Zoho CRM plays an integral role in governing a US-based tax and accounting firm's expeditious growth

Key results:

• Adoption rate100%
• Implementation time6 months
• Savings$300,000 annually

The company

In 2011, William D. King began his own tax and accounting firm with nine members and a vision to help physicians in the United States prosper. Today, Accountants and Business Advisors (ABA) has grown to 133 employees serving over 3,000 clients across the U.S.

ABA primarily focuses on tax minimization strategies and proprietary cash flow statements for physicians, dentists, veterinarians, and small businesses. Its cash flow statement sets it apart from other accounting firms in the country. ABA places great importance on communicating with its clients and making sure they truly have a comprehensive understanding of how to support owners in the management of their business. Traditional financials are difficult to follow for most small businesses, which is what makes the cash flow statement that ABA developed unique.

The challenge

As years went by, ABA grew much quicker than expected, and the company knew they could no longer rely on outdated legacy systems with siloed components to run their business processes. ABA sought a solution that could replace those systems, and allow the team to internally share information swiftly. In short, the goal was to set the company up for the growth it had been experiencing, along with the growth that was expected.

To tackle this challenge, ABA hired Robert Craig, Chief Operating Officer. With extensive experience in implementing software systems, Craig knew that the first step involved collaboratively working with the team to identify pain points. Upon mapping out existing processes, Craig arrived at the conclusion that the software solutions targeted at accounting firms were inadequate and would not be able to meet the aspirations management had for the company.

The solution

Zoho CRM was an easy choice once the company put a finger on the challenges they needed to tackle.

Craig reached out to Zoho's committed partner network to facilitate the implementation process. Navigate CRM and Nimbis Designs worked together to deliver ABA what it was looking for, and assured that Zoho CRM could be completely customized to serve ABA's business needs.

The implementation took six months, followed by six months of training conducted by Craig.

Administering a complex process within a single platform

ABA's success and growth is truly one of a kind. ABA's main source of lead generation is through word-of-mouth referrals which typically arrive by email. By integrating Zoho Forms with Zoho CRM, leads are also generated through the forms on the company's website, and then pushed directly into the CRM system's Leads module. After the details are captured in CRM, with workflow rules in place, the lead is sent an agreement which they need to sign in order to proceed further. The integration with Zoho Sign enables ABA to get digital signatures from potential clients across the nation quickly and accelerate the business process.

Thanks to the integration with RingCentral, business advisors follow up with these leads via phone and follow a process to convert them into a client, which includes sending an engagement letter via Zoho Sign before collecting all the required documents.

Before deploying Zoho CRM, ABA followed a clunky process that involved PDFs and signed documents that had to be scanned and then faxed—just to achieve the same results. With Zoho CRM in place, these hurdles are gone.

An accounting firm as unique as ABA obviously needs a solution that is easily customizable. With Zoho CRM's flexibility, the team created a Client Services module and customized the Deals module to such an extent that they use it as the Jobs module. This makes it easier to track the services being provided and makes more sense for the individuals working on these deals. When a client requests more services, ABA prepares and sends engagements from this module.

To suit its business requirements, ABA has built nearly 10 custom modules to track certain aspects of clients: for instance, a module that houses PCI compliances that only certain personnel can access based on their profile and permissions, an onboarding module that leverages client information to ensure internal flow of communication until the client is onboarded, and so on.

Facilitating integrations to avoid silos

With the integration between Zoho Projects and Zoho CRM, once a client's details are entered in the Deals module, a project automatically kicks off with the correct team assignments. This seamless integration leaves no room for internal miscommunication, as the information is perfectly captured in CRM and is accessible to the entire company. The process is kept intact and in order. Currently, ABA manages 10,000 active projects in the system, with 30,000 completed projects.

Once the project is completed, the billing team takes over. ABA connects Zoho Subscriptions with CRM and Projects to carry out the final step in this process: billing recurring revenue clients and recurring monthly billing clients. Currently, QuickBooks serves as the financial backend for ABA. The company bills over 7,500 clients annually through QuickBooks, and achieves a holistic picture of the clients' projects through its integration with Zoho CRM.

This thorough and complex automation process among various integrations is made possible by Zoho Flow.

Increasing client satisfaction with a unified customer portal

To enable efficient coordination with its clients, ABA needed a secure method of seamlessly transferring client documents and information. Catalyst Connect, a Premium Zoho Partner, implemented an integrated client portal solution that enables clients to securely log in to the portal directly through the company's website. Clients use this portal as a one-stop shop to manage their accounts and contacts with ABA, submit and manage support tickets, and securely submit all their documents come tax season. The portal facilitates the transfer of over 150,000 documents per year at ABA.

Comprehensive understanding of the business

By integrating Zoho CRM with Zoho Analytics, ABA enjoys detailed insights on KPIs. The team tracks their number of service-level clients, monthly reports, and tax returns being prepared, as well as each one's status, the number of reviews completed on a daily basis, IRS deadlines—the list goes on.

Going above and beyond to meet requirements

Though ABA was able to achieve what it needed out of the system, the company took a step further and enhanced its usage of the features and integrations to identify common pain points and find solutions for them within the system.

With Zoho Creator, ABA has created multiple bespoke applications to operate its business process: for instance, the client meeting app. Business advisors meet their clients every quarter to assist them and ensure they're on track with tax minimization strategies. ABA has approximately 4,000 client meetings per year, and it's vital that these meetings and the preparation of client reports are well-coordinated. By integrating Creator with CRM and Projects, this information is communicated internally.

External stakeholder communication is crucial to the team, too; clients need to be informed of tax changes and updates regularly. The team needed a way to notify all clients about changes instantly that often includes integrated engagement letters for additional client services. Within three hours, the team curates the information using an email template and automatically sends mass emails out to clients, thanks also to the integration with Microsoft Outlook. "That's unprecedented for an accounting firm," says Craig.