Square One Goes Virtual

Square One Financial Planning LLP, a leading Sussex firm of chartered financial planners has managed to migrate its business almost entirely on to the web and become virtual. The firm has engaged in three main strategies to achieve this.

Managing partner John Kelly explains the thinking: “For years we have wondered why we have an office at all. Most of the time it is empty because our advisers are out - as they should be – seeing our clients. We are therefore paying rent on empty space. Clients rarely come to us and many are happy to be serviced by telephone, video conference or email anyway”.

The firm had to deal with three main issues. First, they had to think how to manage the computers, servers and IT. The firm has used Weald Computers for many years and we were delighted to be offered virtual hosting in their data centre in Reading. John Kelly comments: “Our biggest concern is security of data. None of us wants to face the “Armageddon scenario” where data is lost, so we wanted to make sure our servers were backed up daily to a different site ,with back ups brought back to us”.

All of the firm’s users login to the firm’s hosted servers which have unthrottled bandwidth and huge processing power compared with the firm’s original local servers.

The second challenge was to get rid of paper. John Kelly takes up the story. “For more than 20 years I have looked at how to make our office paperless, first in my business as a Chartered Accountant and latterly in our firm of Chartered Financial Planners. We are all naturally afraid of throwing away pieces of paper in case we need them later, but we also all know how many hours are spent looking for things that have been misfiled. We decided to use INVU, which works with our back office system. All documents are scanned on receipt and are indexed. Optical character recognition means that we can locate documents by title, content or index in seconds – an absolute dream. If a client wants a copy document it will be sent by e-mail in less than 30 seconds from request.

The final issue was communications. For many firms, having a telephone switchboard severely limits their ability to communicate.  Lines have to be paid for and each call uses a line. It is also expensive and obsolete technology. Square One has embraced VoIP (voice over internet protocol), getting rid of the switchboard.  Instead the internet is the “switchboard”. Any extension on any desk automatically “knows” where it is and which operator it belongs to. Any user can move to any location and their phone will reconnect to the Internet without prompting. Advisers have software telephones in their laptops.  Any member of our UK team can answer the firm’s telephones from anywhere (including the laptops) and then transfer the call to any other user or any other number. All calls within the firm are completely free, as are calls to other users with the same supplier.

One of the most delightful aspects of using VoIP is its utter reliability and speed. If a voicemail is taken by a VoIP handset, it is notified immediately as a text message to the owner and as an email containing the voicemail as a .wav file. Square One have timed it and it takes six seconds from when the call is complete to the user being notified and a further second for the voicemail to arrive. Anyone who is away from their desk knows in a matter of moments that there was a call, who it is was from, what they wanted and how best to provide a response. In case no one can take the call, after 20 seconds the VoIP system diverts automatically to a manned answering service who can take a message and e-mail it on.

John Kelly comments “Clients and introducers are delighted and astonished in equal measure.  Our service standards have improved and calls are answered more efficiently. The phone now cannot ring without answer, and is never engaged, which was always a risk before.

The virtual office, without servers, phones or paper has given Square One a boost in productivity communications and client service - and increased the amount of time advisers can spend out of the office, where they belong, looking after our clients.