped in, and we started evaluating a new practice management system, where did you start? How did you start thinking about that, and what kind of led you down the path of, hey, this is something that Full Send, might need?

Stacey Feldman
Sure, I think for us in the way that we’re looking at our business. We do everything we make every decision through the lens of scalability, we want to be able to grow our firm to, you know, four or five times what we are today. And we don’t want our systems to hinder us in that process. So as we’re thinking about delivering our work, it’s will this process that we’re doing today serve us if we were 10 times larger 10 times volume that we’re doing in the day to day today. So it was really clear early on. I mean, we’re a new company startup, it’s very clear that we wanted a system or something to track are overall workflows that we’re delivering to clients. And the scalability is very important, because we are a startup and today we had, you know, very few clients. So it was a lot easier to rely on memory or, you know, save documents in a different location. But we’re really trying to emphasize the approach of the scalability to start making our, our muscle memory be in the, in the format of the future. So you know, it was just really clear that we don’t have a scalable process using Google Docs and excel and one client this way, this client that way, kind of doing things in different, different workflows isn’t scalable. So we take the approach of let’s find a good way to build this infrastructure from the get go, and then grow it from there.

Roman Villard
One of my favourite quotes that goes so beautifully with what you just articulated is from DJ Patil, who is the chief data scientist under the Obama administration, and his quote goes something to the effect of build for 1x prototype for 10x and engineer for 100x. And what you’re alluding to here is engineering for that 100x of our the things we’re doing today going to serve us well in the future. And knowing that there’s a lot of change that occurs during that scaling process. Like that’s how you’re thinking about the business.

Stacey Feldman
Yeah, and I think you know, who want to just dive into that overall process of how you think about even ideating around a new software. The first step in that is understanding how you do what you do today. And it doesn’t have to be a super formal process. I mean, it depends if you’re A small company or larger enterprise, I think these steps are still really valuable. But it’s mapping your workflows, figuring out how things are done, what steps are taken today. That way you can identify pain points, figure out where things are sticky, where things tasks are duplicated, where you have inefficiencies. Because this is the first step in really figuring out what you need to solve for, if you don’t map will map out where you are today. You’ll never know what you need for tomorrow. So it’s, I can’t understate or overstate this point enough that documenting and itemising out what you’re doing today is the most important step in selecting a new software to solve for the problems.

Roman Villard
You know, it’s interesting we this is the second time that this has come up, we had a conversation with Korey Cournoyer, about a month or two ago as it relates to automation. And he also said the first step of looking at automation is to process map. And so you’re alluding to this very similar process that you went through to document and map out how the firm is operating. Now, how did you tactically do that? Were you utilising a tool? Or were you visualising it? Were you using Google Sheets? You know, what, what was your way of approaching mapping?

Stacey Feldman
Yeah, I know a lot of people love workflow process docs, squares and triangles, and arrows. I my brain works in lists. So I, you know, I had a Google Doc. And I said, when we’re doing scoping, these are the software’s we’re using. And this then flows into actual service document. And what software’s are we using to service different steps in the process. And through that, you can see, okay, here we’re using, you know, practice ignition for scoping, but then we’re moving into Google Sheets, and then we’re using our email. And then we’re using Excel for some clients. So you can really visualize to whichever way is better for your brain, how things are flowing, how information is shared. And you can see a lot of the inefficiencies right, if you have the final client deliverables for an accounting firm are to somehow share the financials with your client. While you’re doing that, and work in one software, and then going back to your email and manually going through and sending, consolidating that information and sending it. How much time is that taking? Is it a big pain point, that could be an area that you could automate through software.

Roman Villard
And what’s interesting about this, that everybody’s brain works differently, your brain works in lists, mine works in shapes and colourful lines, and all these types of things. But one hot tip that can be utilized by anybody that has access to chat GPT is go for a walk, turn on the ability to speak to chatGPT through your phone, download the app, and then just talk through your process. Just talk through every step, you know, maybe break it up into chunks, here’s your onboarding, here’s your client monthly delivery, and then chatGPT to summarize that back to you, and organize it in a in a manner that’s more conducive to process mapping. That’s a really good way to do that without having to tactically go in and type out lists and lists and things of that nature.

Stacey Feldman
So you had your really good suggestion. Yeah. I like that suggestion.

