About the Customer
Named a 2023 Top Firms in the Capital Region and Firm to Watch by Accounting Today, GRF CPAs & Advisors (GRF) is a full-service professional services firm providing clients with audit and assurance, tax services, outsourced accounting, and advisory solutions. Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, GRF is a member of CPAmerica, Inc. – one of the largest associations of CPA firms in the United States – and is consistently recognized as a top firm by leading industry publications.
Meet Tricia Katebini
Tricia Katebini is an Audit Partner at GRF, as well as Tech Pillar team member for the Audit department, in charge of the technologies used to streamline the firm’s Audit and Advisory work. She manages audits for clients of all sizes – including those subject to Single Audits under Uniform Guidance.
Tricia serves on the AICPA’s Joint Trial Board and is one of the lead Partners when it comes to accounting standard updates, including ensuring that the Audit department is empowered with the latest technologies.
The Challenge
Before engaging with Trullion, Tricia and her team were facing the following key challenges:
1. Creating and sustaining a competitive edge
GRF punches above its weight, competing successfully against some of the biggest names in the industry, and therefore needs to offer superior value continuously. To do this, the team is committed to providing the very best service to every single client, very often seeking to leverage technology to provide a decisive advantage.
2. Centralizing workflows and client communication
Most of GRF’s clients provide the firm with documentation such as invoices and contracts by uploading such documentation via an online portal – a process that can be challenging to keep organized. This creates a time-consuming task for the GRF team to gather and classify these materials, it creates the risk of missing something important, and introduces friction and frustration into the process because the audit team may request a document that the client thinks has already been delivered.
3. Optimizing internal resources
For employees, performing a manual test of controls for example, involves ticking and tying documents and figures before generating a work paper – actions that are mission critical yet resource intensive.
The process can leave many talented professionals aspiring towards more creative and strategic outlets for their incredible talents. Thanks to automation, associates can now realize that ambition, as technology enables a more efficient allocation of precious human resource.’
From a Partner management and review perspective, it’s also frustrating – instead of a Partner spending time identifying a missing contract, they could look at things more strategically, and identify trends or provide critical insights.
The process
Tricia came across Trullion when looking for leading technology tools used in the Accounting and Audit industry. After reading more about the company, she reached out, and to her delight found true partners who are invested in her success.
“With some other technology companies being overly aggressive and pushy”, Tricia appreciated the Trullion approach from a customer relationship standpoint.
The Solution
Tricia and her team deployed Trullion’s AI-Powered audit tools at GRF, delivered and integrated with white glove treatment from beginning to end by Trullion’s dedicated team of solution experts.
The results were nothing short of phenomenal when using Trullion’s Test of Details module: “workflow time was reduced by 40%, and I anticipate 50-90% time savings in the near future.”
Unprecedented centralization
Tricia and her team love the fact that information can be scanned and searched for so effortlessly, enabling the team to assess if anything has been missed, and stay on top of all documentation within one secure, cloud-based platform.
Trullion does the heavy lifting, instantly
When using Trullion for the first time, the GRF team were amazed how easy it was to integrate the tools with their workflows. For example, being able to effortlessly drop information into the client folder, and instantly have the work paper 80% complete. This results in a huge efficiency boost, especially with increasingly tight deadlines across the industry.
More motivated and engaged employees
The benefits weren’t just about a reduction in time spent on audits, improved accuracy and compliance. The GRF audit staff were beyond excited to work with the Trullion platform – “Suddenly they’re more curious, asking questions, and wanting to work with the solution”.
For GRF, Trullion’s value goes beyond the firm: Tricia sees it as adding tremendous value to the profession, attracting talented new entrants, and delivering more value for clients.
Conclusion
Trullion has elevated GRF’s capabilities to be more efficient and add value to their clients. It sets them apart from competitors, positioning GRF as a true leader in the Audit and Consulting space with capacity to scale, and compete with larger firms.
Using Trullion’s AI-Powered Audit suite has resulted in huge savings internally, ignited the passion of team members, and inspired Tricia in terms of what the future of Accounting and Audit will look like – all while delivering unmatched value to GRF clients immediately after implementation.
