Aware of the need to move with the times and embrace enhanced technology and the need to continually improve levels of customer service, the region's professional firms are showing that innovation is not a term exclusive to the hi-tech industries.
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Aware of the need to move with the times and embrace enhanced technology and the need to continually improve levels of customer service, the region's professional firms are showing that innovation is not a term exclusive to the hi-tech industries. Jim Simpson reports.
The region's professional services sector is pioneering new approaches to delivering its products to improve both value for money and convenience to clients. Sometimes this is by packaging the services in a more cost-effective way but in many cases it means taking advantage of new technology.
Anthony Elston, partner at Leeds accountancy firm Baker Tilly, speaks for many when he says: "Clients expect more value for money than they ever did, everyone wants more bang for their buck and we're all under pressure to keep up with the times."
ADDLESHAW GODDARD
Law firm Addleshaw Goddard has taken the unusual step of venturing into television with its own channel. Its employment group has launched the Employment Channel, which allows subscribers access to employment news as well as training programmes in the form of television-style broadcasts delivered by employment lawyers.
The Employment Channel is a web-based, news and legal training subscription service broadcast through Addleshaw Goddard's website, once technical links have been established with subscribers by the firm's IT department. Vertex, a leading technology-based business process outsourcing company and client of Addleshaw Goddard, was the first to pilot the channel.
Vertex HR director Hilary Campbell says: "This is an effective means for companies like ours to keep up to speed on employment issues and provide high-quality training for our employees. We see this as a cost-effective development that will enhance our ability to improve our training."
eversheds
Eversheds has developed its own e-learning product - the Competition Law Online Toolkit - so employers can ensure that employees are equipped to comply with the strict Competition and Enterprise Acts. The Enterprise Act came in last June. It could see directors disqualified for up to 15 years if their company breaches either UK or EU competition law and individuals involved in cartels going to prison for up to five years. The toolkit is a fully interactive product that gives companies the ability to roll out compliance training. It uses everyday business language and case studies, tailored to the needs of individual organisations.
One early customer is RMC, the cement and concrete supplier. Michael Collins, head of legal and company secretary at RMC, says: "We have a large and dispersed workforce that needs to be trained. Historically we have used traditional classroom methods but with up to 600 affected employees this is not always easy - people can be away and new starters may miss out."
cobbetts
Cobbetts has also employed online technology to deliver training on legal issues - this time to cope with the new laws governing money laundering. Training on recognising and dealing with transactions that might be related to money laundering is now a legal requirement for solicitors, bankers, insurers, estate agents, those working in bureaux de change and people dealing in large cash sales of goods.
Called Cachet, the training package is accessed via an internet link to the firm's virtual training centre. At their own pace users work through six modules covering the extent of the money laundering problem, the UK laws on money laundering and how to avoid committing offences, followed by quizzes to reinforce the knowledge gained.
dla
Law firm DLA is another to offer online legal services, principally ClientZone, a secure, personalised portal providing clients with direct access to live DLA documents, to online deal rooms and other web collaboration spaces, and to the firm's online products including HRexclusive. This is the first industry-specific portal to DLA services. It provides a dashboard through which HR clients can access online DLA resources.
Hammonds.
The employment team at Hammonds has taken a similar approach by introducing a dedicated extranet service via www.hammondsHR.com. Hammonds partner Mark Shrives says: "It contains the most up-to-date information on all aspects of employment law from legislation, including codes of practice and consultation papers, to case reports and news items of interest."
Clients can also solve their own employment problems through self-diagnosis flow charts or consult specialists via the site."
Clients also receive notification of daily updates to the site via email.
walker morris
Law firm Walker Morris has taken a different route, using online technology to enable its clients to monitor fees and time recording. Clients are given complete access to records and can track progress on matters through their internet access channel, which is called reach... Clients can access the teams working on their matters and their own intranet knowledge base. They are able to receive up-to-date legal know-how directly related to their own areas of interest generated delivered via email directly to their desktop. Clients can also create their own bespoke document library and virtual client rooms, which can be expanded into project portals for specific matters.
Walker Morris has also developed an internet-based service for landlords of properties let on residential tenancies, called Freehome. This enables instructions to be sent to the firm via the internet. Clients are also able to track when a property becomes vacant, which has significant cost implications in terms of potential vandalism and re-letting of properties.
pwc
But law firms are not alone in seeking online solutions to clients' needs. Accountancy PwC has developed an innovative web-based client programme, PwCinform, for UK and international financial reporting, offering real-time information 24 hours a day, and a time-saving single source for accounting and auditing research and training. It secured 7,000 registered users over the past year.
