jenny.brown's avatar
jenny.brown
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2 years ago

Virtual office, what are your thoughts?

Back in 2020, we were forced to close our office due to Covid and the many lockdowns that Melbourne had.  We quickly had to mobilised the team of 10 at that time to work from home, fortunately we predominately use M365 and Xplan, with any other software being 100% cloud based, hence no server issues, which made life a little easier.
Later that year we made the decision to give up our office and work virtually. Many advisers said to me that it wouldn't work for them due to their client base being older, they still say it. 
I would like to challenge the thinking around that, we focus on pre and post retirees, who are usually the least tech savvy of any age group, but whilst they like to sometimes see us in person for coffee or lunch, the majority of the work we do is all via video, email and phone, after all they all learnt to facetime their grandkids during covid.
Our business has grown in people, clients and revenue over the past 3.5 years since we have been 100% virtual, yes it's been a lot of work, trial and error, but it can work, if you want it to.
I'd love to hear from others who have gone virtual and what has worked best for you, your team, your business and your clients?

advice servicing
client engagement
clients
practice management

3 Replies

    • jenny.brown's avatar
      jenny.brown
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      2 years ago

      Yes it's certainly made us re-think how we work, how we schedule in person appointments to ensure we don't waste time travelling and it keeps meetings a lot tighter and on track.
      One thing we were concerned about was how working remotely could change the relationship dynamics with both new and existing clients, we've worked hard on this and found that our relationships haven't changed, an clinets really enjoy the more frequent catch ups.

      • deborah.kent's avatar
        deborah.kent
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        2 years ago

        Great topic to raise, as you know I have taken a leaf out of your book and we are now fully virtual we still have a serviced office presence for booking offices and boardrooms if necessary.  We are finding it fantastic its working really well and we are freeing up capital to look at staffing and tech.  Thanks Jen for your leadership in this way of working

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