How Clarity Street helped McPhail & Partners become an efficient and streamlined cloud-based accounting firm

Matthew Drew, Director at McPhail & Partners had been thinking about transitioning to the cloud for some time, but the big change happened in the wake of COVID-19.

The team were feeling the strain from outdated processes, manual duplication, and lack of integration between systems, so McPhail & Partners were seeking a clearer path forward.

Matthew and his colleagues had heard about Clarity Street and their services and knew of other firms that had transitioned to Xero. So, after the initial COVID wave hit, McPhail & Partners decided to engage with Clarity Street to see if they could find a better way of doing it all.

The Catalyst for Change

“We’d been thinking about it for some time, and the big change really was with COVID – we all got put into lockdown and were trying to work via a VPN on a terminal server. So, it was a big challenge for the team just to use the system that wasn’t really designed for long term remote working. And so that really pushed us to engage with Clarity Street to see if we could find a better way of doing it.”

The Solution

Encouraged by the positive feedback and results gleaned from industry peers, McPhail & Partners approached Clarity Street CEO Amy Holdsworth and her team for their insights and expertise.

“We felt very comfortable working with Clarity Street and the expertise they brought to the table; we realised we didn’t have that in-house. We needed the help and so, we were willing to work with them to get to where we needed to be."

Over the 12 months that followed, Clarity Street collaborated with Matthew and the team to introduce and integrate a range of cloud applications.

“Clarity Street worked with us to ensure our old legacy systems were maintained while the new ones were coming on board."

The Outcome

Following the implementation, McPhail & Partners have seen some good improvements.

“We found that the write-offs in the business services team have come down, and the work is going out pretty quickly. I’ve also seen throughout the process that we are saving in terms of software costs.”

Matthew believes the best results are still to come.

“We probably haven’t seen the financial return just yet – it’s a little bit early because we’re still weaning ourselves off parts of the old system, but I certainly do expect that we’ll get a better return on it.”

Having leaned on other firms for advice prior to making the change, Matthew is passionate about paying it forward and sharing McPhail & Partner’s learnings. His advice:

• Go in with an open mind, be adaptable
• Get buy-in from the whole team
• Have the right support in place
• Focus on internal communication

This blog post was an excerpt from the 'How Clarity Street helped McPhail & Partners become an efficient and streamlined cloud-based accounting firm' case study. Read the full case study here.

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