Case Study

Medical Financial Group

"I've noticed a kick in the level of output and level of revenue"

Medical Financial Group is an accounting and financial planning firm, based in Brisbane that provide financial planning, tax and accounting services to medical professionals. The firm has three partners, 25 team members and was first established in 2007.

Matt Connor and the team at Medical Financial Group first approached Freshmethod in late 2019, having been introduced to Freshmethod by another accounting firm that had been a longstanding Freshmethod client.

Matt outlined what they wanted to achieve when they first spoke with our team at Freshmethod.

"Really, we just needed a bit of help. We didn't know what we didn't know and wanted to have some expertise to assist us in the technical areas to make things more efficient.

Our previous IT guy who we had helping us really wasn't assisting, he wasn't really up-to-speed with what was involved with running a proper functioning, productive Cloud-based accounting firm.

And we were just not getting anywhere. So we decided we needed to make a change."

After a comprehensive audit of Medical Financial Group’s setup Freshmethod identified that there were no radical changes required, only optimisations.

Matt and the team were mostly working from the cloud but were having issues with linking up their document management system (FYI Docs) and practice management system (XPM) and emails (Office 365) so this optimisation formed a key component of the onboarding project.

"For the onboarding, they did a review, identified what we were using, what things needed to change and then set about implementing those changes.

We're using FYI Docs now, having transitioned from a MYOB AE platform, and we needed a bit of guidance on how documents need to go into the document management system, and also how to search for things.

Other issues we wanted to fix were how that document management system was linked with our practice management system, our email and other things like that.

It's a long, hard road when you trial and error everything yourself as opposed to having someone who knows the software to come in and just say, do it this way and it'll be a lot faster. That was really the difference."

Once the cloud applications were fully optimized for efficiency the last piece of the puzzle to moving the firm 100% cloud was to migrate their legacy data from their server onto cloud storage.

"One other area that the team assisted with was previously when our document manager transitioned, we had a problem whereby not all the data moved across to the new cloud system. So we had all our data tied up in a MYOB AE server-based document manager system, which we wanted moved as we were trying to get rid of the server.

So, Rowan (Freshmethod’s Onboarding Technician) was able to problem-solve the issue and managed to transition all our MYOB AE data onto a SharePoint drive. So nothing's been lost, it's all on the Cloud. It's secure through the practice manager system and we can switch off our server.

Before Freshmethod came along, that was one of the big issues we were trying to resolve. And we thought we were going to have to keep the server switched on for the next four to five years until all the documents in there were obsolete.

So that was a fantastic coup for us in getting everything moved onto SharePoint, even things we didn't think could be moved onto SharePoint, and allowed us to transition to the cloud and fully shut down our server."

Since working with Freshmethod Matt has noticed productivity gains for him and his team, as any of their issues are troubleshooted and resolved, which allows for them to focus on client work, rather than investigating issues themselves.

"A benefit of working with Freshmethod is having a functioning professional help desk that has a ticketing system. If we have a problem it is logged instantly, assessed with a level of priority, and then someone's there to help us straight away. This means we’re not having issues linger and left either half fixed or not even looked at, and we can move on quickly, as soon as the problem arises.

The support team are very professional. They absolutely know what they're doing and quite clearly they can come in and fix things far faster than any of us can, trying to muddle through ourselves.

So it's a no-brainer, if we have an issue that we're out of our depth with, we just place a support ticket and we know it's going to get resolved.

I've noticed a kick in the level of output and level of revenue just when we're not spending several hours each week grappling with an IT issue that shouldn't be our problem."

If you want to know how Freshmethod can help you optimise your technology like we did with Matt and Medical Financial Group, click the button below to book a call with one of our consultants.

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Answers to some frequently asked questions.

Simply put, we manage IT for accounting firms. This includes a broad range of services from internet connection, email communication, VOIP, document management, cloud migration, accounting application integration, antivirus, cyber security and more. We provide and execute an IT strategy so our clients are benefiting from new industry technology efficiencies and ensure everything works together so you can get on with what you do best.

We’re different in a few ways.

Faster Response Times – We have the numbers to prove it. All our customer interactions are measured and tracked to improve our service to you.

Cloud Focused – While we do support hybrid and server based firms, we are a cloud native firm and we fully embrace technology change that improves productivity and efficiency.

Accounting Industry Experts – Our focus is 100% on accountants which means we understand your unique problems and the solutions that work for you. We are experts at managing and integrating accounting applications and we understand your workflow.

Our understanding of the Accounting Industry and the value each app provides means we are best positioned to provide an IT strategy that fits your firm. We work closely with app vendors to recommend which path to take at a pace that suits you. Our expert team can address specific cloud security concerns and make sure your IT is unified with the various systems talking harmoniously.

If you want to learn more about how we can help, it’s best to talk to one of our IT specialists.

Working with over 652 accounting firms and serving approx. 9000 accounting professionals across Australia and overseas - our service desk is scaled, meaning we have greater availability and resources on hand to answer your calls and emails.

Our service desk is open 12 hours a day, from 7am – 7pm, 5 days a week.

Our team is measured on a ‘fixed on first call’ percentage, which is currently sitting at 38%. Customer satisfaction has a net promoter score of 93. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it!

Our average call answer is 3 mins. For business critical issues, we promise to respond within 30 minutes and resolve your issue within the hour. Some incidents may require testing, research, problem solving or third party support before a solution can be found. We aim to keep our clients updated on the resolution plan progress in these circumstances and where possible, facilitate temporary workarounds to reduce the impact on your productivity.

Service requests are prioritised immediately as:

Priority 1 (Critical) – Major emergency – “Show Stopper”: e.g. loss of essential server/s or services affecting all users.

Priority 2 (High Impact) – A single or group of users are unable to perform time critical or important tasks, no reasonable workaround is achievable and this is affecting the Company’s ability to service its clients.

Priority 3 (Medium Impact)- A single user or a group of users have an issue with a program or service that is restricting their ability to work but it isn’t time critical or there is a reasonable workaround.

Priority 4 (Low Impact) – Any request that is not affecting productivity. This includes new user requests, or any issue that isn’t impacting on business continuity.

Priority 5 (Planned) – Scheduled, no SLA Any request that involves change of environment, advice or queries that fall outside of service, or needs to be planned and falls outside of the SLA.