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Name organisation:
NOA BV
Reviewer:
Remko van den Berg
Organisation type:
BV
Product: Psychological advice, software
Total staff:
20
Website:
www.noa-vu.nl

noa-portret

NOA is a psychological consultancy whose business it is to develop online tests for deployment by educational institutions, reintegration agencies and human resource businesses. Its clients use the NOA toolkit when testing people in terms of aspects such as intelligence, personality, aptitude and employability. This enables them to select students, job applicants and employees and/or work on the further development of the competences of their subjects. NOA works for universities and vocational colleges and for major corporations such as Rabobank, SNS and KLM. Other psychological consultancies too use the NOA testing toolkit in furnishing their clients with duly substantiated psychological advice.

I’m never caught off guard when the auditor pays a visit

Admittedly Remko has never worked with other tax consultants: “NOA’s partnership with Koppel has come about by virtue of the fact that Koppel’s Bas Hollenberg and I were already acquainted, which at the time enabled us to get off to a trusty start.” It is precisely this which Koppel Services has more than lived up to over the years: “Koppel has been our regular financial and tax consultant right from the word go. They have got to know the ins and outs of our business over the past 17 years, having celebrated with us when we were up and commiserated when we were down and having gained first-hand experience of how we have grown.” Over the years Koppel has consistently taken the best possible care of the accounts and of filing the tax returns, which of course has been exactly what NOA had hired it to do. “The checks performed by our external auditors have never yielded any surprises, which is how I have always known for sure that Koppel had done a proper job.”

Koppel’s familiarity with Remko’s business puts it in a position to provide customised fiscal advice, which in turn has enabled NOA to save thousands of euros: “Having established that we had overpaid our national insurance contributions, Bas saw to it that we received a rebate of some six thousand euros from the tax man. Making the best possible use of opportunities whenever these present themselves, that is exactly what Koppel does for us.”

Rather than focusing on what’s good for it, Koppel gears its efforts to the interests of its clients

NOA – like any other business – found itself having quite a lot of IT ground to cover as opportunities continued to expand. It is not always easy to make the right choices amid such turbulence, and this has been one of the areas in which Koppel has proved invaluable: “They recommended that we start using Exact Synergy to document our processes. It is this software which has enabled us both to document and enhance our quality.” Virtually all of NOA’s business operations – work flow, work processes, client base, human resources, time sheets and work-related documents – are recorded using Synergy, and this includes the financial records: “We have access to our financials wherever we wish owing to Synergy being a web-based programme.”

There are quite a few additional applications that can be bolted on to Synergy, and Koppel can be relied upon to suggest potentially promising options to NOA as these become avail­able, “such as the ‘financial console’, which can be called up when using the browser to pro­vide us in one fell swoop with a proper insight into our financial status”.

Koppel also comes up with proposals aimed at improving the work process set-up, for example when they noticed that clients were frequently late settling up NOA’s invoices owing, as it turned out, to the client’s order number not being included in the invoice. “This translated into a lot of extra work, not just for Koppel, but also for us.” Koppel suggested that the procedures be expanded to include the retrieval of the client’s order number as well as the inclusion thereof in all future invoices. “They could have gone for extra billable hours and extra turnover, but what did instead, and have consistently done, is use this kind of information to our advantage.”

Koppel’s familiarity with our organisation would make it difficult for us to change consultants – assuming we’d even want to, that is!

It is precisely this attitude by which Remko sets such great store: “Thinking not just in terms of what is commercially feasible, but also in what would benefit the client.” This is also reflected in the sponsorship of charities and the informal contacts between the two organisations: “Having known one another forever, Bas and I in our mutual dealings could not possibly stand on ceremony, but the contacts with the other staff at Koppel are as informal, and that is the sort of setting which makes me feel at ease.”

All in all Koppel has most certainly succeeded in setting itself apart from other tax consultants where Remko is concerned: “It is the sincerity of their investment in the personal aspects of the business association which has made all the difference, in that this has enabled them to provide us with a great deal of invaluable recommendations in areas besides that of finance, in addition to which they have got to know us so well as to make it really difficult for us to take our custom elsewhere – assuming we’d even want to, that is!” It is a formidable leading edge which Koppel commands where its familiarity with NOA is concerned, and one “which enables them like no-one else to provide us with tailor-made advice”.

The old situation

NOA has happily relied on Koppel Services’ expertise ever since it was first established, back in 1996. The world has undergone tremendous change over the past 17+ years in terms of automation and NOA itself has obviously had to “roll with the punches”. Questions such as how to arrive at the right choices or how consistently to work on process quality, efficient work flows and a streamlined financial accounting system tend continually to present themselves when the world is in a state of flux. An expert sparring partner with plenty of experience can be invaluable in such a scenario.

The solution

Having taken care of NOA’s financial records and tax returns right from the start, Koppel has come to know its client’s business inside out. This in addition to placing Koppel in the perfect position to secure maximum tax benefit for its client has also made it a prominent adviser where NOA’s automation processes have been concerned, most notably when it recommended the implementation of Exact Synergy so as to enable NOA’s ultra-efficient documentation and set-up of various work processes. This has made the association between consultant and client nothing if not tighter.

The benefits

  • All financial records have been entrusted to Koppel Services
  • Koppel Services for the past 17 years has run a tight ship financially on NOA’s behalf
  • Koppel provides tailor-made tax advice anchored in a long-standing personal business association
  • Koppel’s tax advice has enabled NOA to save many thousand of euros
  • Koppel has enabled NOA to benefit considerably in terms of automation gains and efficiency
  • Koppel deploys its know-how and expertise to NOA’s advantage even where its own billable hours might suffer

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