Tyrrell and Company is an accounting firm who in just over a year of starting their cloud journey, were named Xero’s East England Accounting Partner of the year 2015. We talked to Richard Suswain, Managing Partner at Tyrrell and Company, about how they’ve managed this change so successfully and what the outcome has been for them and their clients.

How did this transition to move to cloud accounting happen?

We've been around since 1989, previously as CS Consultancy and have grown steadily since inception. We've always been a firm that’s been on the lookout for ways to increase our efficiency, with technology being at the hub of this. We did our due diligence on products and kept a close eye on what was happening and also how other firms were adopting technology as well. We wanted to make things as easy as possible for ourselves and our clients, and we found Xero to be the right fit for our company. Once we made the decision, we had really good internal momentum behind it and it was such an easy transition for us. Due to the size of the practice and the mindset of the partners we are very agile and can change our approach to the way we do things quickly.

What was the biggest challenge about the transition?

For us, it was ensuring all key staff were positive about this shift. We wanted them to start advising and having more face time with clients - playing an integral part in their businesses and building relationships with them. This did not come naturally to all and we encountered some resistance, which led to a restructure of the firm.

How did you manage this mindset?

We had to re-think the way that we structured the practice and the partners became very focused on enhancing relationships with clients, that were previously in the hands of the staff. We have found that clients like consistency and stability and this way of working has enabled that for them. The technology available has freed up time to have more frequent meaningful conversations with clients, with a view to helping them with their business journey.

How have your clients responded?

We’ve gone through a complete re-education process, not only internally but externally as well with our clients. We’ve moved from a naturally reactive process to a proactive one, and are getting clients to understand what we can now offer.

We talk about our services in every conversation with clients, so they are aware of them. We don’t like to make assumptions on behalf of clients on what level of service they require from us. We want to educate them, so they can make the right choice for their business.

To enhance our client education, we are rolling out some events to help them understand how to adopt new ways of working through technology. We have recently launched a business solution, The Xero Trifecta. It is our three-pronged approach to taking cloud technology and making it work for our clients. It has Xero as the financial foundation, working with ReceiptBank, Chaser and of course Spotlight Reporting to give our clients better control over their business.

If you’d like to find out more about Tyrrell and Company’s amazing transformation and successes, take a look at Richard’s video case study below:

[embed]https://vimeo.com/144601449[/embed]