Modern-day businesses should not be tied to their desks all day, everyday. This is what Your Money Matters team was experiencing in the past and since switching to G Suite, they now have the mobility of traveling without losing touch with the important tasks in their business. Director Nikki Stafford was able to close high-priority clients and operate smoothly even while she travels the world.
To learn more about our Cloud Support Service, or schedule an IT Systems Check, contact itGenius - the Google Workspace Experts
Transcription:
I'm Nicky Stafford. I'm the director of Your Money Matters where I wealth coach in financial planning business, who shows clients how to add at least a million dollars to their asset base. So, my situation before joining itGenius was we had an in house program called [inaudible 00:00:15] and all of our information was on there. Client's assets, liabilities, income, expenses, really important proprietary information and we could only access it when we were in the office and when we're sitting on our computers.
Now, that was great. We had excellent information. We knew exactly where everything was, but I travel a lot. So, the minute I left the office, I lost all contact with what was going on with my clients. So, it created this enormous issue with me being able to get out of the office and still have a really good contact with the business and clients. The busier I've got, the more I travel, therefore the less I knew.
So, before itGenius came along and we joined Google docs, it was becoming a disaster. It was becoming really difficult to continue to grow the business as I traveled more.
So, one of the key areas that it went wrong was I was traveling at one stage in the states and a client phoned me and said, “You know that contribution, the super that you asked me to do …” and the numbers are really important because there was some major tax consequences to them not getting that right. They were phoning me saying, “Where's that information?” Lo and behold, both of the staff members that would normally be in the office weren't there. Now, we eventually got them the information, but the drama that it caused was huge. Google docs has actually changed all of that. We can get that information to them that easily and quickly.
In terms of reservations for switching the business to Google, I had lots. For one thing, we'd spent over a decade building up our systems and processes on one system. So, a change to that system meant it changed everything that we did, the way we did it, where we found information, and that was a massive thing for small businesses to contemplate because there's a cost to all of that. Not just costing money but a cost in time.
I had to stop and think long and hard about what to do. Ironically, it was a lot easier than we thought it would be. The support from itGenius has been outstanding, and their ability to actually add value has made it so much easier than I thought it was going to be. So, all of the worries that I originally had were dealt with in a way that made it so much easier for my business, which was great.
In terms of the greatest success that we've had, we've just bought on a $50,000 client where I was out of the country. I still haven't met the client. We've gone through the whole process of getting their information, speaking with them, finding out what they really want, and then getting them good quality advice without even seeing them. That was something that we couldn't have dreamed of doing even six months ago. So that's very, very cool.
As a financial planning business, we have over 200 passwords that we had to house somewhere. Again, if I went overseas they were housed on an internal system, I couldn't access them. Whereas now what happens is on anywhere in the world, any device, any of the companies that we deal with are that easy to find. It's beautiful.
As a small business, it's often really difficult to make decisions about the next change that we'll make. One of the things that I found is that by trusting somebody who's really good at what they do, that has a broader scope of what they do is an invaluable part of our business.
Now, my businesses on Google apps, what I'm looking forward to most is being able to use even more VAs to bring them on board because our processes on Google sites are outstanding. We have one hub where everybody can see what we're supposed to do and more importantly I would edit that. So as we hit a roadblock, it's no longer me that's actually filling in that roadblock. They're able to do that themselves.
So, I'm looking forward to our business progressively growing organically, if you like, which is really, really exciting, because the people in the business that actually do it are then developing the processes, the systems around it and what I'm checking is it works or it doesn't. If it doesn't, we'd come back and somebody fixes it on Google sites, but the person that's running it fixes it. Very, very cool.
So, I'm looking forward to a more systematized business, even more freedom, even greater ability not just for me to travel and be out of the office but for the whole team, so we no longer need a static office. Really cool.
I'd recommend itGenius and Google apps to anybody who wants greater freedom and flexibility in their business and wants to be able to go and travel and do the things that they want to do so that they run the business rather than the business running them.
To learn more about our Cloud Support Service, or schedule an IT Systems Check, contact itGenius - the Google Workspace Experts