Roman Villard
Yeah, it’s just hard for me, it’s hard for me to like to get listed every single thing. Exactly. So now that you have your list, was that an intent to identify pain points, or just get it out on paper? So you could kind of visually see it? Well,

Stacey Feldman
I mean, it’s one in the same, right, you’re documenting so you can see what your process is. But in that process, you’re seeing, okay, where are things sticky? Where can things be automated? Where am I doing the same thing in multiple different places? Where do I have to rely on memory for certain tasks. So depending how your brain works, you can start to see trends and see just where things can be improved. And that that feeds in then to the next step, which is defining what you can sell for, and defining the objectives that you would want to sell for through a practice management or an operation system for your business.

Roman Villard
So did you go through kind of a stack ranking of, you know, here’s what I can solve for, here’s the pain point, and then say, I can solve this one pain and that will have a ripple effect to solve other pains that exist, did you prioritize in that way and then ultimately land on hey, we need a new practice management system.

Stacey Feldman
I think I already kind of knew that we needed a software we I knew we weren’t going to scale to where we needed to be in doing month end closes in Excel or Google Docs. So I already knew just based on conversations with other industry leaders and how they’re managing workflows, that it was something we wanted. So I already kind of checked that box. Now the next step was like okay, what features do we want in a practice management system? Or what objectives do we want to solve for based on the pain points that we have today? every business is different. Everyone’s serving their clients in a different way. But for us what I did visually, so I’m a list grid person is I had the our key features, or I guess, objectives we wanted to solve for. And I can can pull this up here what I actually wrote down. So I found the document. So one of the primary items was price and different software’s price different features in different ways. So I kind of said, What would our price be if we served 60 clients with 10 employees? And what would it be if we served 300 clients with 50 employees just so I can get a sense of what the how the price would change as we scale? What integrations does the software provide? The integrations are really important in our line of business of automating different workflows. So I wanted to get a good sense of what are native with certain providers. And then the features was a big thing. Integrated email team collaboration, tools, automation, budget, actual reporting, Uncategorized, expense, reconciliation, client access document share, the list can is almost limitless of different features. But this is the one piece that four features specifically that you can tie them back to your pain points, what in your workflow Do you want to solve for that you need for your system to have for you to scale your business? I think for us, some of the main items were workflow automation. Which means and when I say workflow automation, I guess one of the main things was creating a workflow task list per client. And having that automate and recur each month, having not having to kind of duplicate what needs to be done. Again, it’s it’s eliminating the reliance on memory, what needs what specific tasks need to be done having that auto recur. So we’re not messing with the actual tasks that need to happen each each month for each client. I also wanted some sort of client communication hub, we at our firm, we found out we realized through that mapping that were communicating with clients and having them access different portals in different ways. And we wanted to, to condense that down into one or two primary communication past primary being email, and then one secondary platform. So what we had we realized, oh, our clients are required to log into four different systems and have passwords. And in this system, they’re doing their bank accounts, right, the connection and this system, they’re getting their Budget to Actual and then this system, they’re getting just Uncategorized expense questions. So let’s consolidate that down into one primary software. And, you know, again, through that workflow, visualisation, we could see like, we need to solve for this too many access points. So that was one primary feature that was very important for us to have in the practice management software. There’s plenty more, I mean, time tracking can be wine, if you want to measure capacity. We don’t Bill hourly. But we do like to see profit, or just margin by client. So things like that are were really important for us.

Roman Villard
And so knowing that there are many, many features, items that can bubble up through this type of exploratory process, what’s interesting to me is that you lead with price prices, the first thing that you mentioned, now, I’m curious, did your perspective on price change? When you then identified what types of features could solve your problems more easily, more naturally, or be integrated in a better manner? Did you then kind of revisit that and say, Okay, well, I’m willing to pay a little bit more here because of this access? Or how did that change as you kind of went through this this process?

Stacey Feldman
For me as a visual like grid person, what I was able to do is to see that most of these systems and software’s provide, like a core, sort of other core offering that they all kind of solve for certain problems. But when you have the price, also next to these different features that they provide, you can pull outliers in out like that, right, you can see whether there was one software, for example, that was five times the price of all of the others that were in our list. And the features didn’t solve for many other problems that we really identified in our in our workflow. So we were easily able to just like Nix that software that’s not worth our time to really explore or test or really do a demo of. I say price was there just because I am a numbers focused person. You know, when we get into the do’s and don’ts, one of the don’ts is select based on price. So, I think it just happens that the price was the first kind of feature that I was looking at in the in the grid.

