Inside Integra Newsletter - April 1st, 2020

These are the firms that have uploaded information to our Covid-19 Crisis Page in the Members Only area:
Under the Quick Links tab...

Abeles & Hoffman - USA
ARQ Group - Malta
Cresa - USA
DPA Expertise Conseil - France
Gilmour Group - Canada
Glass Jacobson Financial Group - USA
IL Management - Brazil
KSTD - USA
Leaf Saltman USA
Levi & Levi - Canada
Pro B Centre / Cheng & Co - Malaysia
Salmon Sims Thomas - USA
Fenner Melstrom & Dooling - USA

INTEGRA EDUCATION

Educate your staff and stay connected - a benefit of Integra membership available at no cost, and CPE certificates are issued for live events.
All past webinar recordings can be easily found on the Integra website - link here

HR Committee Meeting

April 2 - Round table discussion for Integra members who have a dedicated HR role in their firm. This meeting will be about work at home arrangements.
Email Laurie Daschuk to be added to the list - 9am PST/ 12 pm EST/ 5pm UK/ 6pm Central Europe

Webinar
Managing Remote Work Situations - April 7 - 2pm PST / 5pm EST + will be recorded
Integra Member Mark Cottle with Frontline Philippines (providing offshore accounting staff) will help us navigate the world of working from home and having staff work from home as they are the experts at organizing remote work strategies. Email Laurie Daschuk to be added to the list.

Marketing Committee Meeting

April 16 - Round table discussion for Integra members who have a dedicated marketing role in their firm.
Email Laurie Daschuk to be added to the list - 8am PST/ 11am EST/ 3pm UK/ 4pm Central Europe

Audit & Accounting Committee Meeting

April 28 - Round table discussion for Integra members who have a role in Audit and Assurance. This meeting will be about remote audits and other current audit topics.
Email Laurie Daschuk to be added to the list - 8am PST/ 11am EST/ 4pm UK/ 5pm Central Europe

Webinars

Brexit - Part Two - TBA
Now the Budget has dropped but the Covid-19 crises ensues. Stay tuned for a coming update on Brexit - possibly next month.

US Tax Update with alliantgroup - TBA
We will hear about all of the changes - and try to keep up with them.

All of Integra's past webinars are available on our website here...

May and June Conferences are Postponed.

We are moving the Miami and Budapest events to 2021.

Early registrants have been refunded.

If you have any questions please contact Susanne or Laurie.

News from Our Members

Rome, Italy - Titoflavio Scibetta - Studio Sergio Scibetta Associati

Tito had sent a message to the Global Board on March 11 about the work challenges and constraints with the Covid-19 pandemic in his country. We asked him for some advice about how businesses will change, as his country was the first to experience such disruption. Tito is also a strong advocate for helping clients in this time of crisis with Pro Bono services - when assistance is greatly needed. We are catching up with him now:

What date did your office close and people started working from home? We have closed the office on the 16th of March and at the same time we have started the Smart Working (this is a term in Italy for flexible work arrangements).
Briefly describe your practice and how many staff? We are 15 people and our firm offers private company audits, accounting and taxation services plus litigation support.
How has the lockdown order affected your business? The lockdown impressively affected our business and, due to the local postponements made by the Government in relation to all the fiscal deadlines, we were able to organize and restructure based on this new equilibrium. On the other hand what I have seen is that this is a problem that affected all the other working realities and that this sense of community helps us to relate and cope with this problem.
What advice would you give to Integra Members? I would advise the other Integra Members to try to think out of the box in this moment and try to understand the new problems in relation to the different area of activities of their clients in order to give them the right support and quickly address strategic and critical business issues and even create new opportunities for their Firms.

Thank you Tito! - we will be visiting with another Integra Member next week.

FIRM UPDATES

New Member Presentations

More videos coming soon!

Pro B Centre/ Cheng & Co.in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia has shared a video since we can't meet them in person yet at a conference.

https://youtu.be/s5RLiQjgOOQ

Send us your news...
Susanne & Laurie love
to hear from you!

All of the new members in 2020:

Ali & Co
- Manila, Philippines

Corrigan Accountants
- Bristol, UK

DM Gibson Accountants
- Auckland, New Zealand

Fiducia LLP
- Singapore

Frontline Phillipines
- Global Alliance Member Offshore Accounting Staff

Ibrahim Ikhtaby Audit Bureau
- Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

IL Management
- Sao Paulo, Brazil

Pro B Centre / Cheng & Co
- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Quality Partners
- St. Petersburg, Russia

Marketing Committee Report and Recording from March 26, 2020

Attendees - Grant Gilmour, Jim Rose, Taylor Danielson, Ashleigh Laabs, Veronique Van Niekirk, Laurie Daschuk

Discussion centered around crisis communication from the firms to their clients. We also discussed work from home issues and strategies - and the approach for each firm. The main focus for the firms is client education given the monumental changes we are facing. Grant is doing frequent crisis posts and following up with clients by phone because of the danger of information overload. Emails are coming from everywhere right now. Taylor commented that their original marketing calendar had to be completely changed. Some messages just aren't appropriate anymore - now we must post messages that are relevant. Jim talked about the use of video. Ashleigh was explaining how their covid-19 page was constructed over a weekend. Veronique gave examples of their posts with a theme of "Business as Unusual". They previously did a lot of events but are looking at new strategies like webinars. Grant is already looking ahead at new opportunities for marketing - and working on an "ADAPT" program to help their clients with change.

Next meeting is April 16 - email Laurie to be added to the list.

Here is a recording from the Marketing Meeting - 45 minutes
https://cc.readytalk.com/play?id=68ovo5

Please follow Integra International social media accounts - sharing or liking posts really helps us to increase our global reach.

www.facebook.com/integra.international

www.linkedin.com/company/integra-intl