On Tuesday, I was lucky enough to be part of a team going on what we call a “Follow Me to the Office” (FMO). The idea: we head out to tax offices to observe how our users are using our software and their other workflows. Part of the principle behind the idea is that it’s often difficult for users to articulate where they might be having problems. In fact, there are many cases where software users don’t even realize that they’re having difficulty with something; they just accept a task as tedious. That’s why we do these visits. Through observation, we hope to learn where the accountants’ pain points are, learn more about the workflow, and generate ideas for things that we can do better.
This particular client was a medium-sized CA firm, not altogether different from the firm where I used to work. Except this one was quite a bit more technologically advanced. I can’t get into the particulars about what they’re doing there, but it was fascinating to see, and I definitely learned quite a bit.
As part of a software development team, it was very interesting to see our software in ‘action’ in a real practice. I mean, I have our product open pretty much every minute that I’m at work. I’m used to seeing it all the time. I’m very used to working in it, but it’s always with sample or test data. It’s a bit different to see it in a production environment where it’s a tool (as opposed to seeing it at work, where it’s the end product).
Some key takeaways for me:
- Our users are generally quite happy with our software (aside from one or two missing features). This was particular refreshing given that my day job at this time of year is dealing with everything that could possibly be wrong.
- There’s still a lot of room for improvement in terms of streamlining and automating the tax preparation process.
- The tax preparation overall hasn’t changed much since I was in practice. This pretty much validated my understanding of accountants’ workflows, and the opportunities to make things better.
While I was at this one, some of my colleagues were attending FMOs to other offices. In total we saw three different firms that day, and all three of them were VERY different. Pooling our observations was a fun process, and it’s definitely helped us refocus on what matters to accountants.
I’m excited for the next opportunity to follow someone to the office.
