Real World CRM Case Study: How Ron Rowell CPA Connects With Their Customers Using Cerado
24 June 2005
DaWayne Rowell wears many hats as partner and senior accountant at the family firm of Ron Rowell CPA in Gresham, Oregon. According to DaWayne, the old accountant is a thing of the past. New accountants must be flexible and be willing to embrace change and technology. DaWayne’s tasks include managing employees to make sure deadlines and quality control are met, but he also acts as consultant, professional advisor and trainer to Ron Rowell’s clients.
Ron Rowell CPA is a 30-year-old family firm. They take care of small to medium businesses’ accounting needs, whether that means the accounting training, processing tax returns, professional advisory services or full payroll services.
The business has changed markedly in the past 30 years. In addition to “traditional” accounting tasks, accountants at Ron Rowell now log plenty of hours training a flood of customers who have discovered they aren’t able to use off-the-shelf accounting packages such as QuickBooks effectively without additional knowledge and skills. DaWayne also trains clients on other independent in-house accounting systems.
Even though the firm prepares over 1,000 tax returns every year, the firm has branched out into other areas of service, such as payroll processing. The payroll side of their business is growing quickly and encompasses about 30% of their practice, as well as half their staff. The firms process payroll for over 130 companies in their local area, and this number continues to grow.
In addition to wearing his accounting and payroll hats, DaWayne manages the telemarketing staff that works off a very competitive bidding schedule to create relationships with payroll customers. Growing the payroll business is critical to the firm’s growth, and follow through, accuracy and record keeping are critical to that effort. To improve the process, DaWayne is using Cerado’s Sales Force Information Service to manage Ron Rowell’s leads and prospects.
The company had used GoldMine for several years, but found it was very complicated to run and when seasonal employees were in house, they had access to Ron Rowell’s entire database; something DaWayne wasn’t comfortable with.
Making the transition from GoldMine to Cerado’s Sales Force Information Service was easy. According to DaWayne, it acts very much like GoldMine as far as functionality, but is much easier to train on; one day as opposed to several weeks.
There are a number of other significant differences as well. Cerado’s system allows for richer mail merging and history tracking than Goldmine. Telemarketing personnel can keep detailed notes on conversations that have been held with customers, so the accountant who follows up can capitalize on what has been said or focus on a special interest the prospect may have.
Cerado’s Sales Force Information Service is a hosted or “on-demand” CRM service. DaWayne estimates that to upgrade GoldMine would have cost Ron Rowell CPA approximately five to six thousand dollars in equipment charges alone, not to mention people to do the upgrade. With Cerado, however, all Ron Rowell needs is an Internet workstation with no expensive hardware or software, which is one of the biggest advantages. The system is always upgraded. It’s always fresh. It’s always being backed up. All Ron Rowell CPA has to have is the Internet. This allows DaWayne and the telemarketing staff flexibility to work from home or to work while traveling without losing functionality. “I don’t have to spend time fixing any problems and as long as we have Internet access, the system runs,” says Rowell.
Cerado’s Sales Force Information Service is passing DaWayne’s and the firm’s usability test due to the quality of the leads they’re getting. The system allows Rowell’s staff to capture rich information on their conversations with customers, and the system takes a lot of the guesswork out of the follow up process. For example, Rowell’s staff can easily determine who in the system is a client and who is a prospect, a statistic the firm has never had before.
Since using Cerado’s system, the follow up and quality of the leads Ron Rowell CPA has been getting have “been phenomenal.”
DaWayne has also noticed an increase in clients coming in. “We now get probably five conferences a week where, in the past, we may not have had any. We’re probably at a 40% success rate…and I attribute it to Cerado’s Sales Force Information Service. The system is feeding us information regarding our new clients. It’s building our payroll firm and building our CPA firm.”
More information about Cerado's Sales Force Information Service can be found at: http://www.cerado.com/solutions03.asp
More information on Cerado can found at http://www.cerado.com
The latest Cerado news can always be found at http://news.cerado.com
Cerado™ is a trademark of Cerado, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Source: PR Web
All trademarks and copyrighted information contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
Related Articles
|
