The Advisory Accelerator Podcast

Nov 9, 2023

Ep016: Managing the Client Revenue Cycle with Aiwyn

On this episode of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, I connect with Pat Morell, the Chief Revenue Officer at Aiwyn, to discuss how his firm partners with CPA firms to help better manage their client revenue cycle. I learned how Aiwyn's system taps into legacy management platforms while innovating with solutions like engagement letters. Pat elaborates on drastically reducing administrative tasks and increasing billable hours. With nearly 80 customers and strong reviews, Aiwyn is achieving success. However, what was most reassuring was Pat's emphasis on data security and reliable service. Take a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS * Pat Morell, the co-founder and chief revenue officer of Aiwyn, joins us to discuss how their system is revolutionizing the CPA revenue process through automation, liberating CPAs from time-consuming administrative tasks. * Aiwyn’s system integrates with legacy practice management systems to automate tasks from billing to collections, to payments and account management, which enables CPA firms to focus more on client service. * We discuss the benefits of Aiwyn's system, such as increasing billable hours and improving clients' revenue. Pat shares that the pricing model is accessible for firms with as little as $2 million in top line revenue. * Pat outlines the challenges firms face when adopting a new system and explains how Aiwyn assists in overcoming these obstacles. * We provide an overview of the process of getting started with Aiwyn, which includes an initial Q&A, a demo, and understanding the pricing structure. * Pat shares the success story of Aiwyn, which currently serves almost 80 customers and has a high net promoter score. * We discuss the benefits of Aiwyn's software, its security features, and how it can help firms of all sizes, emphasizing that it can free up staff from time-consuming billing tasks. * Pat explains the details of Aiwyn's pricing model, which is designed to help firms grow. The pricing model is based on the firm's top line revenue and scales as the firm grows. * We discuss how Aiwyn's software is constantly updated and improved, with security features and uptime SLAs in place to ensure reliable and secure operation. * We conclude by expressing gratitude to Pat for his enlightening insights and to our listeners for tuning in. We encourage interested firms to reach out to Pat for more information on Aiwyn. LINKS Show Notes About Aiwyn GUESTS Pat Morell About Pat TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Jeff: Well, hello again everybody. This is Jeff Pawlow, and I am the president of the engineered advisory family of companies and your host for the advisory accelerator podcast, a show that works to help CPAs become more advisory minded in their practices. On today's episode, I'm happy to welcome Pat Morell, the chief revenue officer and co-finder of Aiwyn, who will help us explore how their system really allows CPAs to better advise their client in the areas of revenue process automation, and that includes billing, payment processing, collections and overall account management. So we've got a lot to cover today, Pat, welcome to the advisory accelerator podcast. Pat: Jeff, thanks for having me Really excited to be here. Jeff: You bet, and full disclosure. Not only am I interviewing Pat today, but we're also interviewing Pat and his company to be part of a solution at engineered advisory. So we're looking forward to working with you as a client and appreciate everything that you've done with us to figure out what solution is going to best meet our needs. So I'm excited to share some of what we've learned with our listeners as we go through the podcast, and one of the things that I thought was interesting on your website is you've done a nice job of kind of historically calling out what the revenue process used to be. You had pre 1980, where it's almost a hundred percent manual processes, and then we got spreadsheets in the 80s and more internet enabled tools in the 2000s, and that brings us up to today. And so talk a little bit about what I win does as a product at a high level, and then we can dig down a little bit deeper from there. Pat: Sure, and I'd love that you put this on a historical continuum, because I think we, before starting the business, were operators on that continuum and actually the core use case that drove us to start I win is we had a not so great billing experience as clients of a very big firm, and it's set us off on this journey to figure out how we can improve the client experience, specifically through the lens of the billing and collections experience. So the high level on I win is we work right now with about 80 of the world's largest CPA firms and we are helping them internally automate their billing, collections and payment processes. We quite literally built software that plugs into some of the legacy practice management systems that a lot of these traditional firms operate off of what they use for their time, their billing, et cetera and we pull out some data and we present data to clients in a modern interface that allows clients to see their payment history, to pay their bills. Oftentimes, folks listening to this, you probably have clients who have multiple business entities. They probably have multiple projects going on at any given time. What we've observed is a lot of those times I just wanted an easy way to go in, see their invoice, one click and pay, and we've created the apparatus to do that and in doing so, in kind of what we say, unlocking data from this legacy practice management infrastructure and by that I mean, you know again, firms listening to this. You all probably work off of things like CCH access or Thompson Reuters practice CS, those traditional tools. By unlocking those data we've been able to not only build solutions that automate really our core focus right now billing collections and payment but we've expanded to additional use cases throughout. Again, just to bring it full circle, what we call the quote unquote revenue cycle, kind of that cyclical flow of behaviors that underlie the flow of revenue to a firm. You know everything from acquiring a client all the way to getting paid. We're now moving upstream and we made this announcement recently we have an engagement letter solution. So all of the nice bills and whistles of automation that we've brought to Billion in collection, we now basically give clients and their firms kind of a one quick, easy button for automating engagement letters and client onboarding. So big visions, big appetites and by unlocking data we're able to do a lot. So that's where we are right now, three years in. Jeff: So talk a little bit I mean any accounting firms you know at the upper end of the market is pretty impressive. Let's dig into that a little bit so I win. I'm assuming is the system that they're using to automate their revenue process. But then I'm guessing they're also recommending and referring that to their clients as well. So talk about the dynamics of that relationship you have with the CPA firm. Pat: Sure, yeah, so our firms. It's an interesting dynamic we have with our firms. Yes, they are using us as their internal systems and the value proposition, jeff, they're being you plug in Iowan and Basically you can put on autopilot. All the billing collections work, so measurably what happens is your day sales outstanding decline. You save a lot of time, you know, instead of your partners making collections called day in, day out. They don't have to because we can automate things like statements and we get clients an experience where they can literally go to one portal, click pay and be done. The firm love it because it's unlocking Kind of time at the margins. That's freeing up capacity which, when we talk about transitioning to a kind of advisory services, that's…

28 min