Based in Braintree, Massachusetts, Xpitax LLC is a leader in providing tax and bookkeeping services to the accounting industry. Xpitax operates an office in India to provide U.S. CPAs (certified public accountants) with four types of outsourcing services: tax return preparation, financial analysis reports, bookkeeping and workpaper conversion and year-end accounting. Xpitax’s India staff, which varies from 250 people in tax season to about 85 in the off-season, includes chartered accountants (CAs) and accountants. The company also offers XCM workflow software to facilitate collaboration among virtual team members. By the April 2007 tax deadline, the company prepared more than 20,000 tax returns.

The Challenge: Improving Training and Communication in Outsourcing Engagements

Xpitax offers overburdened CPAs the ability to outsource tax preparation and other accounting functions to highly trained professionals overseas, achieving cost savings and improved efficiency. However, the actual process of outsourcing can be fraught with concerns on the part of clients. “Outsourcing represents a big change for CPAs. There can be a lot of anxiety about loss of control, lack of confidence in the outsourcing staff and even fear of losing their jobs,” said Penny Breslin, director of Professional Services.

Xpitax faced an uphill battle in assuaging concerns so clients would sign up for outsourcing, and would be comfortable delegating higher-end projects — representing additional revenues — to the India staff. “Ordinarily, the work we do is day-to-day transactional data entry into accounting software, but occasionally a CPA firm has a special project and a particular way they want it handled. We could write procedural documents but still miss a lot of holes, and getting the CPA firm to write the documents is difficult. We needed a way to connect the client and the chartered accountant in India for training — and also to establish a comfort level,” she commented.

Implementing Citrix GoToMeeting Corporate

The company initially tried a popular Web collaboration service but found it had pricing and usability drawbacks. So Xpitax replaced its existing solution with Citrix® GoToMeeting® Corporate — and immediately saw a cost reduction of 50 percent. The Citrix service enables clients from across the U.S. and their accountants in India to quickly join a Web-based session hosted in Xpitax’s office. The sessions serve as an introduction and enable fast, efficient training. “With GoToMeeting, clients can show screens and oversee the India staff moving through the software while giving them instructions. This level of collaboration would be impossible with participants 6,000 miles apart sending e-mails back and forth.”

Breslin enhances her meetings with photos of the India team, while an Xpitax colleague who handles tax compliance uses Webcams for his sessions. Breslin also records the session on video and sends it to India, both as a reference tool and to train other staff members on the client’s processes.

Building Trust and Driving Business Growth with Online Meetings

GoToMeeting is a critical factor in the success of Xpitax’s outsourcing service — both in winning clients initially and in building confidence that leads to lucrative, higher-level projects. Breslin said, “I had a prospect in Canada who was totally opposed to outsourcing, but her boss insisted. She was calling me nonstop, so I brought on her assigned CA and got the two of them talking through GoToMeeting. Now they’re fast friends. She’s spoken to him, seen his picture and feels like she knows him. They’ve gone through data files and taken turns with the screen controls. She’s very comfortable sending work to him.”

She added, “I can name at least five customers we would have lost without GoToMeeting. We saved them because of the ability to collaborate in real time with their teams in India. And we’ve had clients who didn’t send us anything for months, but once we conducted a Citrix session with India, the work started coming in.”

Not only does GoToMeeting help persuade reluctant clients to outsource, it also builds their confidence in the abilities of the India team to tackle more complicated projects. “We’ve seen an increase in hourly work, and also in the level of difficulty because clients feel very comfortable,” Breslin continued. “Just having India throw a high-end accounting question at them and realizing they know their stuff is usually all it takes.”

Using the Citrix service, Xpitax can show customers exactly how the India staff members do their work. “We can show dual monitors used by the staff — XCM workflow software on one side and on the other, the actual tax or accounting software they’re working on. All these capabilities help build clients’ trust that we can handle the job.”

She stated, “When clients get to know their India-based accountant one-on-one using GoToMeeting, they feel much more comfortable and send more work — and higher-quality work — and everyone ends up on the same page.”

Improving Recruitment and Retention of Outsourcing Staff

Xpitax also uses GoToMeeting to recruit accounting students for tax season. “The Citrix service plays a huge role in our recruitment efforts. Although we travel to India frequently, we use GoToMeeting almost exclusively to communicate with prospective employees and train them when they come onboard,” Breslin explained. “We’ve also cut down on the turnover in India because the clients become real to the staff and vice versa. The person in the U.S. is seeing them as accounting professionals and responding to their questions.”

Further, the company uses the solution to remotely troubleshoot IT problems with its hardware and software staff in India. And it reduces travel time and costs for coordination among several “virtual” workers in the U.S. and India.

Gaining Reliability, Ease of Use and Cost-effectiveness

Citrix GoToMeeting has proved to be a winner for Xpitax. Breslin said, “Compared to our previous solution, GoToMeeting is extremely easy and highly reliable. Hands-down, everyone in the company likes it much better. It’s very simple to manipulate the screen. The interface is user-friendly. And of course, it’s a big improvement cost-wise with the All You Can Meet® flat-fee pricing.”

©2007 Citrix Online, LLC. All rights reserved. Citrix®, GoToMyPC®, GoToMeeting®, GoToAssist®, GoToWebinar™ and All You Can Meet® are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.