Speaker: Annabel Wilson, Audit Associate, Ecovis Wingrave Yeats
Annabel Wilson: Hi, I'm Annabelle and I'm a Senior at ECOVIS Wingrave Yeats based in London. I've been with the team now for about two and half years and I work predominantly in audit. I'm a support team, in a way for Glasscubes at our company. It's something that was brought in maybe a year and a half ago now, and there's a couple of us that work on it, but I'm now heading it up at our company. Helping the team, training them, showing them exactly what they need to do to get the most out of Glasscubes.
Before using Glasscubes, how did you request information from clients, and what problems or frustrations did that cause?
Annabel Wilson: So, before we used Glasscubes to get requests from our clients, or to ask for order deliverables, we used to use an Excel spreadsheet. We set one of these up per client and this would get updated throughout the order as requests were answered and as new requests were found, or if we had follow up queries as we were going through and working, we'd share this with the client via email. We used to have a column in there as well that had an option for client comments. If they were waiting on someone sometimes we'd add a column about whose responsibility it was. If there was more than one client contact, things like that, and then we'd then add a tab if we had any additional things, for example like a sample, we'd have a list of transactions or something in that additional tab. I mean, I wouldn't say that it didn't work well, but in some instances, there were a few downfalls. If we didn't update the tracker as often as the client was responding there'd be things on there that were no longer relevant or we'd already asked for, which can be obviously frustrating for the client and also for us because we're double asking for a request essentially. The Excel could get very bulky if it was a big job, we have to have, different versions, or try and split it up a little bit more, just to make it a little bit more manageable. Also, obviously, the requests in each tab aren't attached directly to the line item, like Glasscubes now is. Sometimes there'd be some difficulties of them trying to trace through, which tab related to which request. We did try linking. It works in some instances, but when you've got a lot of tabs, sometimes Excel doesn't always play ball.
Did you have any concerns about moving to a new solution like Glasscubes, and were any of these subsequently realised?
Annabel Wilson: So, I think the whole team had some concerns with implementing Glasscubes, the taking over of that, rather than using our usual request tracker via Excel. So we started off by trial running it through a client that we'd worked with for many years. Their finance team used to work in audit, so they know how difficult it can be sometimes getting requests, collating them, tracking how much you've got through. So, we tried it for them, which helped us to identify the training needs both internally and externally. It did help in the way that this client had used similar software but it helped us to design a user guide both internally and externally, to train up our clients and then our staff. We also put together training sessions, running through. I'm constantly looking for updates and stuff on Glasscubes, trial running new things. If I see something new that's popped up, I always email someone in the team and just say I'd noticed this, getting exactly what it does, and I can share it with the team to keep them clued up on that but all the clients were really understanding with moving over to that. We did run some one-on-one sessions with clients who saw the user guide and wasn't really sure exactly how it worked but after doing that, they use it absolutely fine now. I think it is very user-friendly. So, I think that was our main concern of just making that big change and then showing everyone exactly how it needs to be used and then it's also a change for the client as well, but they seemed to have adapted really well.
Please describe working with us. How has Glasscubes helped you, your firm, and/or your clients?
Annabel Wilson: Everyone at Glasscubes is super helpful. I email quite regularly if I notice that there's something new that's come on. I've been having a little play around on the site just to ask some questions, see exactly what it can do and then, as always as you're working on a new platform, there's always going to be questions coming through from different members of the team, that sometimes I don't always know the answer to, or anyone else who works closely with Glasscubes doesn't know the answer to. So, we can always drop them an email and they're always super helpful, and help us to come up with a solution of how to fix it. And I know we have also suggested a few things that I think have been implemented as well, which is really helpful and it's also made the process of us using the system a lot easier. It makes requesting deliverables from clients and audit requests a lot smoother. We can have that conversation on each line item rather than you not knowing what people are talking about. You can all be on that one line item and you can keep a conversation flowing. So, it helps working together as a team and everything like that. Anyone in the audit team can access the request list all at once. When we were on Excel obviously, you have to open it and read only if you've not got a shared portal. So you can't see exactly what people are adding. You have to wait until they've come out. It's just a lot more easier to flow if you can all access it all at once, and also we can have all of our, if there's multiple clients working at that company, we can have them all looking at it, and all working along side at the same time. There's obviously the delegate function, which is really helpful for people who aren't involved in the audit, for them to delegate it out but it's also really helpful to have them all working on it at the same time. It's a very secure portal as well, meaning that clients are happy to upload secure information to that, and they know that it's going to be safe. There's also an option to have it in the app, which you can check on the go or just sometimes it's easier to just look on your phone. I know we're all on our phones a lot nowadays, so if it's all there, it's just sometimes a lot easier and a lot of our clients have said that they prefer it as well to our old process of just using Excel. They've said that it's made it a lot easier for them to track. They obviously have the percentage of how much has been completed. They can track down the side with those icons of the tick, see what's completely done. See what they've delegated. See what we've come back to ask questions on. As well as obviously, we can keep that conversation flowing on each line item request. So, it's made a big difference for us, and our audit team, and the firm as a whole
Annabel Wilson: I would definitely recommend Glasscubes to anyone who gets any information, or data, or gets any requests from any of their clients when working with them. I don't think it's just tailored to our industry. I think it can make a difference in a lot of different industries as well. Glasscubes has transformed our audit request process. It's really streamlined it. It's made it a lot easier for us. It's saved us and our clients a lot of time. So, I definitely recommend it to anyone who's looking for that process, or to streamline the way that they get information from their clients. It has been really helpful.
