Effective Pricing
Mark Wickersham Training International Limited
Accountancy & Financial Management
Multi-Tenanted Quote Building sass solution
- .NET 6
- Angular 11
- REST API
- Integrations with MailChimp, Quickbooks, Stripe, Xero, Intercom
The Challenge
Providing value for both firms and clients
Mark Wickersham is a world-renowned professional speaker, author and mentor for accountants, bookkeepers and finance professionals - teaching his clients how to transition to value pricing to increase their firm’s profits.
Accountants commonly charge their clients by the hour, or by how long a project takes to complete. Whilst this promotes consistency, the work undertaken is varied - by client, complexity or calibre - and can leave firms undercharging for certain tasks, where the value or expertise goes above and beyond a set rate.
The varied work of a finance professional can also lead to difficulties when it comes to communicating to both potential and existing clients. Without customised correspondence around quotations, the style and frequency of messaging can be hard to gauge, file and store.
Mark wanted a solution that would allow accountants to realise the value they are providing to their clients and be justly rewarded - working smarter not harder to increase profitability and revenue. In the same vein, he also wanted to help busy accountants better manage their quotes and clients, with the ability to build professional looking proposals at the touch of a button.
The Solution
Customisation and Automation
A custom built SaaS (Software as a Service) solution 'Effective Pricing' would allow Mark to support and engage customers worldwide, with automated systems doing the hard work for them and their teams.
ioSTUDIOS recommended this should be a multi-tenanted, multi-user piece of software that could automatically generate quotes and build proposals based on a series of questions that system users would answer. This in turn would streamline processes and minimize admin tasks for Mark's cusotmer base.
The solution would also allow clients to log and manage existing quotes and proposals for their entire client base, whilst integrating with world leading cloud-based accounting tools, a communication provider and customer service platform.
A collaborative approach
Before anything was built, ioSTUDIOS devised an in-depth discovery exercise with the Mark Wickersham team to better understand both the business and its customers’ requirements, alongside exploring different markets, enterprises and cultures to gain deeper insight into the sector as a whole.
Once a prototype of the system was created and signed off in Discovery, the ioSTUDIOS Development Team’s expertise - in conjunction with their tried-and-tested development processes - produced a quality SaaS product that included the below functionality.
Key functionality:
- A quote builder that allows users to efficiently build quotes either from scratch, or pre-defined templates.
- A payment plan builder that allows customers to set prices from one period to the next.
- A proposal builder which creates templates that can be easily edited.
- All quotes and proposals are fully downloadable for printing, sharing and storing.
- Payment plans can be pushed to Quickbooks and Xero which automates invoice scheduling for users.
- The multi-user system allows various employees across each firm to log in and view their own personal and/or corporate dashboards.
- The multi-tenanted system allows firms to sign-up clients of their own into the system, providing personalised access to the quote and proposal building tools.
- Automated subscription payments are powered by Stripe, allowing revenue to be generated from a global audience, without increasing workload or manual tasks.
- Gamification functionality promotes increased user interaction and engagement within the system, encouraging users to make the most of the platform by increasing their understanding and profitability.
- Notification functionality is used to further drive engagement and alerts users of key updates and other messages from the system.
- Mailchimp integration automatically builds data sets of users marketing outreach. This builds clean, up-to-date contact list of customers to engage with.
The Result
From discovery to go-live, the ioSTUDIOS Development Team worked with Mark Wickersham for six months to ensure the project met both requirements and expectations.
The software provided our client with an additional revenue stream, without any additional workload or stress. As a SaaS product, Effective Pricing generates revenue automatically, diversifying income and strengthening business, brand and reputation.
This profitability permeates all aspects of the platform and business, as the streamlined and automated aspects of the software have saved hours of manual intervention and customer service, allowing the team to focus on value-add tasks and interacting with users.
The software is regularly maintained to ensure the underlying technology is up-to-date and performing at an optimal level, providing high-quality service to both our client and their customers. Regular sprint updates ensures new features and functionality are applied in an agile manner, in order to keep the system in-line with users’ ever changing goals and expectations.
