With Christmas now less than 4 weeks away, that summer feeling is well and truly in the air. Traffic is easing, Christmas lights are going up throughout the neighbourhood streets, and that familiar sound of test cricket on the radio is ever present in the air.
As for our industry, I’d like say that things are starting to wind down, but while out on the road I’ve spoken with plenty of partners for whom it is going to be flat-chat right up to the 22nd of December. So for those of you in that camp, I do hope that your busy work is “good busy” and that you will finish 2017 on a prosperous note.
For myprosperity, we’ve had a landmark year. We’ll finish near on 500 partners and with active subscribers on our platform approaching 20,000. It will be a big milestone and we thank our many partners, both old and new, who have helped support us throughout the year.
How did they do it? Partner Insights
Speaking of partners, we recently relaunched the Testimonials page on our website with interviews that showcase how some of our most successful partners have leveraged myprosperity to grow their business.
- What made them sign up as partners?
- How did they roll it out?
- What clients did they target?
- How did they price and position the service?
- What has been the impact?
The videos are only 5 to 10 minutes each, so if you want a few tips and ideas from others that are getting great results from our platform, visit the site and check out the interviews.
Also, if you haven’t seen it, one of our partners (Spencer Broad of Acute Business Services) was featured in the AFR talking about how cloud computing, and in particular myprosperity, has helped his business establish a competitive advantage and generate value-add to their clients.
Team Update
As we continue to build the business we’ve brought on a few new team members. With Anthony Pearson (Partner Success Manager for QLD/NT) now on board, and Jeremy Johnston, formerly of Change GPS, stepping into a Partner Enablement Manager role looking after NSW & QLD, we are now in a great a position.
Alongside the existing Partner team – Matt Green, Meena Berry, Clayton Wright, Karolina Kuszyk, Sophie McKinley, Karen Kairouz, Paul Lo and Ersan Fedai – we really feel we’ve made a substantial investment in supporting our partners to succeed with myprosperity and set us up for a strong 2018.
Events Galore & Partner Drinks
Some of you may have seen us on the road and around the country in the last month at various events. The FPA Congress in Hobart in late November was well attended with our very own Matt Green pitching as part of the Fintech Hub and hosting a series of breakfasts on industry trends across Tasmania, and later in Adelaide.
I was also busy at the IPA National Congress with Clayton and Anthony on the Gold Coast where I spoke about the “whole of wealth” opportunity for accountants and the importance of owning the data in order to own the client. We’ve had great support from the IPA over the past year and it was great to catch up with some familiar faces at the event.
@myprosperity present a market changing solution to wealth information through an innovative new approach #IPANC17
— Andrew Conway FIPA (@AndrewConwayCEO) 24 November 2017
Supporting Women in Business
We were very pleased to announce a new partnership with Acceler8, a national training organisation which provides financial literacy training to female entrepreneurs.
Led by Tanya Titman, who also runs a prominent accounting practice in Brisbane (Consolid8), the program aims to help female entrepreneurs understand the financial implications of running a business, with tools and resources to assist them in building sustainable wealth.
With this partnership, each participant in the program will receive a free 12-month subscription to myprosperity, so they can manage their personal finances and get their entire financial world in order.
Product Update: Custom Report Covers & Partner Permissions
Last but not least, from a product standpoint, we continue to increase our cadence on important new features and developments to improve administration, user experience and security aspects of our platform. November saw the following platform enhancements:
- Usability updates for the Tax Wizard;
- Enhancements to our reporting templates allowing partners to configure reports with a custom title page for a more compelling branded experience;
- Improved functionality around permissions and roles for practice staff who are assigned to various clients in the Advisor Portal. This should make management of staff and allocation to clients much easier to configure and simpler to manage;
- Important security enhancements with multi-factor authentication to be available very shortly at a client level for login, along with notifications to ensure users are logged out after remaining idle for a set period of time.
Check out the demonstration by our senior BA/QA guru, Sara Azer, to see all of the features in action. We have many more in the pipeline, with most of the development team working through Christmas and New Year to deliver what is an ambitious program of work to kick off 2018.
So there you go… plenty happening. This will be my last update for 2017, with the next edition due in late January where we’ll announce some further product updates as well as plans to hit the road with Xero and MYOB in February, and details of our H1 national roadshow which we are planning in Q2.
Until then, have a safe and joyous festive season, and on behalf of the team at myprosperity thanks for all your support in 2017! We look forward to working with you in what we know will be a huge 2018.
Chris Ridd, CEO, myprosperity