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A Quest for Staff Scheduling With Impact — a Case Study of AAFCPAs Journey and Implementation of the Beeye Solution

A Quest for Staff Scheduling With Impact — a Case Study of AAFCPAs Journey and Implementation of the Beeye Solution

The Beeye Team - May 17, 2024 2:41:04 PM

Case study

Beeye and Jeremy Hyman Associates conducted a joint case study on AAFCPAs, highlighting how the implementation of Beeye's resource management solution addressed AAFCPAs' scheduling challenges, leading to significant operational improvements and enhanced integration with their existing firm management tool.

 

The Backdrop


About AAFCPAs


As a firm with a “culture first” mentality, AAFCPA is known for not simply servicing a niche of not-for-profit companies but giving back to the community through them as well. With a heritage of service back to 1973, AAFCPA now stands with 350 strong, providing a mix of Audit, Tax, Accounting, Business & IT consulting, Wealth Management and Advisory Services to their clients who range from the aforementioned not for profit organizations to commercial companies and wealthy individuals/estates.


The New England headquartered firm, ranked inside of the IPA Top 100, is led by Carla McCall.

The leadership at AAFCPA is innovative in their thoughts, to service, culture, and also internal solutions. The drive to improve the firm is fuelled by the understanding that driving the firm forward will increase the impact the firm is able to make back to the community. The willingness to innovate and try new solutions allows AAFCPA to confidently search for the best solutions – not just follow what others are doing.


The Challenge at Hand

For AAFCPA, the challenge they faced was efficient and insightful resource management. While the solution at the time, had served the firm for a number of years there were some key gaps the firm wished to close. The need for a true cloud solution to serve their distributed workforce was critical, the biggest pain point was solving for their team / pod approach to scheduling within their audit team. As part of the focus on culture at AAFCPA they have their audit team members designate 2 focuses a year, in alignment with their interests. Ensuring these pods were front and center of the scheduling process had to be handled manually – consuming time and resources.


The Solution


Assessing the Options

The team at AAFCPA, headed by COO Kim Beauchamp, began their evaluation process with six or seven products. After some preliminary legwork, the final contenders were down to a group of 4, including Beeye. Through the evaluation process the handling of the team approach was the most critical element. Naturally, price and implementation timeline also were factors through the consideration process.


Making the Choice

The standout moment for Kim and her team at AAFCPA came right back to the core problem: Handling the teams scheduling. Beeye was the only solution that they felt listened to their concerns and was willing to customize to their needs, bringing the team/pod model to life for AAFCPA. Another critical element to their choice was the integration that was promised (and delivered upon) to integrate with their firm management tool, Practice Engine. As Kim reminds “We have so many technology tools, the software must work together.” The variety of customization options were added elements for AAFCPA to confidently make their choice of Beeye. 


Implementation

Beeye was present through the implementation, one that happened over the course of approximately 6 weeks from November-January (taking a holiday break in the middle). During this time, the team scaled up from 10 test users to around 200 users. This brought the scheduling of the audit and tax team into the same platform. During this time, the integration with Practice Engine was also completed, allowing the staff data, budget data and actual time entry data to flow from Practice Engine to Beeye. The team at AAFCPA appreciated the speed of the work, and that it did not come at the expense of customized selections and deep conversation. While the audit and tax team are up and running, the CAS team is the final piece of the puzzle that is presently being worked on. 


The Impact


Happy Early Returns

When asked about the early impact to AAFCPA of the Beeye product, Kim Beauchamp had a one-word response: “huge”. It didn’t take much more probing to dig deeper. Kim went on to say that “the Wow moment for me was when we say a budget flow in from Practice Engine, which we could then gauge how much time was supposed to be scheduled due to the budget/fee then we could see realization by past cost and future scheduled time.” Through bringing together the audit and tax teams into the same tool, the shared visibility has also already improved communication on shared clients. The real time look at jobs that may have been moved, or jobs beginning to exceed budgets is allowing the team to make dynamic choices from real time data. Oh yes, and fewer meetings for planning! 

We spoke with a couple of team members at AAFCPA as well. Michelle Ward, one of the tax resource schedulers, mentioned the clean and intuitive visual interface. She also highlighted improved communication and transparency between scheduling and the managers, with supervisors and managers having real time data on what is being worked on alongside availability and capacity. Cory Black works on the audit portion of scheduling. Her first comment was on the responsiveness and listening of the team at Beeye, not just that they listen but that there is execution as well. She also greatly enjoys the custom views/filters that can be leveraged to make her job easier.  
 The excitement of the Beeye product also extends to their Managing Partner, Carla McCall who said “Our team is super stoked about this transformation. In some cases, using Beeye reporting over our own practice management system!“



Next Gains to Be Realized

As AAFCPA looks forward, the completion of the CAS group into the Beeye will bring another level of benefit to the centralization of the scheduling tool. Other benefits which AAFCPA expects to see as time goes forward include: Better insight and adaptation during staff changes (hiring, exits, as well as promotions); improved manager accountability with resource requests; and a more clear picture of capacity.


Kim and the team at AAFCPA are optimistic of the growth of Beeye based on the level of listening and responsiveness from Beeye during the implementation process. As they look forward, they are excited with opportunities for continued real time insights, deeper data connectivity, and the ease of continued scaling.



The Scheduling Solution Market


A Unique Space

While most of the Tax & Accounting technology ecosystem is filled with very industry specific solutions, the scheduling and resource management choices often include more broad set solutions geared at all sorts of professional services organizations.

Many of the tax & accounting specific solutions lean heavy into workflow and task management – but lack the ability to delve into true capacity management and projection based on budget and actual hours.

However, it is the uniqueness of tax and audit work – both with and apart from one another – that leave broad based solutions without the insight of the profession at a disadvantage. One can only reasonable project that as AI continues to take aim at things like passive/predictive time entry and ‘job to skilled resource availability’ matching that this space is one to keep an eye for rapid growth and improvement.