A further 16,000 subscribed to the new PwC Portal, offering clients access to experts, solutions, tools, research and analysis.
PwC won best tax website at the LexisNexis Tax Awards for innovation, design, navigability and practicality of content. The firm developed its DrivingAmbition client care programme providing ambitious companies with access to the breadth and depth of PwC's ideas and solutions.
ernst & young
Ernst & Young has also developed several online products in response to the need to prepare all listed companies for the transition to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) from 2005. For example, the GAAP Difference Identifier Tool (GDIT) is a web-based initiative that involves the client, in partnership with Ernst & Young, going through 70 questions on an internet site, which takes around half a day. The process then outputs a relatively high-level report that uses a traffic light analogy to illustrate its diagnosis of the difference between the company's current reporting mechanism and IFRS requirements.
The firm has also produced a completely interactive online system that allows a client to log onto its own bespoke secure site and drill down to see, in real time, what stage its tax computations are at anywhere around the globe. Clients can also ask questions online to appropriate Ernst & Young specialists who can add value to the pure figures in the computations.
PKF
PKF is another accountancy firm to make use of the improved power of information technology but has employed it to tackle a specific problem - overpayment and fraud. It is launching an electronic data mining service called PKF Finder. This searches and analyses data and transactions on purchase ledgers, for corporates and other organisations with large or complex purchasing functions.
The software highlights cost savings by identifying potential duplicate invoices and payments, errors in the treatment of VAT and fraud risks such as invalid VAT numbers or multiple suppliers operating from the same address.
PKF says the tool identifies anomalies in purchase ledger data by cross-referencing both the standing data on suppliers and the details of every transaction over a given period using over 50 tests developed from PKF's experience of investigating fraud, error and VAT irregularities.
KPMG
KPMG has also produced a software package aimed at dealing with a single issue - in this case that most beloved of employee benefits, the company car. CarWISE is a bespoke software package for financial modelling of car fleets that can test out up to 17 different ways of funding to arrive at the one which best suits the business's needs. The product incorporates an intranet/internet-based questionnaire tool that not only gathers the financial modelling data but also employee opinions and preferences as to the current car scheme and what they would like to see in the future.
Mark Allen, senior consultant for remuneration services at KPMG, Leeds, says: "We identified savings of over £313 million whilst still covering numerous possible options for the car fleet for one particular client."
irwin mitchell
Some advisers are also looking at ways of packaging their services to make them more attractive to clients. Irwin Mitchell, for instance, has put together a package for HR departments to handle the ever-increasing amount of employment law and regulation.
Called imhr+, the service includes tribunal claims handling and awards insurance, contract reviews and online updating and guidance on all key issues. Available for an agreed annual fee, based on a company's payroll and size of workforce, the service offers an alternative to paying solicitors by the hour, as subscribers will be able to manage both risk and cost.
The service is being launched in the wake of hefty increases in the amounts paid out in tribunal awards and other employment legislation. The maximum award for unfair dismissal is now £355,000 and the highest weekly wage for calculating redundancy payments £3270. These changes were introduced just weeks after new legislation added religious discrimination to other grounds of complaint for which employers can face unlimited liability.
deloitte
Accountants Deloitte has developed a number of integrated market offerings (IMOs) that bring together different specialists to resolve clients' complex problems. Les Platts, senior partner in the Leeds office of Deloitte, says: "By taking an integrated approach to the client's business concern, we aim to match solutions from across our services - audit, tax, consulting and corporate finance. The appropriate mix of these services can be applied to any business, whatever stage it has reached in its development.
"For instance, Deloitte has been successful at an approach around making deals work, that is providing support for a business from the birth of an idea, through to its implementation and aftermath.
An example of how Deloitte's integrated approach works is regional development agency Yorkshire Forward's appointment of the firm's specialist regional development consulting practice to deliver a programme of business and financial support to bioscience businesses in the region. Deloitte will develop bespoke business development tools for new businesses being spun out of university research centres. It will also provide financial and advisory services to expanding companies.
For the programme, Deloitte has teamed up with law firm Eversheds, which will provide contractual and intellectual property advice.
baker tilly
Another accountancy firm, Baker Tilly, has produced a series of one-day products in which key staff and board members spend a day with Baker Tilly experts discussing single issues such as profit improvement, retirement planning or strategic planning. In a strategic planning day, for instance, senior staff establish where they want their businesses to be in two, five or even ten years time, with the help of Baker Tilly's specialist advisers.
