"I wanted to be happy at work"
Damien Vincent was not always a CPA. He was a caregiver for 9 years in a university hospital and clinic - emergency room, operating room, transplant service. He then worked for 5 years in a law firm before setting up his practice at the end of 2019. This particular experience, and other more personal ones, have forged a work philosophy in which good treatment holds a central place.
"The health of the body and mind takes precedence over everything else. You have to treat yourself better and refuse to put unnecessary pressures and priorities on yourself. I wanted to be happy in my work, and to have the means to combine consulting with technical expertise, in the service of my clients, in a balanced and collaborative framework.”
To achieve this, Damien Vincent quickly realized that controlling the amount of time spent by himself and his staff on the various assignments was a sine qua non condition. For example: "Today I have a lot of requests for asset engineering, but how can I integrate them into the schedule? As a result, I only produce 15% of what I could do.”
Planning: fairness and justice!
To plan fairly, you need a tool that can both measure and forecast.
Time sheets are notoriously insufficient when it comes to measuring, i.e. to know precisely how many hours each person has put in. First of all, because they are often very approximate (at the end of the week, everyone tends to charge the client with the best budget... and the most or least friendly, depending on the case). Furthermore, because analyzing these timesheets in Excel proves to be a rather laborious process, and the necessary transformations regarding the organization of work are postponed. Above all, perhaps, because these "old-fashioned" timesheets are exclusively geared to productivity, whereas "the real objectives are well-being at work, the quality of the assignments produced, and the reduction of the mental load."
And when it comes to forecasting, the most beautiful spreadsheet quickly reaches its limitations, the most obvious of which being that it is barely finished when it is already obsolete. Can we really distribute the work fairly with such a rustic tool? Damien Vincent decided not to, and opted to share tasks and manage his firm's schedule using Beeye.
"We must restore justice for ourselves and for our staff when sharing tasks. It is a real transformation: it is not a matter of window dressing, but of proceeding to in-depth renovation, which requires getting a grip of the volumes and their restructuring. The attention to be paid to the follow-up is all the more important".
Identify and resolve over-quality
Beeye enables Damien to gain better control over a phenomenon well known to firms: that of over-quality. The over-quality is part of the essential concepts of management methods and management without waste - of human resources or raw materials. Tracking it down is the basis of lean management, which is well known in automobile factories.
"We must remain profitable, without confusing the symptom with the disease. In my opinion, we must improve quality to improve profitability. With a limit: going beyond the customer's expectations is fine, but excess value is often there to make up for a mediocre customer experience. It is the syndrome of the husband who is exceptionally busy cooking, who wants to make a splash", the accountant says by way of illustration.
By monitoring the consumption of time budgets allocated to different clients of the firm, Beeye makes it possible to manage the quality of its services better, and to know whether a predictable penalty comes from a poor organization or from bad budgeting at the outset.
Beeye at the firm: "Something happened right away”
"We took three months to implement Beeye in the end: the departure of the adviser who was in charge of the project internally for family reasons, and the Covid stoppages, have significantly delayed its implementation. However, the tool started to produce its effects well before it was implemented.
"Something happened right away. We realized that we had no idea of the real workload of our employees. The approach led by the Beeye team, the questions asked, and the rigorous work on the nomenclature, enabled us to hone the project and get everyone to embrace it. To use the real estate analogy, with Beeye, we draw up the house plans together!”
"The project was very well supported, with positive energy at all times. Half a day was enough to convince all the employees to adopt the tool, whose playful dimension and "Trello-like" card system makes a pleasant change from the obscure pivot tables...
The benefits of Beeye for Keyreko:
- Empowerment: With Beeye, everyone starts his week with his or her individual organization. This new discipline allows a self-assessment and gives a new ability to assume: call the client - in advance - to prevent and explain a gap that the tool has allowed him to anticipate. "We don't lose ourselves in over-quality, because we know the time allotted for the task".
- Good treatment: Beeye shows everyone the reality of their workload. Its use is a daily demonstration of "the care that the firm brings to its resources", in other words, of good treatment. It also enables the manager to identify employees in difficulty.
- Visibility: The tool highlights future gaps in resources and allows for proactive recruitment.
- Availability: "The better internal organization frees up time for my employees, who in turn take time off my hands. As a result, I am more available, I can better supervise and monitor our activity - and that of my clients.
- Quality of service: Using Beeye makes it possible to guarantee deadlines better: "we can give a deadline knowing that it is realistic, tenable".
- Data: the tool brings up contextualized internal management data. "For example, we can establish complete supporting documents that trace all the activity carried out for a company and will provide a precise and documented basis for negotiation, for the past year or for future years."
After 3 months of use, Damien Vincent has een won over by Beeye: "For me Beeye is the only tool capable of approaching internal management from the employees and their capabilities". Does it change anything in the tax season? "The tax season rush is often nothing more than a sprint to catch up. With Beeye, we smooth out our efforts over time. The workflow is more regular and better balanced, while I have gained time to advise my clients and develop the firm.” And he concludes: "To be honest, I didn't expect so much!”
