Speaker: Alison Habebi, Outsourcing Manager, Haines Watts
Alison Habebi: Hi, my name is Alison Habibi. I work for Haines Watts, working in their Newcastle office, and I head up the department, which looks after our outsourcing clients. So that's management accounts VAT returns, bookkeeping and payroll.
Before using Glasscubes, how did you request information from clients, and what problems or frustrations did that cause?
Alison Habebi: So before we started using Glasscubes most of our information was gathered via emails or calls to the client or a combination. That meant often that you were sort of trailing back through old emails to see what you'd asked the client for, how long ago it was, reminding yourself, or having to set diary reminders to chase for information. And then of course it was all coming back piecemeal. So you had to keep checking if you had it all, or if you were still waiting for some of the information that you'd asked for. So it was just quite time consuming and I haven't got the best of memories, so it was quite onerous.
Did you have any concerns about moving to a new solution like Glasscubes, and were any of these subsequently realised?
Alison Habebi: I think I was mainly concerned whether the clients would take to it. You often find that you try new things, and the clients really don't appreciate it. It feels impersonal to them. So I suppose that was my main worry. Little bit concerned that my team wouldn't get on board with it, but more so, the clients and certainly I haven't had any clients at all complain about it. They all find it really easy to use, and the team are happy, so it's all good.
Please describe working with us. How has Glasscubes helped you, your firm, and/or your clients?
Alison Habebi: We've enjoyed using Glasscubes. It's made our jobs a lot easier in terms of collecting data. So everything from one client is in one place and they can kind of tick it off. We can go and see where we're up to and collect it all from one place rather than the time that it takes to trawl through emails and collate that information, and then realise that you're still missing something. They haven't sent it all. So that is, in terms of efficiency and time saving, that's been really good. I think it's also helped our clients to have that kind of list that we need from them all in one place so that they can tick off as they go. And just through an easy kind of email click link into a secure portal. So that's worked really well. Glasscubes themselves, great to work with. It's a nice, simple software. So we haven't had any glitches. we just kind of jump on a call with Kevin to start us off, and check in the odd thing, and then we were good to go, so I would certainly say the software is definitely worth having a look at and getting one of the Glasscubes guys to do a demo for you if you're interested in it.
Alison Habebi: Yeah, I'm a bit of a software saddo, so I get very excited and rave about software such as Xero, and Glasscubes goes along with that. I do really like the software. Nice and simple, does what it says on the tin kind of thing. and so, yeah, definitely have a look at it.
