Teamwork paying off at Wembley

Yesterday was an incongruous mix – Wembley stadium dressed up for an NFL game between the Tampa Bay Bucaneers and Chicago Bears and “the home of football” home to hoards of accountants. This was the keynote IRISWorld event where Phill Robinson and his team got to say, “Hello Wembley” to massed rows of accountants worrying more about the numbers and the future of their practices than the 3 lions. The stadium is very impressive of course (and so it should be) and with a target attendance of c.800 IRIS pulled out all the stops to do justice to the choice of venue. OK – typical exhibition drop-out rates meant that the actual number was somewhat under but what this single community saw was an example of a well-focused team talking directly and knowledgably to its customers about what they wanted to hear. And it’s this aspect that struck home as being most impressive. The financial community has a very important concept: KYC – Know Your Customer. Wembley and the other IRIS roadshows was a fine example of how to know your audience en masse.


The headline plenary sessions were good and strong and stuffed with subject matter experts from the ICAEW and Microsoft. More importantly the mood-music and buzz around the break-out rooms and the exhibition stands was confident; an acknowledgement that this was no waste-of-chargeable-time, but an important tool in knowing how to guide each individual practice. And it wasn’t all futures and jam-tomorrow. One of the sessions was a very simple hints-and-tips talk and it was just as packed as the bright-new-future presentations.

IRIS’s branded version of Invu (IRIS OpenDocs) was well in evidence and it confirmed our view that Invu’s integration with IRIS and it’s strong positioning with accountants was natural and now, almost taken for granted. On the IRIS OpenDocs stand, a steady stream of attendees sought more info (“how does it work?”, “what’s the cost”), but the number one question? Email, email, email. How do I handle the sea of emails I get? Almost from day one in our relationship with IRIS, the need for a flexible email solution was a top agenda item and directly led to Invu Email Manager coming to market. Yesterday continued the evidence that this was well judged.

The last couple of years have seen a lot of change at Invu, including the IRIS partnership. Standing back and reflecting, this was and continues to be an extremely positive partnership and Wembley showed the benefit of dealing with the experts in an area. Invu deals with a number of domains as well as solving some more generic issues in other sectors and it’s important not to lose that focus. Where we get close to the issues faced by individual customers or sectors we have a solution set which can be a veritable chameleon. But you have to understand what’s needed and what works best for each business. As Invu delivers more individual mid-market type solutions our focus on what’s needed for a successful solution teaches us a valuable lesson in listening closely to what our customers want. This varies by business sector and by customer and we’ve had to change the way we work. In fact this has been a major and hugely positive transformation. Wembley showed that with a strong, capable and domain expert partner we can deliver on both fronts with trust and confidence. IRIS and other partners keep us on the ball so we cannot ever afford complacency. Without getting smug, Wembley reinforced the partnership. For some of us with many years spent delivering software for accountants it wasn’t quite like coming home, but it was pretty close.

IRIS & Invu team up for IRIS World 2011 Roadshows

There will be plenty of eyes on Invu in its guise as IRIS OpenDocs in the next few weeks. We’ll be supporting IRIS as our premier accountancy partner as the IRIS World 2011 roadshows begin. These are taking place across the UK, starting with Bristol and ending with a 10th and final event towards the end of the month. These are excellent opportunities to find out about Invu’s unique fit in the accountancy space, to discover why the largest provider of accountancy solutions has chosen to work so closely with Invu and to meet the teams to find out more about the difference IRIS and Invu can make.

The regional events are condensed to ½ day sessions so you can join the IRIS and Invu team for breakfast and be back in your office in time for lunch.


The largest event is at Wembley Stadium; this is a full day conference with guest speakers and focused afternoon breakout sessions. One of these is Practice Efficiency – Save an hour a day with IRIS and this is where accountants can find out how much time can be saved using IRIS Practice Software and IRIS OpenApps.


Join us at the largest FREE customer event for accountants. We’d be delighted to meet you and to hear about your practice’s needs – to register click this link http://bit.ly/p5Xcc9

Software for the real world….

Like software businesses the world over we find ourselves testing new releases in something of a vacuum – attempting to replicate the actions and environments of the real world can be a thankless and impossible task. Where the software can be used across a number of business scenarios and the twists and turns of a wider user community can vary enormously the scope of error is compounded. It’s an issue which the software community has wrestled with for many years now. Other than long, in-depth and often automated testing, the most common belt and braces proving route is by customer validation. Beta site testing is used the world over whether it be the big names like Microsoft, Oracle, Sage and others or the niche software provider.

Invu’s Early Adopter programme is typical. But we know that alongside those who are genuinely keen to see what’s round the corner, for most businesses the attraction can appear limited. We’ve been giving this a lot of thought. You see, high quality, real-world pre-release feedback is nothing short of gold dust. It can be the difference between success and embarrassment in some cases. But there must be something in it for the customer.

That’s why we’re formalising the Early Adopter programme with some sweeteners to add to the standards. (The standards being: a bit of first-mover advantage so you can be up and running before your competitors, enabling you to plan out your implementation and getting closer to the vendor and therefore being more influential in future product direction. There’s also the issue of ensuring the software quality for yourself – don’t trust anyone else, gain your own confidence etc. This is what large organisations with major roll-outs will do anyway so some of you may already be used to a period of User Acceptance Testing before new software is available to the business in a live environment.)

