I get to do some fun stuff.

Today I’m off to the Dorset coast to spent some time at Camp Bestival, a weekend of fantastical fun in the grounds of Lulworth castle tailor made for families and with a line up designed to satisfy both children and their parents (it’s probably the only place that you’d see Mr Tumble and Basement Jaxx in the same place!).

Next week  I’m heading to Italy to do the shameless tourist bit (complete with big camera and Dodgy shorts). Whilst Rome and Florence are on the itinerary I’m especially excited about visiting Pisa and taking the obligatory ‘holding the tower up’ shot (you see what I mean about being a shameless tourist!).

However, and back to my professional role, one of the things I have great fun doing is speaking at events.

I’ve done a fair through over the past few years and enjoyed them all from the 300+ IFA’s I met in Leeds to the 20 business owners in the basement of a London Pub.

Sharing my knowledge and experience to help others gives me a great buzz and is one of the favourite parts of ‘my job’ (only in quotation marks due to the fact that I feel guilty talking about in this way when I actually love the time I spend working, and especially when I’m writing, presenting or communicating . Yes I am a bit weird!)

Recently I had the opportunity to share our businesses experience of the automatic enrloment market along with other professionals. After a short presentation from both David Taylor (from accountancy and professional services firm Mazars) and I we got involved in a Q&A sessions.

You can find a clip of one of the questions asked below….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oQfBuQe2fs#t=177

So, a few points raised from both David and I about our experiences with the auto enrolment market.

However as we now quickly move into where SME / Micro businesses need to comply let’s talk about what we can learn about from what David and I learned in the Medium sized employer space…

Getting to grips with the rules

David is really clear about this.

Getting to grips with the rules surrounding auto enrolment was a challenge for all of us working in this space.

Legislation was new. It still is!

Also whilst the dust is settled on the actual legislation for now if you consider both the fact that case law (as challenges occur) has the potential to clarify certain interpretations of the rules (a recent example was how members of a LLP should be treated under auto enrolment rules) and the potential for changes in legislation post 2017/2018 when auto enrolment has ‘bedded in’ it means that professionals will be consistently adding to their knowledge based in order to protect their employers.

So, for professionals, and for the large and medium sized employers they work with, that’s fine. They tend to have the resource, knowledge and ability to retain the grip on the rules they had before.

However the challenge is then how SME and micro businesses get to grips with the rules.

I believe the most appropriate way of doing this is two fold…

Firstly in bite sized chunks. Auto enrolment delivery for the SME market should be task based and the tasks should be broken down into bite sized chunks which allow the employer to comply bit by bit.

Then, as changes occur, the changes need to be broken down into small bite sized chunks so that SME and micro businesses comply with ease.

Process, Project Management + Procedures (not only pensions)

Our biggest learning curve around auto enrolment (and one that David mentioned) was due to the fact that…

Auto enrolment is only a tiny  bit about pensions.

In order for an employer to comply it’s about systems, processes and procedures. However this again raises a question?

Whilst putting these robust systems are easily implemented in medium sized businesses…is there any additional issues doing this in smaller businesses?

The answer to that is theoretically no, but practically the business owner may have less time to build and develop these systems and processes.

In the medium sized firms we worked with there were usually payroll, pension, financial and HR teams. It’s relatively easy for firms of that size with a team of 20 people to spend time working on systems and processes.

However in a smaller business, how can this be done?

The answer is simple. I’d suggest that smaller businesses use systems and processes but instead of building them in a bespoke way they use a service designed to provide less bespoke systems but ones which are designed to do the job in ensuring they complete the tasks required for automatic enrolment.

Data

The largest issue we had is translation of data. Many an hour was spent translating data to fit into a software package and then getting the information back out again.

Interestingly there’s some changes in this market which are making data less of an issue (it still remains an issue but there are changes occurring).

Firstly the large payroll providers have been involved in developing their own auto enrolment software.

This means that instead of having to export data from payroll to comply with auto enrolment if you’re with certain payroll providers all you need to do is press a button to comply with auto enrolment.

However for many employers their payroll provide either hasn’t or doesn’t intend to build software designed to make this data process easier.

However how does a specific employer know what the best route is based on the payroll software he uses is? and how does he select software designed to help him comply if payroll aren’t going to get involved?

We believe that this can be done easily but needs to be approach in a systemized way.

Assumptions

As I mentioned in the video…there’s a lot of confusion around auto enrolment. This includes professionals, employers and even some of my esteemed financial types who are not actively involved in this market.

As we approach the millions who need to comply there is an education which needs to occur. I firmly believe this will be done primarily through a SME’s main route when needing professional help, their accountant.

However accountants are also have a situation. How to deal with the millions of employers in a profitable controlled and systemised way and ensure that they empower their employers not only to comply but also to limit the additional amount of work the accountant needs to complete in order to ensure that’s the case.

We believe we’ve got an answer.

In conclusion.

So, among the challenges that SME’s face are:-

and accountants face the problem of educating their clients in this space without a systemised and scalable solution.

We’re doing some work on solving this problems through our bespoke SME / Micro auto enrolment  solution and you can find out more at www.aeinabox.co.uk

I’d love to know your thoughts.

I’m off to dorset know to live in listen to some great music, live in a tent for a weekend and entertain the kids.

Wish me luck…..I think I might need it!