Reinventing Collaboration at an Accounting Firm: The Partexia Story
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Smoothing out exchanges, bringing documents together in one place and uniting staff spread across several offices are key challenges for accounting firms. Challenges that call for modernizing the ways of working and the collaborative tools teams use. Challenge accepted for Partexia, which adopted the Talkspirit platform in 2020.
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Partexia is an accounting firm organized around 6 areas of expertise: audit, accounting and tax, consulting, payroll and HR, legal, and communication.
Key figures:
- 3 offices in Gironde: Bordeaux, Gradignan and Merignac
- 21 employees, including 2 partner accountants and 19 staff
- +250 clients
In this interview, Alize Lecouvreur, communication officer at Partexia, looks back on the rollout of Talkspirit, the firm's main use cases, and the benefits the tool has brought to its staff.
Three Key Challenges for Working Differently
Before adopting Talkspirit, Partexia's staff and accountants communicated exclusively by email, phone or in person, which created challenges in terms of internal communication and cohesion.
Read also: The 7 reasons why email is already obsolete
So when the team switched to remote work in March 2020, it started looking for a solution that would answer three key needs:
- connect employees across the three offices,
- gather and organize all the documents,
- streamline communication internally and with clients.
The common goal behind these different challenges: modernizing the working habits of the firm's 21 employees.
All-in-One, the Deciding Factor
“We benchmarked several tools, including Talkspirit, Slack and Mattermost”, explains Alize Lecouvreur. But Talkspirit quickly stood out from the rest thanks to its rich feature set and competitive price.
“Mattermost's features were far more limited than Talkspirit's. Mattermost only includes discussion groups, whereas Talkspirit offers many more possibilities.” Partexia did not just want team messaging, but an all-in-one platform that would let it develop new uses.
On top of that, “Talkspirit was cheaper than Slack”, and offered just as many features as its American competitor. That is why Partexia went with Talkspirit.
A Smooth Rollout
“We first started testing Talkspirit with three of us (myself and the two partners). We created a few groups and, very quickly, we opened the platform up to everyone.
Right from the start of the project, we held a launch meeting to present the tool and explain why we wanted to put it in place. Then, depending on what each person needed, we ran small-group workshops to answer people's questions and explain how to get the most out of the platform.
The accountants and the staff found Talkspirit very intuitive. They got to grips with the tool very quickly.”
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New uses
Since Talkspirit was adopted, several new uses have developed within the firm.
Video Conferencing Internally and with Clients
Before the Covid crisis, all internal and client meetings took place in person. Since March 2020, however, these practices have changed significantly.
“Video conferencing has been a real plus during this period, and it is still used a lot today. We use it for our monthly meetings, and for one-to-one catch-ups between colleagues.
We used to call each other a lot for that kind of catch-up, or to help each other out on files. But it was sometimes complicated to give instructions over the phone. Now that we can use screen sharing, communication is far smoother.
“During lockdown, video conferencing also allowed the teams to keep every client appointment, particularly during tax season, which is a very busy time for them.
Today, we keep using it for the clients who want it, so as to offer them more flexibility. Many of them really appreciate it.”
Read also: Best Video Conferencing Solutions for Businesses
Information Sharing and Project Management
“We created several groups that make internal information sharing easier:
- working groups for accountants and the staff they work with,
- topic-based groups on specific subjects (monthly meetings, for example) bringing together all the staff.
These groups let us talk to each other, share documents, but also organize our projects and track how they are progressing.
Read also: Project-Mode Communication with Talkspirit: The Petit Vapoteur Story
We also use polls to gather people's views on certain projects, for example on new solutions to put in place within the firm.”
Centralising Documents on the drive
Besides video conferencing, the drive is one of the most used features among the staff. “We keep all the project documents there, along with the information and orders related to Covid.
In autumn 2021, we would also like to add more documents there, linked to our various projects”, continues Alize Lecouvreur.
With the drive, there is no longer any need to use email to share documents. Staff can find all the information they need in just a few clicks, a guaranteed time-saver!
Tangible Benefits
“The main benefit of Talkspirit is that it lets us keep everything in one place. The result: exchanges are smoother and faster, which makes us more productive.
Today, internal communication happens on Talkspirit, which has led to a drop in the number of emails exchanged internally”, explains Alize Lecouvreur. No small advantage, when you know that a French manager spends more than 5 hours a day dealing with email.
Read also: How Agence Bergamote cut its emails by 95% and boosted its productivity with Talkspirit
“Talkspirit has also allowed us to reassert our company culture and our values, closeness in particular, which we see as essential to maintaining good relationships internally and with our clients.” The platform does indeed strengthen the ties between colleagues, and so keeps a sense of belonging alive.
Today, “the firm enjoys a more modern, innovative image”, which makes it easier to attract clients and keep them.
The Ambition: Getting the Most Out of Talkspirit
“Our goal this year is to make more use of all of Talkspirit's features. We are thinking in particular about adding a chatbot to the platform, for example to help new colleagues find internal documents easily.
We are also thinking about bringing information and documents together on Talkspirit. For instance, we are considering setting up an automatic forward of the partners' emails to a dedicated group. That way, staff will be able to access the information the partners receive more quickly”, reports the communication officer.
Read also: A look back at the webinar “Better information sharing for better decisions”
Talkspirit's Take on Partexia
Collaborative tools bring real added value to accounting firms looking to modernize the way they work. And Partexia understood that well.
Read also: Transforming How Notaries Work: The Vacossin & Associates Story
Easy to use and intuitive, the platform lets employees talk to each other smoothly, without having to go through email or the phone. A setup the staff really appreciate, since 95% of them use it every month.
Talkspirit also plays a unifying role within the company. Accessible anytime and anywhere, it makes communication easier between the employees of the three offices, and also those working remotely.
Thanks to groups and the drive, partners and staff can share information and documents in real time. The entire firm gains in responsiveness when addressing client requests.
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Want to find out more about the challenges of digital transformation in accounting firms? Watch the replay of our webinar “Notaries, lawyers, accountants: towards a shift in ways of working”:
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Author: Emmanuelle Abensur