We’re looking for a good spread of customers across a range of organisational types. If you join us we’d like to make it a worthwhile exercise for all parties. Our most recent Newsletter leads with this request and asks that if you’re interested that you contact Mark Palmer or Sandeep Kang. Of course, we’ll be asking some customers and partners directly. But it would be great if you put your hand up first before we even send the invitations out….

A tale of two cities?

In our news section, we’re talking about a tale of two cities. Not exactly original, but it comes to mind with two new case studies – Seren Group in Newport and, a quick hop down the M4 in Cardiff, Hendre. They are both engaged in social housing and both have been delighted with their Invu experience. Housing Associations (HA’s) are waking up to Invu with its wider portfolio of products and integration opportunities with housing systems. Forty plus HAs have adopted Invu and, increasingly, the demand is for document management at the heart of the business.

HAs face a bombardment of documentation, from invoices, to maintenance orders, to tenant correspondence and much more. Service levels can massively improve if the documentation is immediately to hand and a 360˚ view of a tenant’s affairs or suppliers transactions are to hand. HAs come under tight regulation and service levels are an important benchmark, so being able to respond quickly with all queries answered first time is a significant measure of success. It’s also a measure of efficiency and cost saving. Right now there are still many HAs find themselves reliant on paper filing and queries may take hours or days to get answered and then only in part – add in the “whilst I’ve got you”, almost mandatory supplementary question and you could be back to square one. You can see why a good eDM solution is needed.
HAs face particular issues with accounts payable – often working with a host of suppliers. Many of these are likely to be local and small in keeping with an ethos of trading in the community where possible. Quick payment is often critical to these suppliers. However, manual processing of paper invoices can be a slow process. Invu’s invoice processing solutions cut through this – we’re getting increasing and encouraging demand here. Invoices are scanned, the relevant data is extracted from the invoice and then looked up against the finance system for supplier details, POs etc. This then initiates an automatic workflow for authorisation – what might currently be 1-2 week’s worth of round trip can be simplified to minutes, all without the fear of loss and all whilst still having sight of the information for queries. Extending Invu Document Management out beyond a passive repository can make a huge difference to the way businesses work and this is a great example of a sector where the fit is especially good. Invu’s engagement with HAs continues to get closer and stronger – we hope to see our South Walian friends at Seren and Hendre joined by many more HA peers using Invu.many more HA peers using Invu.

Inside Housing highlights Invu

The most recent Inside Housing magazine is a welcome reminder that Invu has an important part to play in making Housing Associations more efficient. Invu represents eDM in the recent technology focus of the magazine: http://tinyurl.com/3h2k3rb.

From simply enabling better and quicker decision making and improving tenant and supplier service through to wholesale changes in the way that finance departments work, there’s a large number of HAs using Invu solutions nowadays. The trend is one of increasing adoption – encouraging news and also a reminder that this is a sector which faces its own pressures. Less money coming in, increasing demand for their services and greater regulation and service demands.

Invu has been shown to make a genuine difference to these organisations – check out the recent case studies on the Invu web site for the Seren Group based in Newport and their near neighbours in Cardiff, Hendre (www.invu.net/testimonials.aspx).

These join other HAs with similar experience and words of encouragement for Invu, notably Derwent Living in Derby and Sheffield HA Arches Housing.  Housing Associations and Invu – a very good fit indeed.    

 

Calling all customers – keep up to date

The latest copy of InsideVu is available to download here.

We’re talking about our Health Check reviews, pointing you towards our recent invoice processing white paper, covering the new version of Invu Capture, the latest service pack and hearing about how Stoddards Manufacturing has transformed the way its finance department works using Invu solutions. And there’s also the normal hints and tips of course.

In case you missed it you can also find edition #9 online (it’s the same address as above). It majors on the invasive operational issues, costs and risks that email brings to so many organisations. Also included are a couple of great case studies – Northern Feather manufactures Snuggledown bedware and Invu’s purchase order, sales order and delivery note solution has been described by Financial Controller Brian Wilcox as “transformational”. Also in the North West, Tony Collier, managing partner at Milner Boardman accountants, tells us about the effect of going paperless and the print savings the practice has seen. 

InsideVu is a quarterly roundup of news, adding to our website, twitter and blog. You can sign up to receive future issues here.

Get Match Fit!

It’s so easy for us to lose contact with each other! Businesses may nurture their relationship with suppliers and service providers and many of us start off aiming to do so, but often good intentions lapse. With software this is normally countered with updates and communications. However, this doesn’t always give you that objective when your investing in a solution rather than a commodity. Many of Invu’s partners bridge this divide but we’re aware that this doesn’t always happen so we’re stepping in.

If you’re an Invu customer it may have been a little while since you began using Invu. As time moves on we all change - your business may have changed and Invu solutions certainly have. Increasingly, we’re seeing more and more customers who want to see how they can work even more effectively. We’re therefore offering a free half-day Health Check with one of our consultants*.

We can dig a little deeper into the pain points in your business and get an idea of your business processes. Often, documents are a manifestation of your processes but can also represent a contribution towards hidden costs and degradations in productivity. Hearing about your business and the way you work, understanding how you currently use Invu and raising awareness of the wider functionality of Invu, we’ve been able to realise even greater rewards for existing customers. We’ve seen:

•        More savings in time, resources and costs.

•        Better customer & supplier service

•        Compliance peace of mind

So - can you improve the way you work? Take our challenge - call us to book a free Health Check 01604 859893 or sign up here.01604 859893 or sign up here.