“With Ignition, we can put admin to one side – we don’t have to worry about it. It means we can spend more time helping find the ‘pearls’ that will help our clients grow their businesses.”
- Adarsh Dutt, Co-Founder, Oyster Hub
Industry: Accounting
Location: Sydney, Australia
Founded: 2017
Team size: 10
Clients: 250
The world may be your oyster, but finding a pearl is another challenge entirely. It was a challenge that Adarsh Dutt set out to solve when he co-founded Oyster Hub, an accountant and advisory firm built on the philosophy that every business has a “pearl” that will transform their business – they just need some help uncovering it.
It’s a unique approach that is making waves in the industry. In just four years the firm has grown to serve over 250 clients and has landed Adarsh the title of CFO of the Year in the 2021 Australian Accounting Awards.
We sat down with Adarsh to uncover what part Ignition plays in their goal of being 100% cloud-based, and how it’s helped them cut admin time, improve client experience, and ultimately grow their business – even during the pandemic.
The challenge: manual workarounds eat up hundreds of hours
Oyster Hub has always been a 100% cloud-based firm. While this approach was great in many ways, the team found themselves dealing with lots of different systems and gaps in processes. And that meant manual work.
The team were spending over 100 hours a week on admin and manual workarounds to overcome obstacles in billing and collection. They knew this wasn’t going to work long-term.
The solution: smart integrations and workflow automation
Adarsh was referred to Ignition by an industry colleague and, despite being hesitant at first, he soon felt supported and confident they had chosen the right tool.
“Ignition’s onboarding specialists were great. They helped us through the whole process and we were able to quickly transfer all our clients over to Ignition.”
Adarsh used to have a team of three handling invoicing and payment collection. Now, with the help of Ignition, he has one person who gets through it in less than a day.
“Ignition removed all the manual processes we had. It has saved a lot of time and we’ve found it really good value for money.”
And that’s just the start. By integrating Ignition with Karbon and QuickBooks, Oyster Hub has automated its entire client engagement process.
“Ignition is a powerful tool. Not only from a collections point of view, but also in terms of workflow automation.”
It’s also helped them keep on top of proposals – a particular sticking point with their previous proposal solution that had no automated payment collection or reminders. That meant once proposals were sent, they often fell through the cracks.
Now, with Ignition’s automated reminders, Adarsh and his team have complete confidence that proposals will be followed up and actioned.
Ignition proposals also give Oyster Hub clients confidence with the services they are getting and clarity about the fees they will be charged. It helps to manage client expectations upfront, removing roadblocks, and ensuring compliance.
“Ignition is our first point of control for all engagements. It has bridged the small gaps we had in the client engagement process so now we can fully focus on servicing our clients.”
With the pandemic pushing accountants to deliver more than accounting and compliance services, Adarsh was able to adapt to changes sooner and invest the time saved from admin work in providing more valued added advisory services as a virtual CFO.
“The role of accountants has shifted towards trusted business advisory since the pandemic, however thanks to tools like Ignition, we’re able to provide more valued added services to our clients.”