Roman Villard
Yeah, okay, so don’t select a system based on price. Do To map out your process and understand where the pain points are, one of the challenges that I found throughout a process of selecting a firm for management system practice management system is, is that I get so maybe enamoured by different features that exist that may or may not contribute to the core as much as they should or as much as I think they do. But I tend to look at these lists of features and say, Oh, well, this tool has that option, this tool has that option, and just kind of get attached to that, without really understanding. Alright, what is the core functionality that is required to create a better experience for clients? Because that’s the second point that I heard you say is, how does this relate to a better client experience? Can you kind of expand on that a little bit just enamoured by features? And also how does it improve client outcomes?

Stacey Feldman
Sure, yes, I mean, so what I said for point one was, you know, figure out your workflows, point two is define your objectives. Point three is engage your stakeholders, who’s going to be using your software day in and day out, who’s going to be actually going through and setting up tasks and really executing on this different software and delivering to clients through the platform, you need to make sure those people can easily use this software, right? If you have a software with all the bells and whistles, but it’s just clunky and difficult to adopt at your stage in the business. Maybe you don’t have an IT team to set up all the backend, or you don’t have the time to build the infrastructure that’s required to make things easy and automated. You need to take that into consideration when you’re selecting the software, how easy is it to be to use it, it needs to be user friendly, right? I mean, for us, when we like we had a system that we were using to just kind of centralized client information. But it was just, it just felt like there was a hurdle to using it every day. And it was very clear when we found, you know, tested different software’s that the one we ultimately landed on, it was just easy, right? It was easy to use, it actually solved for the pain points that we had, and the inefficiencies that we identified earlier in the process.

Roman Villard
And so now I’m hearing there’s a divergence between the quantitative and the qualitative analysis of this process of saying, quantitatively, there are these features that really directly solve our pain points, qualitatively, it has to be a system that I like that the team enjoys using that they will use. And that really makes sense for us to adopt. And so were there other qualitative things that you were evaluating alongside of ease of use?

Stacey Feldman
Sure. But this kind of goes in the don’t category of when you’re selecting, you cannot ignore vendor reputation. Right? When you’re doing your research and looking at different platforms? What are people saying about the software, whether that’s online and reviews, or just in your network and having conversations with different firms that are on the platform? The people who are using it? Do they like it? Do they feel like they don’t have the support they need? You know, those conversations are important, and you cannot ignore just what people are saying about the platform, and also not ignoring tech trends and how quickly the software provider is adopting them. Right? Our industry is moving very fast with AI and different automations that are available to us. Is your providers this software? On top of that? Are they finding ways to improve the software based on user needs? Or are they fairly stagnant, or this is their offering, and they’re not really modifying it based on industry trends? You can find that out quickly as well. Just online user reviews, go on Reddit, check out what people are saying, if people don’t like something, you will be able to find it.

Roman Villard
It’s such a good point. Because I think about online reviews and how to qualitatively assess whether or not this is a good system, whether or not it has a good reputation. I think about how and when people actually take the time to review something that they experience in their life. My home builder for this home that we built had terrible reviews. And then I looked at other home builders and they were all terrible. And then I realized the only time that anybody actually takes time to review a homebuilder is when they have a poor experience. So I think that a lot of the like online reviews stuff can be really Miss Gay can be misleading. And so we approached the qualitative assessment of is this a good system by having conversations at conferences by having smaller group discussions with our peers and other firm owners, and then having one on one discussions with other firm owners who either utilize the systems that we were exploring or had had experienced onboarding, maybe one or multiple systems? And that was really validating?

Stacey Feldman
Yeah, and we were really lucky in that we started from basically infancy at our firm, right? This process of selecting a new system can be a lot harder if you’re needed to manage the change. Management from an existing software to a new platform. And that’s why it’s really important to not underestimate the training requirements around this. Right? What? What does your team need to learn to be successful in this new software? And how supportive is the software provider in guiding your team through that process? Do they have packages or even just support that has training for your team that can help them, you know, ask questions and figure out how they can best use the software. It’s another kind of qualitative aspect of making sure you’re, you’re on the right path.

Roman Villard
I think that’s a great question to ask for anybody exploring, and particularly a new practice management software is ask the sales rep, the AE, whoever you’re talking to, within the organization, ask them What does onboarding look like? And how do you play a role in the success of my firm onboarding your tool. And when you go through that process, you’ll understand very quickly, like how they approach that if they have a process, because you can cobble together an onboarding yourself, or you can work alongside of them. And I generally would tend to say, hey, work alongside of the team, particularly if it’s this important of a system, work alongside the team pay a little bit of money to help them onboard you in the most effective manner so that you can get the most out of the system.

