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Systems are growing to encompass more aspects of a firm
Over the years, the application, or suite of applications, called practice management has come to mean different things. Initially, practice management was just another way of saying time and billing. And it's true today that some vendors use the terms interchangeably.
But more and more vendors have come to realize that practice management can also be a holistic approach to the workflows and information needs that a practice requires to run efficiently and profitably. To get a better handle on the current state of the practice management application, we surveyed five well-known vendors in the industry.
Not everyone agrees on what makes up a practice management system. For example, AccountantsWorld chief executive officer Chandra Bhansali said, "I think it depends on the segment where the firm practices. The needs of small firms are very different than those of larger firms. For example, scheduling would be an important component of a practice management system created for larger firms, but it is not important for smaller firms. That said, the key component of every practice management system should be a measurement of client profitability, staff productivity and firm performance."
Samantha Grovenstein-Deal, product line manager of firm management solutions for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting, agreed: "There is no one-size-fits-all solution to firm management, and especially no one-size-fitsall solution at the right price point for every firm. That's why the most key component to a good firm management system is access to data, so that you can wrap or attach any other part of the firm management process into a single-source-of-truth database. Even if a single product does provide all the functionality (time, billing, due-date tracking, expense management, accounting, reporting, workflow, payroll), the best solution will allow for easy service-level integration to pull all these mission-critical pieces together"
On the other hand, Christie Johnston, product manager for firm workflow and administration for Thomson Reuters, had a checklist of capabilities: "Practice management needs to include all the information about their clientele and the services they are performing for them so that staff has one location to be able to execute and deliver those services." According to Johnston, these functions include client information tracking with complete address tracking, notes...