Following an extensive and competitive pilot process, Duncan & Toplis chose Inflo Workpapers over its incumbent provider to modernise its audit process with new levels of quality and efficiency. In this latest stage, Assurance Director Rachel Rudkin explains why Inflo was an easy choice and details the firm’s implementation experience, including the early benefits they’ve realised and the key actions they took to make the process a success.
Choosing Inflo
We were looking for a more modern way to manage and conduct audits. Our IT strategy is very much cloud-first, so we were looking at products that aligned with that approach.
We decided to conduct a pilot project in which we evaluated Inflo against our incumbent provider. We were already quite familiar with Inflo as some of our team members used it in their ICAEW exams, and we’ve used its Data Analytics solution since 2016.
From our experience of working with Inflo, we knew that as a vendor, they listen to feedback and requests and feed that into future releases of their products. So when it came to evaluating their Workpapers solution, that gave us great confidence that Inflo would be a great fit for us now and for the future. It hit all our must-haves and desirables and this made it easy for us to choose Inflo in the end. Our familiarity with the software also made the transition to Workpapers from our former solution much easier.
Next-level support
The support we got from everyone at Inflo was exceptional. Every question we had throughout the process was answered exactly as we wanted and in a very timely manner. At Duncan & Toplis we love that the software has clearly been developed by auditors. Everything is so well-suited to what we need, so it was a perfect match.
Inflo’s Proven Process, which guides firms through the journey of learning, understanding, and implementing Workpapers, was invaluable. The level of support we’ve got through the change management process, and as we started using the software, has been next-level. Even when we had a very specific scenario, we got quick responses on how to handle it.
You just have to trust the process. It works, and it’s worked for us.
Key features and functionalities
We’ve used Inflo’s Data Analytics for a long time, however with the adoption of Workpapers, we can now properly embed data-driven analytics into our audit methodology. Although Data Analytics can work with other tools, having it in Inflo’s single platform makes it very easy to use. We eliminated the obstacles that resulted from using differently designed tools. It’s fully integrated, so we’re not trying to plug it into something and work around it. It’s a fully digital approach and that’s something we’ve wanted to achieve for a while, and Workpapers allows us to do that.
We also like the risk assessment functionality in Workpapers and its clear linkage between planning through to field work. We’re not having to manually repeat multiple documentation points. Everything just flows through nicely. Our managers like the progress bars and the ability to set review dates, and how the system sends out reminders. This helps with the overall project management side of the audit and keeps workflows on track.
The Inflo Know resource, where users can get answers to questions right in the platform, has been brilliant. Having that knowledge right there and readily available when you need it has helped immensely in the implementation process, and will continue to going forward.
Groups has also been a valuable feature for us. The way we can now document groups in Workpapers compared to our previous software has been a game-changer. We know that big efficiencies will come with that in time.
The team also loves how colourful and intuitive the platform is, which may seem like a small point, but it makes a huge difference.
Words of wisdom
The biggest piece of advice I could offer other firms is that it’s important to get your client data into the system as early as you can. Because Workpapers is data-driven, you need that information as early as possible to manage the audit planning process well. Otherwise, you’re making judgements on things without the full picture. So it has forced us to be even more organised with our audit planning.
We learned the most from having hands-on experience using Workpapers with familiar client data in it. There are many training resources available and you can do as many training workshops as you want. But it’s not until you start working on client data that it sinks in and you know what questions to ask.
If you’re already using Inflo and you’ve got champions, we found that getting them involved in the trials has been helpful. We slightly staggered our rollout, office by office, just to give some locations with Inflo champions a bit more time to get used to the software and help with some of the day-to-day questions from the wider business.
Looking ahead
We have now rolled Inflo Workpapers out across all our offices. Everybody has had training and it’s being used on all new audits. Recent feedback from a manager was that as far as software rollouts go, this one has been really smooth.
These are very exciting times at our firm as we acquire new firms and locations. There will be new geographical locations, and Workpapers will allow the team to work across different offices in a consistent way. We can add standard templates to the software to drive consistency across our documentation and easily standardise our approach and leverage efficiencies across the whole business, whether new or existing.
It will take us a little bit of time to get there and build up more of our tailored resources to continue to embed directly into Inflo, but we are looking forward to seeing that. It will be good to get feedback from our new acquisitions as well, because their ways of testing can inform our process. It’s been fun to visit them, provide training, and help with their implementations.