Stacey Feldman
Yeah, I mean, it kind of ties back to the original steps I was talking through where like you assess your workflows, define objectives, engage stakeholders, do the research. But the last one is adopting and committing to the platform, right, you can ask your vendor to help you to guide and train and have that ability. But a lot of that is on internally in the team, right? If you will, if you don’t have a clear path and plan for actually adopting the software, whether you’re starting from scratch, or change managing the crossover from an existing platform, you’re not going to have a successful implementation, there needs to be clear deliverables and process plan around, we’re going to start with one client, we’re going to test it out, we’re going to have see where the inefficiencies are. And then we’re going to have load three more clients on or every new client at this date is going to be onboard into the new platform, there needs to be specific timelines and deadlines around how the new software is going to be rolled out at this step, the firm, and you need to hold to it right. If you don’t adopt and commit to the new software, your team is never going to go onto that path as well. Right? And it’s the same thing for us, right, we could have implemented our software, and then the team could still be reconciling in Excel, or kind of using things on saved on their desktop. But because we’re requiring we’re monitoring, and we’re tracking the use of the system, and making sure day to day that people are doing things in the process that we’ve mapped out. We’re having a more much more successful implementation and overall usability of this software.

Roman Villard
Yeah, now you’re moving into change management, how do you effectively communicate changes to how you operate internally, in order to kind of rally the team and excite them and encourage them and help them understand how this will benefit? You know, the stakeholder that you’re talking about? How do you get their input and their their excitement to like jump into this, because it’s never easy. It’s always hard to learn a new system. And so I really liked that connectivity to the team now of let’s create a successful outcome for the team because we know that this is going to be a big effort.

Stacey Feldman
Yeah, I mean, the best way to do that is to engage the team early, right, whether that’s selecting a few key stakeholders who are going to have a committee on being involved in the overall assessment, review and selection of the software, right, you want to have your team involved making sure that their needs are heard, right, when we’re growing through the definition process of figuring out what features are most important. You need the team involved, you need to know what their pain points are, and what they’re struggling with to make sure those are highlighted in this selection process. So what if the team is engaged from you know, they’re very early on in the process, it’s gonna feel like less of a of a burden or Hey, team, we found a new software, we’re going to, we’re going to onboard it now. Right? You want to kind of phase through that they’re involved in the process. They’re, they’re expressing their concerns and their needs. And then they have a say in the overall selection. So if there’s more transparency in the overall process, it’s going to be a heck of a lot easier for the team overall, to adopt that change and then start to phase into a new system and process.

Roman Villard
Totally, totally. And if you have a firm size of maybe sub 10 people, it’s a lot easier to communicate, hey, here’s what we’re exploring. Here’s how we’re doing it. Here’s here are the factors that we’re assessing to understand what tool makes the most sense. Maybe bring in a teammate or two on that front. once you get beyond that, if you have a team of 20 people, you have two internal and 18, client service team members and, and maybe you have a pod structure and three pods of six people bring in those pod leaders to allow them to be advocates and have input in the process so that then they can disseminate what that change management looks like downward to the rest of the team. There are a lot of ways that you can do it. But that’s maybe one approach you could take.

Stacey Feldman
Yeah, and if you’re in your mapping process, you’re identifying the appropriate inefficiencies and pain points. While the overall migration will be challenging, your team should feel feel excited about it, because it should make their lives easier. The software should be easy to use, you know, all of these points we talked about previously, while any software change is going to be a little bit clunky, a little bit burdensome to learn and adopt, the outcome should be ease of use, and overall making the experience better for your team members. I’ll never be making it harder, it should never be making life harder.

Roman Villard
You’re right, I think I do think that there is an element upfront where it may be a little bit harder to just to adjust to a new system, a new means of communication, things like that. But I like how you tie that to the outcome for the stakeholder, you know the accountant level up. Because ultimately, what this tool should enable for that individual and every firm owner has to define this for themselves. But hey, this may give you more personal freedom, this may allow you to be able to spend more time doing the things you love, because we are more efficient over here. And if that message is, hey, we could pile more work on your plate because more more efficient Yeah, may not be the right messaging.

Stacey Feldman
The primary message we used when we were figuring out which software we wanted to use is that we wanted a platform that documents workflows and process in a way that if a team member wants to take vacation, during the heat of month end close, another team member could come in, look at that workflow and complete their work for them. And that’s kind of one of the lenses because we have a focus on overall employee satisfaction ability to take time away from work, we wanted that to be a key item of again, removing the reliance on memory where anyone can come in, and it really execute on a client close just based on what we’ve the work we’ve put in to document those process and the software.

