I'm Chris. I'm the founder of Collective Concepts. We are a proactive accountancy team where we kind of really want to help clients and provide really useful insights so we can add value and not just look at what happened in the past, but really provide add value and additional value from what they may get from more of a compliance only accountant. So, one of the pain points we particularly found is when we're working on a particular client job, if someone new picked it up, they would just look at the spreadsheet of last year and copy good or bad habits.
And what we were finding is we weren't being consistent in our in our processes. So, we were looking to find a find a solution really. Whatever level of the person who was working on that particular client was able to follow a minimum standard, which in turn makes us more efficient, more effective, and able to spend more time adding value to our clients. So, I think what we're looking for with Silverfin is we're looking for a solution where we're able to scale up and grow with a particular platform without the pain points of manual spreadsheets.
We were looking for a software solution to help us with consistency around the work that we did for our clients. So, we were very much reliant on spreadsheets and what we found here, it was very consistent pretend on the user that was using the spreadsheets. What we want to do is to bring consistencies and gather data from Xero and other platforms in one place. So, when we were doing our working papers or management accounts, we were all starting at the same base and be able to more efficient in the work we were doing.
We'll go into a market for find a solution like Silver fin to be able to scale and grow and be able to have those efficiencies from day one. So, as our business was only set up in twenty twenty two, we're very clear in terms of what we're trying to achieve in terms of having a clear process in from day one. So one of the biggest frustrations we had was the inconsistency of work and I could review someone's work and then the next day they would do it in a different way. So there weren't standardized processes and ways that we did it.
There wasn't a collective concept way of doing things And with spreadsheets, it was very much you could have a user does it one way because they've done it for five years this way and another user that was doing completely different. I think a lot of firms in the same boat really, you just use spreadsheets. And when I started, it was, you know, paper and pen client files, lot more manual. So, I think kind of, you know, over the last twenty years, we've seen a shift from, you know, paper to definitely excel to now looking at more efficient efficient ways.
And I think because costs of hiring staff have gone up now as a a kind of practice owner, you can't just add a person to a process and hope that will solve the problem. You need to kind of look at software and the efficiencies you get with software that you may not get with just adding another person. We want our accounts done. We want our management accounts.
We want some to good tax advice. They don't care how we produce their accounts for example. So, still think was able to ensure that we're spending the right amount of time on the important things and decreasing the time we're spending on compliance activities like accounts production. I think along those lines of kind of, you know, a free agent or a zero, Silverthin kind of dovetails into the bookkeeping platform very well.
And I think what you tend to find the bookkeeping system is good at the transactional stuff, but it doesn't set process. It doesn't set systems. It doesn't set the way that we do our work. And that's the thing we want to be very clear is we wanted to do it in a certain way.
So, whether we have ten clients, a hundred clients, a thousand clients, all of them get the same end result in terms of speed, in terms of how we produce work within our SLAs, but also in terms of we know that this work will take us this amount of time and that will always stay the same. I think after working with Silpen for three months, we've gone through our onboarding period. We really understood the software really well and we found it as part of the team really. It was a really important part in everything that we do and now we're looking back to it.
We couldn't live without it. But you have to go through the first kind of couple of months in terms of change, learning the systems, getting everyone on board And, what was important is that we all move to it at the same time and there was no kind of half measures. They all feel massively helped in terms of when we're recruiting new staff, they can get quickly on board the way that we do things. So whether we're employing like a trainee or a qualified accountant, they will have habits they would picked up from previous jobs.
And what we found is they wanted to do things in the way they've always done things. So this was an easy way to ensure that we're doing things in kind of that collective concept way, in a nice easy way about loads of your extra training manuals because you have to stick to a certain way of doing things. It really is that consistency and approach around scaling up. Because if you've got a pain point around particular part of the process, as you grow and you have new staff, you're always gonna have that pain point there gets bigger and bigger.
And what we've found is when we hired our first member of staff without Silverfin, they wanted to have their own spreadsheet templates. And you end up approach where they had their spreadsheet template. I had mine and then the end result was it was taking longer. Longer for me because I had to get used to their templates and longer for them because I was trying to push them in a different By having Silverfin, it meant that we both had to do things in the same way, which meant we were both doing it the collective concepts way, which was really valuable in terms of that efficiency piece.
