How Thompson Wright built a smarter practice with FYI
Thompson Wright is an independent, owner-managed accountancy firm that has earned its place in the UK’s top 100 practices.
With 110 staff across three offices, the firm provides a comprehensive range of accountancy, tax and advisory services to a diverse client base.
Thompson Wright combines the agility of an independent firm with the depth of resource that comes from operating at scale.
Technology is central to how the firm continues to develop, with a clear focus on finding solutions that improve efficiency, support staff and give directors better visibility of the business.
The Challenge
Thompson Wright had previously used a software to handle the billing, time recording, client data and job management, but there were a few areas where it was starting to create challenges.
“We regularly experienced system downtime. Something as simple as raising a bill often meant opening multiple modules, and if another member of the team was already using one of them, you simply had to wait. It slowed everything down.” Explains, Rachel Davis, Associate Client Services Director, Thompson Wright
The firm also needed a platform capable of managing billing across multiple entities while maintaining a single, unified client database.
The Solution
Thompson Wright first encountered FYI at an industry event. The initial tour was, by Rachel’s own admission, a little overwhelming in terms of what the platform could do, but a deeper look at FYI’s configurability changed her view entirely.
The firm committed significant resource to the implementation, assembling a dedicated internal project team.
Rather than simply replicating existing processes, the team used the migration as an opportunity to start fresh.
Rachel said: “It was that opportunity to basically start from scratch, rip things to shreds and rebuild it, rather than just doing things the way we’ve always done them.”
Perhaps most distinctively, Thompson Wright has begun using FYI effectively as a CRM tool, tracking prospective clients, outreach activity and pipeline progress.
Although this wasn’t the platform’s originally intended use, it has been successfully adapted to meet Thompson Wright’s requirements.
The Results
How FYI improved Thompson Wright’s day-to-day operations.
Efficiency
The administrative time savings have been substantial. Tasks that previously required manual chasing or separate system lookups now happen automatically.
Reporting
The reporting capability has transformed how directors and team leaders manage the practice. Thompson Wright has built a monthly reporting pack that gives directors a clear picture of workflow status, job volumes by team and turnaround times.
Adoption & support
Staff adoption has also exceeded expectations, says Rachel: “When you’re trying to bring 110 people with you on that kind of change, it’s quite a daunting prospect, but I was really quite pleasantly surprised with how well people embraced it.”
The team has also been impressed by the support available from FYI.
“It’s quite nice to actually be liaising with a person at a software company – you don’t often get that human interaction – and even the AI support assistant is genuinely helpful, which I didn’t expect,” added Rachel
Looking ahead
With the core system now embedded and the team growing in confidence, Thompson Wright is turning its attention to the prospect pipeline within FYI.
Having come from a platform that was difficult to adapt, the freedom to configure FYI around the way the business actually works has been, as Rachel puts it, unlike anything she has experienced with any other software.