Decupere & Partners makes its way through the digital jungle

‘For accountants, it’s a jungle to find their way through all those tools,’ says Dieter Bonte, CCO at Decupere & Partners. ‘And once they think they’ve found the right toolbox, another challenge arises. Because no matter how interesting some of these new fintechs are, they remain a risk in terms of reliability and continuity. Will their services still be available in a few years? Is their attractive price tag sustainable, or is there a risk that the fintechs will run out of money and suddenly double their prices? Will there always be close support in an understandable language and from a familiar face; or is it from a call centre in the US, Malta or India?’

To move up a gear with its digitalization, Decupere & Partners decided to partner with Isabel Group a few years ago. ‘We wanted a robust partner who is professionally organized, has a large sales market and can continue to offer its services at an affordable price. In this way, we too can continue to guarantee continuity and affordable prices to our 3,000 customers. That is why the choice for a partnership with Isabel Group was logical for us,” continues Dieter Bonte.

Less manual work

A few years ago, Decupere & Partners started implementing various services from CodaBox. CodaBox makes it possible to convert invoices, account statements, credit card statements and payroll documents into usable data and to deliver them automatically to the software of your choice. This not only saves a lot of manual work and time for accountants and bookkeepers, but also for their customers.

Decupere & Partners also implemented a second solution from Isabel Group: ClearFacts. That platform enables better and smarter collaboration between accountants and their customers. Thanks to machine recognition of data, automatic booking proposals, digital reading of documents, etc., a lot of manual work is eliminated for both the accountant and the customer. Once the data has been processed at the accounting office, the customer has an immediate view of his or her figures via the portal.

‘It requires some evangelizing for accountancy firms’

Although most accountancy firms today are already convinced of the benefits of digitization, not all of their customers are. A big challenge is to get the SMEs to take the bath. It takes some evangelizing for accountancy firms as well,’ experiences Dieter Bonte. But once customers have made the switch, they immediately see the advantages and don’t want to go back. Every customer who takes the step is also a win for us, of course. With ClearFacts, customers simply upload their own documents in the meantime, allowing us to process them daily and smooth out the traditional work peaks at the end and beginning of each quarter.’

At Decupere & Partners, the initial focus was on getting medium-sized companies on board with the digital journey. This year alone, the accounting firm has helped 500 larger companies to embrace the ClearFacts platform. Smaller companies are generally more hesitant.

Of the 105 employees at Decupere & Partners, two are currently working full time to guide clients through the switch to ClearFacts. For our part, we also continue to support and train accountants. To this end, we have dedicated customer success managers. They continuously assist the accountancy firms to ensure that they master the solutions, according to the train-the-trainer principle. In addition to coaching, we also offer accessible and bite-sized information in the form of manuals, instructional videos, etc. and that both for accountants and their clients.

Reliable and safe accountancy tools

Accountants work with sensitive information and large sums of money every day. Being able to rely on reliable and secure solutions is therefore a must. That is also one of the reasons why we work with Isabel Group. Data security is top of mind for many of our customers. Who exactly is behind CodaBox and ClearFacts? Is there support? Is it secure? These are the typical questions we get. If we then provide some explanation, the doubts are usually quickly dispelled’, explains Dieter Bonte of Decupere & Partners.

In the meantime, Isabel Group is not standing still. In April 2021, we set foot in France for the first time with the acquisition of Clearnox, a company that develops solutions for automating accounts receivable management. We are always looking for new solutions to better serve accountants and their customers.

Find out more about CodaBox and ClearFacts here.