A quick and simple setup at PwC for Entrepreneurs Paris

A quick and simple setup at PwC for Entrepreneurs Paris

The Beeye Team - Feb 8, 2022 6:03:33 AM

Project management Time Management Capacity management Best practices Management tools

 

SMBs, customers with high expectations

Working with SMBs requires specific skills and knowledge where flexibility, availability and responsiveness are essential. Customer needs are always a priority, and even if they do not require much time from your employees, the sheer volume of tasks that need to be completed can make planning optimization very difficult.

« In the accounting industry, we deal with many tasks that need to be completed in a day or two. For example, a tax verification or an administrative audit that requires an immediate response to the client. »
Marie-Christine Dura-Cayron, Project manager at PwC for Entrepreneurs
(now PKF Arsilon)

SMB managers expect a great deal from their accountants, who for the most part are their primary advisors. They ask for regular communication, greater sensitivity, and a more human relationship than large enterprises. To meet these requirements, determination is not enough. Planning must be managed both effectively and flexibly.

 

Planning issues

« The best planning has to consider several factors, the most important being deadlines. You have to make the customer happy while ensuring employee well-being. If an employee is assigned too many tasks, this will never work,
even for the best! »

The peak work periods that are recurrent in the accounting industry make this even more challenging. When you have to deal with delays and due dates, it's not unusual to see people working on 3 to 4 projects simultaneously. This not sustainable.

PwC for Entrepreneurs’ office in Paris was using several tools to plan, from internal custom applications to Excel spreadsheets. These tools were inadequate, and the need for a fully integrated application grew stronger every day in order to effectively plan and assign tasks, handle conflicts in a timely manner, manage the different teams and track progress with customized dashboards and reports.

 

Beeye, a new way to plan tasks

After a year of using Beeye, PwC for Entrepreneurs have changed the way they plan their tasks. As Marie-Christine Dura-Cayron stated:

  • Beeye is a simple and collaborative application that let you see planning conflicts and how to solve them. The tool lets you access the list of available employees that understand the customer’s needs or have already worked with him. "We're still the decision-maker, but we have a major help to plan correctly."
  • We're more able to forecast instead of reacting to emergencies. Work is assigned without delay when possible, priorities are quickly identified, we can anticipate our need to hire more associates or external advisors.
  • Workload is better managed and reports let you easily analyse production capacity and identify periods of overwork or availability.

« We don't need to ask people what they are working on anymore. The planning gives us the answer immediately. »

  • Everyone is responsible for their own planning. Partners and managers are no longer the only ones managing planned hours. Everyone can now modify their own tasks, such as postponing or cancelling an activity. With new management rules, planning is always up to date.
  • Let's not forget the time saved by being able to create recurring planning for one or more employees in a few clicks.

 

Major benefits from Beeye:

  • A simple tool that lets you see what you have to do
  • A collaborative application where everybody can manage their own planning
  • A great user-experience with new ways to plan
  • A tracking system to provide comprehensive analytics on reports and dashboards
  • A better way to manage the firm by assessing staffing requirements, and forecasting profits in regards to future work
  • A tool that is adapted for accounting and audits
  • Less time spent planning, more to bill.

 

A quick and simple setup

  • April 2018: First conversation 
  • June 2018: With Beeye's quick start program, a group of partners and managers onboard the application to test and evaluate the customization they'll need 
  • Summer 2018: a connector was built to import monthly project and employee data from SAP into Beeye.  
  • October 2018: all the teams from PwC for Entrepreneurs Paris are now on Beeye. 

« Beeye is always listening to what we need. They are highly reactive and creative in adapting the product to our systems and issues. After the training, the application has been well-received by all employees. »

Right now, other offices from PwC are testing Beeye to plan and manage their tasks on a daily basis.

 

About PwC for Entrepreneurs Paris (now PKF Arsilon)

PwC for Entrepreneurs is a firm specialized in counseling, accounting and audit for SMBs. Its office in Paris is composed of 80 employees and 10 partners. PwC for Entrepreneurs counts more than 20 offices in the whole of France.  

In Paris, their tasks are split evenly between audit and accounting. They consist mainly of certification, consolidation, bookkeeping, revision, salaries, taxation... 

The variety of tasks, the workload, the requirements and needs of customers, being mostly entrepreneurs and CEOs, requires the best planning and staffing to ensure everything will be accomplished on time.