Roman Villard
I love that. And so now now your six months post practice management system implementation, you know, after going through a full list, maybe six to eight systems that we evaluated, we ended up landing on Financial Cents. And so now we’re six months and on on that implementation. What’s your What are your thoughts now? Are we still iterating? Is there still change management occurring? What does it look like after you’ve implemented the system?

Stacey Feldman
Great question. I think for my line of work, my focus is always how can we be more efficient, and I’m continually assessing pain points and inefficiencies. I feel really, really good about Financial Cents in serving our clients and their needs. And then I also feel really, really excited about the effort Financial Cents the team, the company is putting into making their system better listening to client needs, adopting new software trends implementing AI. So we’re always tinkering with the new kind of the new evolution of what the software can provide, and how we can make things better. I think it’s checked all of the boxes that we have for how we’re servicing clients. But now we’ve identified a new pain point, right? In our overall workflow of mapping and planning, we realized that the handoff between clients scoping and signing a contract, handing that data and what we promised what systems new clients using, handing it over to the actual Client Onboarding team. There’s something broken there. So now we’re going through the process. Do we need a software to solve this? Do we need a workflow change do how do we kind of make this process overall a bit more seamless? The the structure and the framework is all the same. You’re figuring out your workflow, figuring out the pain points, you’re figuring out what objectives you want to sell for, you’re engaging stakeholders to make sure we’re on the right path, doing research on how we want to execute on change, and then eventually adopting a new way and committing to that. So the framework is all the same there. And it can be applied to a lot of different kinds of rational decision making processes. And I think it’s gonna be something that sticks with us every six to 12 months minimum for how we make sure that we’re always getting a little bit better. And we’re staying on top of trends and client needs. And just as the business evolves.

Roman Villard
Yeah, I love the openness to change because ultimately, in any growing firm, there will be change. And at this juncture in our industry, there’s a lot of change occurring on the tech front. And so we have to be very open To that, but to your point by documenting our process and having that core really well established, now, we’re just kind of bolting on to that core to the practice management system, because we know that this is how we operate. And we’re creating efficiencies. On top of that we’re not creating massive amounts of change. Again, at this level, were really just adding on to it and creating better outcomes for our clients for our team and trying to move things forward and in the most manageable, efficient way possible.

Stacey Feldman
You just reminded me of a really good point, an overall kind of software assessment. It goes back to the age old saying of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right there. With all of everything that we’ve said in this conversation today, it has to have the caveat of you know, if there aren’t pain points don’t change just to change. Right, that first item that we talked about was assessing workflow and identifying inefficiencies and pain points. Just because there’s a flashier software that you think might have a prettier, you know, interface. Just because it’s prettier doesn’t mean it’s solving for what’s most important that your firm, you really need to make sure you’re solving for problems that exist, not just adopting new software for the sake of adopting new software. Because that’s right.

Roman Villard
Drop the mic. That’s fantastic. Yeah, it is tricky is a very delicate, it’s a difficult process to go through. But I think the way in which you’ve approached that is just very logical, it makes sense. And so I hope this has been beneficial for those firm runners out there to help help them think through how do you start to approach this type of monumental potential change in your firm. So thank you so much for that. Really appreciate it.

Stacey Feldman
Yeah, of course. And I think one of the most helpful things for me in the process was talking to people talking to firm owners figuring out what they like what they don’t like. If people are willing doing a screen share, just see what the process looks like, see how it is in use. Obviously, there’s good tutorials online, that can always be helpful, but you’d have a trusted network contact that you can talk to and willing to do a screen share. Those are always really helpful. And if you have questions of how we use Financial Cents, I’m always, always willing to be an advocate and talk through that and how our experience went.

Roman Villard
Perfect. And so if anybody wanted to find you, where would they find you and how they get a hold of you.

Stacey Feldman
I can mostly be reached on LinkedIn, linkedin.com/staceyfeldmancpa/ we also have our website fullsendfinance.com. We can always be shut out there at [email protected] and we’d love to connect with anyone who’s going through this process.

Roman Villard
Perfect. And I get the pleasure of riffing with Stacey Feldman on about a weekly basis on the building in the wild podcast. So if you want to hear more of us, you can jump over to building in the wild. But Stacey, thank you so much for walking through implementing a practice management system. This has been fun.

Stacey Feldman
Yeah, happy New Year and let’s let’s make things more efficient.

Roman Villard
Yeah, later.