Case Study
|McCabe Ford Williams: from 0 to 78 agents in 8 weeks.
“In a few weeks we went from nothing to dozens of agents, each built around a real job.”
Rob Horne, ACA FCCAPartner, McCabe Ford Williams
About McCabe Ford Williams
Most technology rollouts start with a tool. McCabe Ford Williams started with a question: where does the time actually go?
McCabe Ford Williams is a chartered accountancy firm with seven offices across Kent, spanning audit, accounts, tax, payroll and advisory. It's a genuine partnership, and each office runs its own way.
The partners had seen technology promise a lot and land badly before. So this time they did it differently: a focused eight-week pilot in one office, led by the people who do the work.
Every service line, its own agents
Rob and his fellow partners asked each manager to name their most time-consuming workflow, then build an agent for it with the Combinely team.
There was no shortage of ideas. By the end of the first week, the team had identified around ninety candidate workflows across the practice, far more than anyone expected to find.
“Our people are fully engaged on client work, so the question was never willingness, it was capacity. Combinely adds that capacity. It means we can react quickly when a client needs something urgently, and take on more work with confidence that the quality of our product and advice, and the deadlines we commit to, are never compromised.”
Ashley Phillips, FCCAPartner, McCabe Ford Williams
Supported through the change
Adoption took time, and McCabe Ford Williams are honest about that. Some jumped in, others were wary, and there were logins and integrations to work through. What carried it was that no one was left alone with it.
The Combinely team was onsite for the full eight weeks, sitting with each person, building around their real work, and fixing what didn't work.
“What Combinely did to help us adopt this was something we hadn't experienced before. They came and sat with each of us. That's what made it stick.”
Clair Rayner, FCA DChAPartner, McCabe Ford Williams
And it stuck. Usage grew 24% into the second month, when pilots usually fade. Nearly 60% of it is now ad-hoc, people reaching for Combinely rather than the other way around. All twelve built agents of their own.
What it changed
Combinely became a second pair of eyes, not just a drafter. It identified errors on a legal document before a 10am deadline. It matched a senior's two-hour share-portfolio review in seven minutes, providing McCabe Ford Williams with additional time to provide value to clients. And every output is source-backed, with a recording of exactly what it did.
“Combinely has consistently matched our own conclusions while saving time which gives me confidence in using it to prepare work before an accountant reviews the output prior to use and for Combinely to sense-check what we have done.”
Clair Rayner, FCA DChAPartner, McCabe Ford Williams
It also handles the quality work that always slips down the list, like a fully referenced accounting workpaper or bank transaction analysis in a fraction of the time, then rolled out across work of a similar nature across the firm.
What's next
Eight weeks. 78 agents. Every service line represented.
Now those agents are a shared library the other offices can build on: one firm, one growing set of tools, one policy.
“What one office builds, the next can pick up. That's what makes this worth doing across the whole firm.”
Rob Horne, ACA FCCAPartner, McCabe Ford Williams
One agent, built once in Sittingbourne, now helping the next person, and the next office.