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| Headline: | Great Software |
| Description: | IRIS – Global Practice Management |
| Review: | IRIS – Global Practice Management
IRIS was founded in 1978 and the company’s independent status was secured in 2000 when venture capitalists Lloyds TSB Development Capital made a substantial investment in the software house to support its ambitious growth plans. IRIS software (used by 7000 + accountants in practice plus 14000 + SME customers) is 32 bit and compatible with 95, 98, ME, 2000 and XP. In addition IRIS has the highest retention figures in the industry, currently standing at 98%. IRIS Global Practice Management is a module within the IRIS product suite and because it is integrated, it can link client data with staff workflow, time and billing activities along with financial information about the client from accounts production, personal tax and business tax. It consists of three major elements, workflow, statutory compliance and client relationship management. The workflow system combines Task Management and Job Tracking (Deadline Management). Tasks are allocated to individual staff members, giving them a priority level and these are displayed at logon. Each partner can view a summary display for individuals or produce a task management report which draws the attention to overdue job stages. This is of particular benefit to the practice tax department and ensures statutory compliance intelligently sweeping the client database for looming deadlines and picking them out for staff to action to avoid penalties. All the modules within these elements are related and share the same IRIS central database. Because IRIS does not rely on passing information between modules it provides its users with considerable time savings and ensures accuracy as there is no need to re-enter data. This removes any chance of data-mismatches between the sub-systems. The new data mining facility is usually only found in expensive commercial CRM packages and allows the practice to segment clients by key financial criteria held on personal tax returns and statutory and management accounts. The results can then be fed into IRIS’s own correspondence module, AutoMail, to produce mailings and emails automatically. This will allow practices to generate significant extra income through a more proactive approach. Support There are trained accountants and technical specialists manning the support desk. This is the reason why they have a high rate of same call solutions and an average 40 second call waiting time. Security There is a secure log-in process with user name and password. This provides a secure gateway that controls user rights and permissions for the individual member of staff. Access to sensitive information, such as outstanding monies etc, can be limited to senior staff by the system administrator. Robustness The IRIS accounts production, personal and business tax, time and fees and payroll products were found to have amongst the lowest levels of business critical failure in the recent ICAEW survey into IT usage in accountancy practices 2002. Flexibility A ‘report builder’ allows customisation of report formats. In addition, data can be exported directly into Microsoft Excel or Word for further analysis. Product day-to-day overview Day by day usage revolves around the predefined customisable list of basic work flow stages. These stages can be changed, added to or deleted to suit how we work as a firm and crucial stages are automatically ticked as completed by other IRIS programs. A date is entered onto the system for when a stage should be completed so, for example, if a member of staff ticks off the stage to say that the accounts are ready for review, a partner is informed automatically that this has happened and will be given a date by which this should be achieved! In the past if a note or phone call came in affecting client work, for example, a missing figure from a tax return, then a copy/phone note or email would be given to the person involved. Now however, a note or “task� can be added to the job as a whole or even to an individual stage of the job, and it is automatically notified to the relevant person. Simple screens or reports can be displayed/printed at anytime showing the current state of play on all or selected clients’ work. These will show work still awaited, work scheduled and individual stages reached on work started, as well as outstanding issues (tasks) and stages that are due to be completed in the near future. Paul Scholes of the CSL Partnership, a three partner firm said in August 2002 “We now no longer have to maintain several client lists or databases. IRIS is now the heart of everything ‘client’. Consequently if a client changes their address it gets entered once and is then available, not only to the other IRIS programs, such as accounts production and personal tax but is live for any client listings we want to produce, for news letters, accounts chasers, correspondence and even emails.� We now rarely have to have meetings! We are able to stay in control of work, anticipating problems rather than reacting to them and, above all, having far more time available to provide additional or enhanced services or just to go home. |
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| Drawbacks: |  |
| Price (GBP): | 1495 |
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