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Meet Ignition; transforming the way people in professional services do business together

LEVERAGE TECHNOLOGY 4 mins 01 Mar 2022 by Dane Thomas
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Earlier today, Practice Ignition announced that it is now Ignition - the first client engagement and commerce platform for accountants, bookkeepers and professional services businesses.

While we may look and sound a bit different, our core promise hasn't changed. We exist to make it easy for people like you to do business with your clients, sparking long-lasting relationships with ease.

What our brand change does do though is signal further investment into our product.

We’re working every day to make Ignition better and better. Because we see the challenges our customers face in this environment filled with uncertainty, increased competition, greater compliance, changing technology and ever-growing client expectations.

That’s why we’re continuing to build a solution that will help shape the future of professional services, making it easier for our customers to win and retain business, engage clients seamlessly, run their business on autopilot and get paid every time - all in the one intuitive platform.

Why client engagement and commerce?

Our transition from proposals and payments to client engagement and commerce is a reflection of the last 18 months worth of product investment.

We reimagined the proposal experience - giving you more flexible billing options, the ability to upsell services with proposal options, confidence to price and sell services more easily with ready-made proposal templates, and peace of mind with multiple signature proposals.

We centralized client information and billing - giving you a view of your client details, scope of work, agreed services, billing, invoices and payments in one place.

We introduced more ways to get paid - giving your clients more ways to pay with our Review and Pay online experience in addition to automated payments.

We invested in new integrations while enhancing existing ones - making it easier to scale people advisory and simplify billing with our new Gusto integration, and adding more flexibility to automate jobs with our enhanced Xero Practice Manager workflow experience.

With all these improvements, we’re now looking to deliver even more value across the entire client journey for Ignition customers.

So what is a client engagement and commerce platform?

When we talk about client engagement, we’re talking about everything you need to engage new and existing clients seamlessly - from online proposals and automated engagement letters to centralized client information and billing for agreed services.

And when we refer to commerce, we’re talking about how Ignition brings together everything you need to sell, manage and get paid for your services effortlessly - from staying compliant with regulatory requirements, pricing your services, automating payments and invoicing to dashboard insights to help manage your business profitably.
There are countless options out there that do one or maybe a few of these things. But Ignition does it all in one place. And that’s what’s going to make the biggest difference to you and your business. With everything in one, we free you up to focus on what matters most to you.

Where are we heading with Ignition?

Our vision for the future is to make it easier for accounting and professional services firms to build lasting client relationships and do business effortlessly with Ignition.

In 2022 and beyond, here are some of the ways we’ll achieve that together.

Win and retain clients

To win and retain clients in this changing environment, it’s important to sell your services confidently. Yet we know that pricing your value is one of the biggest challenges that many accounting professionals face.

We’ll make it easier for you to price your services consistently and sell with confidence.

In the short-term, you can expect more ready-made proposal templates from leading accounting professionals, industry experts and partners to help you evolve your advisory practice, or simply feel confident in offering clients the basics, whether that’s tax or payroll. In the long-term, we’ll also look at other solutions that make it easier to price and increase prices and importantly, get buy-in from your clients so you don't leave money on the table.

Engage clients seamlessly

We know that delivering a great client experience and freeing up your time for client work is key to your success.

We’ll make it easier to create and update engagement terms on the fly. We’ll give you the ability to easily create and edit your engagement terms when you’re creating your proposal in our new proposal editor.

We’ll make it easier to renew and upsell services. In the short-term, we’ll continue to improve our new proposal editor, starting with the ability to more easily re-engage existing clients and make the proposal and engagement letter renewal process more effortless.

We’ll make it easier to navigate the ever-changing regulatory landscape. In the short-term, we’ll continue to make it easy for you to stay compliant by giving you access to more industry body engagement letter templates through our exclusive partnerships.

In the long-term, we’ll explore other ways to help you stay compliant with other regulatory and legislative requirements when engaging new clients using Ignition.

Get paid effortlessly

We know that having a healthy cash flow is essential to keeping your business running smoothly.
We’ll make it easier to get paid for one-off and recurring work. In the short-term, we’ll introduce the ability to accept upfront deposits in proposals using our new proposal editor to minimize the risk of non-payment, especially for one-off work. In the long-term, we’ll look at introducing milestone billing to make it easier to get paid when hitting key milestones in ongoing projects.

Ignite your business with us by your side

We’re incredibly excited to share this journey with you and watch your businesses grow with the power of Ignition behind you.

We hope the improvements we’re making to our product ignite a spark within you, providing the clarity, confidence, convenience and control that your business needs to reach its full potential.

With Ignition, you can create long-lasting client relationships that pave the way for success now and into the future.

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Meet the author

Dane Thomas

Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer  Ignition

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Published 01 Mar 2022 Last updated 19 Mar 2024