Silverfin was really great at was providing consistency when we're using an outsourced team. So, you know, having a team next to you has its own challenges in terms of consistency and making sure they're doing things the same way. But when you got an outsourced team that's remote, we're finding that the consistency piece in terms of, well, why did you do that spreadsheet in that certain way? By making them do it in a certain way of a certain template, we found that was one of the biggest advantages we found with Silverfin.
Really hard to put a time on it, I guess, in terms of, you know, the manager level, the junior level. But what I would say definitely, they're able to work with on more things at once. So instead of maybe working on, you know, three, four set of accounts at the same time, they're now working on like a minimum of ten at a time, which means they're able to adapt because sometimes you do half a job and they need some information from a client, you have to stop. But knowing that you've got another five or six jobs going on in an easy to get to way, you're able to have those gaps in a more efficient way.
One of the benefits using Silverfin is the ability to not become a bottleneck and able to delegate work. So whether you're on your way on holiday, you've a staff member sick, someone else can pick up the work because the file was there with all the notes. They were to pick it up and because our, you know, processes are standardised, it means anyone could pick up that job and they know what to do, what to expect. One of the things that Silphing really helps is finding information quickly.
So for example, we may be looking for a certain piece of information to answer a client question such as what my dividends worth last year and what we found is that different members of the team were struggling to find that data quickly by having all in one clean digital working papers we found we can find information a lot more quickly because they knew where everything was. One of our managers, Shri, he found it particularly useful when he's doing his manager reviews. So when he was reviewing the work of juniors, he found the process in terms of providing feedback, review points was far more efficient because it was all within a closed system.
So instead of finding, you know, points within a spreadsheets or in different systems, all of his feedback to the junior was in one place, which means that we're able to give better feedback to our juniors in a more quicker way. And because we it's all within one digital file, we're able to list the queries in one place and by tag as well. And likewise, when I'm doing a partner review, what we found is my partner reviews were listed here. The manager reviews were listed there and it's really clean and easy to see where we're at.
And I think that was the the best thing about it was the communication around it. You know, Excel doesn't have a communication. You can't chat someone so much on an Excel sheet. But with this, you're able to combine to kind of a team's element, a chat facility, as well as being able to tag your questions and notes, which meant everything was kept within that client file as well.
So later on, if you had a question, you know, a year after the event, we're able to go into the file and quickly find the answers.
We've been able to embed kind of service level agreements with our clients in terms of, keeping them accountable, but also keeping us accountable. So, for example, like for our management accounts, we want them to be done within two weeks. And because we've got the templates already there, the process to do the management accounts templates is far quicker because you're not just, you know, getting a spreadsheet and then altering it and spending hours and hours. You've already got the file already half done for you because it's pulling the information.
So I think that's the biggest thing with clients is able to be more efficient and able to turn around work in a far more quicker way. There's less kind of, you know, setting up time and they're able to go into it straight away and also move between client and client quite quickly. Time saving is important, but actually looking at the work we're doing. So, we want to spend more time adding value.
So, we don't get bogged down in kind of the non add value task. We want to spend more time, you know, helping clients, giving them the advice. So, therefore, when we're looking at things like working papers, we want to minimize the time it takes from that. So, we're able to spend more time with the more important things that the clients really value.
I think, Certolfill will help us massively as we grow. So, one of our future goals to have multi site offices. And I think by having that consistent process with more than one office, I think that will massively help our kind of meet our goals going forward. And without having Silverfin, we would find it really hard to do that.
I think kind of as a young ambitious owner, you're always looking about, well, you know, what's the next year about what's your future plans and scaling and having pain points is one of the things that scares me a little bit. And able to kind of add people, add more clients into a process.
You don't want additional pain points, you don't want your margins dropping by utilizing Silverfin will really help that. So, Silverfin is able to future proof our business because as we grow, we're able to scale and we're able to add more people, hire more staff and we've got confidence they're gonna keep to the same process is. I think using Silverfin has been really beneficial to our business. If you're thinking about moving something like Silverfin, you just need to do it. If you kind of just wait, I'll do it next month, I'll do it next year. That will never happen. You just need to kind of write, we're starting it from this date and we're just gonna do it because the benefits that we had after going through that three month pay period were very very large indeed.
