Ensors is one of East Anglia’s oldest firms of Chartered Accountants with over 130 years’ experience of all aspects of accounting. The firm has six offices across East Anglia and one in London, with over 300 employees, including 21 Partners.
The Challenge
The firm had identified inefficiencies and inconsistencies in its client onboarding process, particularly in generating engagement letters. Recognising the need for a streamlined approach, they set out to explore how technology could improve efficiency, reduce manual workload, and create a more seamless experience for both clients and internal teams.
The TiPS Project
The firm collaborated with Strategiq to conduct a mapping exercise, analysing existing workflows across different departments. This exercise highlighted variations in onboarding practices and identified best practices for a standardised approach. The exercise was crucial to the success of the project because it provided an opportunity to gather valuable feedback from accountants, helping to prioritise must-have features versus nice-to-have elements in an onboarding solution. It also allowed buy-in to be secured from users of the solution and concerns to be highlighted and addressed as part of the adoption process.
The firm selected Socket/Uniify as the preferred technology solution. The solution was used to automate key elements of the onboarding process, such as proposal generation, pricing assistance, and engagement letter creation.
Impact and Outcomes
The TiPS project provided a chance to take a more structured approach to technology adoption. A key impact was enhanced collaboration and communication among stakeholders—particularly between Partners and IT professionals, to ensure the chosen technology aligns with the firm’s strategic vision and needs. Additionally, the approach fostered stronger appreciation and engagement with the IT team, creating better lines of communication. One Partner acknowledged that the firm had historically viewed IT as a service rather than an enabler of business growth, but that perception shifted as a result of effective engagement between different stakeholders.
The TiPS project also laid the foundation for future innovation, providing a methodology for adoption projects, particularly focusing attention on the firm on ensuring that technological adoption aligns with the firm’s long-term strategy and professionals’ needs.
Lessons Learned
- Set the strategy – technology should be chosen with the bigger picture in mind, ensuring alignment with firm-wide goals. For Ensors, this meant taking the time to align technology adoption plans with the firm’s strategy, ensuring the board understood the link between strategy and technology adoption, and the prioritisation of projects that addressed the biggest opportunities for the firm, its partners and professionals and its clients.
- Communication drives success. The TiPS project marked a step change in how Ensors managed communications relating to technology projects. This began by bridging the gap between the IT team and the firm’s leadership as part of a process of engaging the board and partners in conversations about innovation. Through the appointment of a CTO and the building of clearer lines of communication and engagement around technology adoption, projects became more visible and involved active collaboration between the IT team and professionals.
- Enhanced approaches to technology adoption in the long term. The TiPS project sets the stage for future technology adoption projects at Ensors. The lessons learned provide foundations for a new approach to technology adoption that better meets the needs of the firm and its stakeholders. A dedicated team, which includes members of the IT team, partners and other stakeholders, is now in place to lead effective technology adoption projects in the future.
Conclusion
By leveraging technology in a thoughtful, strategic way, the firm is transforming its approach to client onboarding, ensuring efficiency, consistency, and a more seamless experience for both internal teams and clients alike.
Testimonials
“It has been a massive success. The buy into IT projects going forward will be much, much greater.” – Mark Hewitson, Ensors
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