A year ago, Croner-i was acquired by Peninsula Group – and in just 12 months, the company has gone from strength to strength. CEO Bertrand Stern-Gillet talks about what Croner-i has been up to, the new Navigate Tax service, and how the company has adjusted to major changes while making significant investments in technology, infrastructure and resources
What has Croner-i been up to in the last six months?
Well, the big thing has been the office move. The minute we saw 240 Blackfriars, it just felt right. It’s more conducive to collaborative work, and we’re able to offer more to our colleagues, like the on-site gym, café, breakout areas, and meeting rooms, which were at a premium in the old building.
The other massive project going on is the migration of our entire company back office system. When we bought the business, we shared a SAP system with the old owners, which was very heavyweight and complex, designed for a global hard copy publishing business – which we aren’t. It’s a massive project and a huge undertaking because it’s the one system that’s the backbone of the business for every team.
From a client-facing perspective, what we’ve tried to do is change how we deliver enhancements. Previously, we’d focused on big projects which took a long time – so we want to identify things which are more quickly deliverable with an agile approach to IT and product development.
For example, we’ve made changes to help clients search, and view more content on the screen. And the feedback we’ve had is that these small changes are making a bigger difference than the large scope projects.
Finally, from a content perspective, we’ve really tried to focus on improving and expanding the practical elements of our knowledge and information. We’re known for having fantastic in-depth detailed expert analysis – but we had some room for improvement for the different experience levels of our clients, or the extremely busy sole practitioners, who need the critical points in an easy-to-digest manner.
For instance, we’ve been working hard on the new Navigate Tax product, which combines our expertise with a brand new, user-friendly system. It’s a new approach to tax guidance that hasn’t been done in the space before – and with our expert knowledge, we know it will transform our clients’ work. It is packed full of interactive tools and has more than 40 modules based around real-life scenarios, covering everything from setting up a business to making pension contributions. Navigate Tax instantly gives you the resources you need for all kinds of tax issues and is set for launch in October.
What was Croner-i’s best achievement of the last six months?
The thing I’m most proud of is that in only six months we’ve increased the profitability of the business – even taking into account the prime real estate we invested in in London.
I think that gives a good yardstick for an awful lot of things that are going on. The fact that we’ve improved the company’s performance means we’ve made great strides with our marketing efforts, the sales teams have been doing a fantastic job, and even our usage has gone up – the average client is now using us 25% more than in previous years.
We’ve also hugely improved our client experience, really focusing on helping our clients and resolving any issues immediately.
What’s been the biggest challenge?
Definitely the system migration – that’s been torturous at time. It’s been a lesson in overcoming adversity, because it’s been one of those projects where you overcome something, and half an hour later you have another three problems, then you solve those and you have another six.
It’s the largest IT project I’ve ever been involved in, and we came up against some real blockers. But at the same time, it’s been an amazing experience: we’ve made a team which is spread out all over the country, in some cases worldwide, and the ability to bring those teams together towards an end goal has been astounding. The effort put in by some people on the project has been superhuman.
What will the next six months bring for Croner-i?
The biggest thing we need to do over the next six months is set ourselves a really high benchmark to the way in which we get our content to clients. We’re really fortunate in that with our team of writers and editors, our content is the best it’s ever been – but where we have some improvements to make is the way we deliver that content to clients, and the way in which they access it.
The back office system doesn’t sound exciting, but what it will do is allow a series of teams to think in a more streamlined way. It will transform how we deal with client queries and speed up our response times significantly. The change to the back office system has the potential to transform how this business thinks and reduce the levels of complexity, allowing us to focus on what we do best – which is writing great content and delivering it to our clients.