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By Nagaraju
- In Analysis
eTaxMentor was launched in 2009 to empower individuals and businesses to file their taxes on the web. Over the last decade, we expanded our services to include taxation, GST, bookkeeping, and other financial services.
As we enter the new decade, we took a look at how technology is revolutionizing industries around the world. Cloud computing, SaaS, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are increasing productivity, transforming their cost structure, and creating new revenue opportunities.
At eTaxMentor, we have started leveraging these technologies to completely transform how we work and deliver services. In the next year, we want to be the most efficient accounting firm in India. Using technology, we want to deliver high quality accounting, advisory, and tax services to our clients with high accuracy, timeliness, and user experience that clients have never experienced before.
As any good tech startup founder or product manager would tell you, the key to winning customers is focusing on their problems. So, what are our customers looking for?
- Accuracy: Financial statements and taxes are calculated accurately.
- Timeliness: Complete tasks on time so the business can report to its stakeholders and does not pay penalties.
- Cost effectiveness: Service fees meet the budget of the organization.
- Regulatory compliance: Stay on top of constantly changing laws and regulations and address queries from government agencies.
- Business insights: Help the business understand key metrics and how they are performing vs the industry.
So, what does an accounting firm need to meet these needs of their customers? It always comes down the basics: People, Process, Technology
- People: Do you have the right team? How motivated are they? Do they have a sense of ownership?
- Processes: Do you have well defined processes for every task? Does the team clearly understand these processes? Is there a way to measure if the team is following the processes? Is the team incentivized/penalized based on process compliance?
- Technology: Do you have the right tools to empower your team so they are not performing repetitive manual tasks? Do they have the tools to easily follow the processes? Do all the tools integrate well so data flows seamlessly between them and increase productivity?
eTaxMentor is taking a holistic view and addressing all these areas. We want to share our journey with the industry so all of us can move forward together. There is ample opportunity for all the firms – India’s GDP will grow immensely over the next decade. Businesses will need a lot of help from the accounting firms to help them manage the growth. We need to rise up and improve our service standards and our productivity to meet these needs.
We are creating a separate technology company to help other firms leverage the same technologies and processes we use. More on that soon. Meanwhile, we will share our journey here so you can follow along. We want to collaborate with other firms so we can also learn from you and become better.
Looking forward to hearing from our customers as to how we can serve them better and from our peers at other firms so together, we can become better!