The voice of business in the Tees region | 21
Looking forward – Baldwins’ Wynyard
office managing partner Joanne Regan.
WORDS: ADAM STEEL
PICTURES: TOM BANKS
Go
figure!
D
ynamic accountancy practice
Baldwins is staying ahead of the
technology curve as it looks to the
future and offers clients the latest
digitally-driven services.
Specialising in a wide range of
accountancy and business advisory
services, Baldwins offer expert corporate
finance and specialist tax advice in a variety
of sectors.
Part of the CogitalGroup, whose strategic
goal is to become a leading, technology-
supported international business services
group, Baldwins has always prided itself on
being at the cutting edge of technology.
The firm is one of the UK’s fastest-
growing accountancy businesses, with
more than 90 offices and 3,000 employees,
including a modern office at Wynyard
Business Park employing over 60 staff.
Baldwins has used cloud-based
accountancy innovations for the best part of
a decade and is future-proofing once again
as it moves further away from traditional
paperwork by incorporating technologies
that collate data and provide real-time
information at the touch of a button.
The company has introduced its own
smart web-based portal CoZone to help
streamline business processes on one
platform, invested in award-winning new
cash flow management software Fluidly
and is using tools such as Receipt Bank to
capture invoice information. They also have
allocated a digital hero within every office
and every region has a digital transformation
leader.
The additions are exciting news for both
Baldwins and clients, says Joanne Regan,
Wynyard office managing partner.
Fast-paced changes to the industry, such
as the Making Tax Digital government policy,
have influenced the firm in staying ahead of
the game as well.
“The old accountant-client relationship of
turning up once a year to ‘do the accounts’
has completely changed. Now it has to be
instant, and it has to be accurate so that we
can concentrate on current issues whilst
being reliably informed with the most up to
date historic information. At Baldwins, we’re
always looking for advisory tools and how
to make the advisory process slicker and
quicker.
“It’s about using tech
to make life easier for
everyone.”
“What we offer now is much more
of a virtual finance director role. By
utilising technology, we can add value to
businesses, where a traditional accountant
couldn’t.
“We are not just doing accounts six
months after a year-end, we are doing it
promptly and in-depth, and we are future-
proofing.”
“The profession has moved from being
just about processing numbers to being
able to advise businesses in a language
they can understand,” Joanne added.
“The tech allows us to present easily
digestible information and frees up time to
help us work more closely with clients on
Keeping one
step ahead in the
numbers game
matters that are important to them.
“So while the image of technology can be
that it’s impersonal, it allows us to offer the
best of both worlds and move closer to our
goal of being the go-to advisers in Teesside
and the wider North-East region.”
Baldwins’ technology also means their
clients can devote more of their working
day to running their business rather than
number-crunching, Joanne says.
“Sometimes a business owner's time is
constrained by the fact they are busy doing
things that can be efficiently carried out by a
piece of software rather than concentrating
their talents on growing the business,” she
added.
“Invoices and receipts, for example, can
now be scanned and sent directly to us to
take care of.
“It’s about using tech to make life
easier for everyone, from small to large
businesses, where we are introducing
technologies in auditing which can be far
more efficient and produce useful business
insights.”
Given the firm’s commitment to the
latest tech-savvy ways of working, it should
perhaps come as no surprise that Baldwins
is getting involved with Tees Business and
its first-ever Tees Tech Awards.
Having already radically altered their
own operations and those of their clients,
Baldwins is sponsoring the Digital
Transformation category at next April’s
inaugural awards.
“For us, it was a no-brainer,” says Joanne.
"Teesside was at the heart of the industrial
revolution and we want to play a full part in
our area's tech revolution."