Transforming the management of self-managed super funds with accountantsGPS
Cevo was engaged by Fiduciary Financial Services to develop accountantsGPS, revolutionising self-managed super fund management for accountants. By integrating with BGL’s accounting software, Cevo automated the data import, analysis, processing and categorisation to generate instant insights. This allows accountants to save time and money on calculations, provide better advice and simplify billing.
accountantsGPS solution
Designed and deployed
Co-Create
Financial Services
Industry
Customer overview
Fiduciary Financial Services (Fiduciary) is a leading provider of financial advice and education services in Australia. Their advice services are commonly provided through various channels, including digital advice, chatbots, seminars and video conferencing.
Business challenge
Fiduciary recognised the challenges accountants face in managing self-managed super funds (SMSFs), particularly the time-consuming and complex tasks associated with data analysis and report generation, and set out to create a revolutionary solution for the financial industry.
The primary challenge was to develop a system that seamlessly integrates with BGL, a prominent SMSF management platform widely used by accountants in Australia. The solution needed to streamline the importation, analysis, processing and categorisation of SMSF data from BGL. The platform needed to foster a positive user experience, with an intuitive user interface that was easy to navigate, as well as engage users during the sign-up process while they fill out initial survey questions.
Fiduciary had a clear vision and overarching concepts for the solution, requiring a partner with robust technical expertise to transform these concepts into reality.
Solution
In late 2022, Fiduciary engaged Cevo and D6 Consulting to revolutionise SMSF management for accountants through the development of a scalable solution called accountantsGPS.
In partnership with BGL, accountantsGPS is designed to transform the landscape of SMSF management for accountants via a subscription platform where accountants can access SMSF reports via monthly or yearly plans.
Guided by Fiduciary’s vision and concepts for the application, a team from Cevo and D6 utilised the Co-Create framework to help build a resilient, user-friendly, and scalable platform on AWS, underpinned by a DevOps-led foundation.
The first phase, ‘Define’, focused gaining a deep understanding of the problem Fiduciary was trying to solve, and designing the roadmap for accountantsGPS. This was done via product ideation workshops, mapping of the user journey, and careful consideration of the user experience. The team also identified and validated the key business challenges by conducting workshops and interviews with several stakeholders. This helped to collaboratively address technical limitations and develop solutions, resulting in the creation of a future-state user journey map.
The project then moved to the ‘Deliver’ phase, employing elastic development squads and agile-based delivery sprints. Building upon Cloud Native application development expertise and experience gained from a previous moneyGPS project, Cevo’s consultants effectively developed, deployed and tested the accountantsGPS application.
An integral part of the project was the integration with the BGL API. This required significant mathematical calculations and formula adjustments to handle BGL’s unique data format, ensuring accuracy and compliance.
Another key differentiator of this project was the integration with Stripe, enabling accountantsGPS users to subscribe to the plan of their choice and conveniently pay for the features they need. Similar to moneyGPS, the SMSF check-up report utilises jsreport and survey.js, and pre-populates survey responses by collecting fund details from BGL, saving accountants valuable time during each check-up while maintaining accuracy and efficiency throughout the year. The platform’s distinguishing feature was its ability to process, transform, and present financial data in an SMSF check-up report, providing valuable insights and guidance for accountants in a user-friendly manner.
The final phase, ‘Operate’, involves the successful operation and ongoing management of the platform. The application is managed by Cevo’s Co-Ops team, while ensures accountantsGPS remains resilient, agile, and secure through a proactive and modern approach to managed services.
Following the launch of accountantsGPS, Cevo’s Co-Ops team has focused on ensuring BGL’s stability within the platform, and implemented proactive improvements to the user sign-in journey to ensure a seamless user experience. Cevo also assisted Fiduciary’s marketing partner to implement Google Tag Manager, which enabled Fiduciary to track conversions, website analytics, user activity and more.
“Cevo’s support in the development of the accountantsGPS platform has been a huge success, and working with their dedicated consultants has been a very positive experience for us. The integration of accountantsGPS with BGL’s accounting software has been a game-changer for the management of self-managed super funds.”
George Haramis
CEO and Co-Founder, Fiduciary Financial Services
Outcomes
The successful completion of the accountantsGPS project led to several benefits for Fiduciary and the accounting community:
- BGL integration with scalability: Fiduciary now boasts a fully integrated platform that seamlessly processes SMSF data from BGL, which allows for the opportunity to cover approximately 60% of SMSFs in Australia.
- Simplified billing with Stripe Integration: accountantsGPS collects payments from Stripe upon sign-up to the platform, which simplifies billing for accountants while ensuring accuracy.
- Streamlined journey with SMSF user flow: The platform features a streamlined user journey with accountant authentication, fund owner selection, data retrieval from BGL and report generation. Accountants are able to initiate, save, and complete SMSF check-ups with ease.
- Instant insights: With accountantsGPS, accountants can now receive an instant overview of their client’s SMSFs and the changes that should be made to optimise their fund allocations and determine their best investment opportunities. This overview includes a comprehensive report that reveals insights, graphs, statistics, business forecasts, and calculations based on data.
- Accessible advice for accountants: Accountants using accountantsGPS now have the ability to provide expert SMSF advice much more efficiently, resulting in improved client service.
- Time and cost-savings: The platform drastically reduces the time accountants need to spend on SMSF calculations, where they would typically be looking through financial statements, transactions, investments and expenses. This reduces the time they spend from days to instant overviews.
- Managed services expertise: Cevo’s Co-Ops team continues to provide Fiduciary with ongoing and proactive management. With extensive engineering capabilities and development expertise, the team’s proactive approach to continuous improvement and technical enhancement, ensures the platform remains resilient, agile and secure.
- Enhanced platform stability: Cevo is proactively ensuring ongoing stability for the accountantsGPS platform, including seamless BGL integration and addressing user journey concerns, minimising disruptions and ensuring a smooth user experience.
accountantsGPS has revolutionised SMSF management, and has since earned recognition in the technology sector, when the platform was named as a finalist in the 2023 Technology Scale-up Awards.
By simplifying SMSF management for accountants and offering instant insights, accountantsGPS empowers financial professionals to deliver exceptional value to their clients.
“It’s not just about cost optimisation; the platform has made data analysis and report generation much more efficient for accountants, enabling more time to provide expert advice to clients. Thanks to Cevo, we’re delivering exceptional value through our platform, and we couldn’t be happier with the results.”
George Haramis
CEO and Co-Founder, Fiduciary Financial Services
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