Senior manager Anthony Elston says: "Business owners often struggle to find time to formulate a clear strategic plan because of day-to-day operational issues. If they do have a plan, it is often outdated, particularly if the company has been through a rapid period of growth. The strategic planning day is a structured day away from the distractions of the office where our specialist advisers ask the right questions at the right time to help business owners define a clear direction and with an agreed vision.
"What we're seeing is a shift in emphasis from the usual bread and butter work like audit and tax, on to more innovative, creative business solutions. Obviously we will always deliver basic professional services like this, but there's definitely now a demand for something more."
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
Broadband for the masses
Sheffield-based PlusNet has announced plans to transform the way in which broadband is made available to the UK consumer, providing increased choice for home and business, and assuring low prices for end users with modest bandwidth requirements.
The far-reaching broadband options have been made possible thanks to a well-received proposal by BT Wholesale outlining the way in which service providers can pay for IPStream ADSL broadband services based on their utilised network bandwidth, an option known as capacity charging.
Announced in January 2004 and with pricing confirmed at the beginning of May, the capacity-based charging model's flexibility will allow PlusNet to continue leading the market with a series of innovative products.
Marco Potesta, marketing director at PlusNet, said: "Capacity-based charging means we can deliver entry-level broadband products at prices directly equivalent to today's standard dial access. Developments like this, combined with BT's commitment to extending broadband coverage across the UK, mean we can expect to see high-speed internet access become the standard. PlusNet is bringing forward the day when the majority connect to the internet via broadband - leading the way with low-cost solutions that make cost-effective sense for the end user."
PlusNet, however, regards the BT-imposed cost of service activation as the single biggest block to mass acceptance of broadband.
"The real thing that is preventing mass take-up of broadband so far is the disproportionate cost of getting started," said Potesta. "BT Wholesale's £350 activation fee is an immense barrier that we would like to see removed. Ofcom must act to see that the fee is either completely removed or considerably reduced. Only when this is done will we see broadband take-up double in the UK."
At the beginning of May PlusNet launched the first of its products to be based on capacity charging. Broadband Home Lite priced at £314.99 per month, provides a one gigabyte monthly bandwidth allowance and the flexibility to purchase additional bandwidth.
Bioscience arrival
Inward investment agency york-england.com has heralded the arrival of a new bioscience company to the region.
Yorkshire Bioscience is an innovative start-up company that has moved to the Biocentre on York Science Park.
Dr Slava Pavlovets, a Russian biotechnologist, has moved from London to York to create the new company, which will be a primary manufacturer and supplier of reagents and consumables to the bioscience community in the UK as well as providing comprehensive research services.
Yorkshire Bioscience will employ highly skilled scientists with experience in academia and industry and Pavlovets already cites customers in hospitals, industry, and universities. He explained that the company is leading the trend towards buying-in of services in biotech research in the UK.
Pavlovets said: "We can save researchers' time, money and effort by providing products such as nucleic acids, proteins and nucleotides - the essential "fuels" for much laboratory work such as DNA manipulation, gene expression, genetic or somatic disorder diagnostics, specific proteins detection, cell culture works, etc. This allows the researchers to concentrate in their own specialist areas."
Dave Taylor, marketing director of york-england.com, said: "Pavlovets first showed his research skill to me when choosing York as the location for his business. He had visited most of the UK's bioscience clusters to find the optimum solution for a combination of research excellence, access to his target markets, laboratory facilities and the quality of life."
Gained in translation
The future is proving to be bright for Wakefield-based Web-Translations. After an award-winning 2003 it is now a finalist in the North East presentations for the best use of technology in the National Business Awards.
Web-Translations won a number of awards in 2003 that recognised its innovation and success in delivering a product to help UK companies trade abroad by translating and adapting their websites to make them suitable for non-English speaking visitors. Communication is achieved through voice over internet protocol, email and instant messaging.
Daniel Rajkumar, managing director at Web-Translations, said: "We are delighted to have been nominated for such a prestigious award, especially as there are so many well established national companies involved.
We are enjoying a successful 2004 and our upcoming promotions in Athens are demonstrating our desire to be as international as our clients."
FAST 50 ANNUAL DINNER DATE
The Deloitte Fast 50 Awards annual dinner for the North of England takes place at the Midland Hotel in Manchester on Tuesday September 21.
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