How one insolvency firm saves up to 40 hours a month

With many businesses bracing for changes to government stimulus, insolvency practitioners are in a unique position to scale and grow. This makes it more important than ever to ensure you are fully utilising two critical assets – your people, and technology. We spoke to James Imray, Director at Rodgers Reidy Brisbane, to learn about his experience.

A catalyst for change  

This year has highlighted the critical role technology plays in helping insolvency firms maintain and improve productivity at a time when remote working has become the norm. This can bring benefits that will last long after the COVID-19 pandemic has ended – letting your firm scale quickly if demand rises and empowering your staff to focus on client service.

According to James, the changes his firm has made over the past 12 months have helped them increase productivity during the COVID-19 lockdown, saving up to 40 hours a month on administration while increasing accuracy and flexibility.

Connecting your systems to drive productivity

As one of the early adopters of Macquarie’s software integration solutions, James was able to integrate his online banking with his client management system and accounting software. This enabled Rodgers Reidy Brisbane to streamline bill processing, payments and reconciliations by automatically uploading transaction data and sending approved payments directly from their client management software to Macquarie for processing.

Andrew Knowles, National Head of Insolvency at Macquarie Business Banking, says this not only saves time, it also improves security and reliability. “It’s much more efficient since you don’t have to log into two platforms, and it also creates a robust risk protocol because the file can’t be manipulated after internal approval,” he says.

This service is supported by popular software providers and is readily available. “Many insolvency firms aren’t aware of just how easy it is to integrate online banking with their client management and accounting software, with significant efficiency gains,” says Andrew.

Benefits of integrating your software

For James and his team, a key benefit is consolidated reporting of daily bank account data, especially in-bound payments. “From 6 am everyone can see what’s been received and whether there are any account balances that don't match our records from yesterday,” he says. “Now we can see every bank account at a glance and highlight which accounts have had money come in overnight.”

Automated data exchange also means staff can access accurate data anytime – increasing transparency and helping avoid double entry. As a result, integration helps avoid re-keying errors from multiple systems, reducing the risk of human error.

Empowering your people 

Just as importantly, connected systems mean staff spend less time chasing paper and entering data, and more time on higher value activities, with benefits for everyone. According to James, “this means we can then provide our highly-valued administration staff with more challenging and meaningful work to develop their roles, rather than wasting time on processes that can be automated”.

That not only helps make the firm more efficient, it also helps them attract and retain skilled staff at a time when experienced people are in demand. “It certainly makes it easier to promote your practice to candidates when you can explain the kinds of tasks that have been automated,” says James. “That has a lot of appeal because there are many processes even senior staff members have to do in other practices, which in our practice they just don't have to spend time on.”

Supporting scalability and increasing efficiency

James and Andrew agree that insolvency firms are likely to see a significant increase in demand once government measures to limit insolvencies and support impacted business are relaxed. Yet James is confident that Rodgers Reidy is well positioned to manage any increase in workload – in part because the firm’s technology suite accommodates both efficiency and scalability.

“The beauty of these systems is that they're very scalable,” he says. “That means carrying a greater number of jobs doesn’t mean spending a significantly greater time on administration, banking and reporting, because many recurring tasks are automated,” he says.

“The biggest time savers are the processes that we simply could not have implemented without the Macquarie integration in place,” James says. “The total automation of the receipt, and in many cases entry, of data from Macquarie as well as the automated upload of payments has eliminated numerous manual processes thus removing opportunities for manual error. Security is unaffected as the bank payment authorisation process is retained. Compared to these automated processes any manual processing … adds up to a significant amount of time and that's just for one transaction … when you have hundreds of these transactions it really adds up.”

As a result, James believes Rodgers Reidy Brisbane is actually more efficient now than before the COVID-19 lockdown began. “In lockdown, we actually saw productivity increase,” he says. “My view is that this could be the beginning of a more accessible workforce, which will help us future-proof our business.”

How Macquarie can help

The Macquarie Insolvency team is here to help you with personalised support, delivered by industry specialists.

To find out more, please contact your relationship manager, or learn more request a call.