Immigration advisory businesses are more successful when business processes are handled efficiently. This includes everything from customer interactions to the handling of visa applications. One way immigration advisors in NZ are making their businesses more efficient and successful is by using templates – letters, contracts, accounts documents, and more. Templates ensure these are all formatted and laid out properly with professional and consistent language. I have extensive experience digitising office processes and making them more efficient, so I made it a priority to give you template functionality to make multiple stages of communication with your clients more efficient.

The Prima Communications blog sums up the importance of using templates. It says they bring consistency, clarity, form, completeness, and efficiency to your business. It goes on to say that templates help make your files and documents more “manageable, reliable, and effective”. It concludes by saying the best templates are those designed to meet the specific needs of your business.

In an article on the AllBusiness.com blog, Carrie Smith puts templates second on her list of five essential things that make small businesses more productive and efficient. Streamlining expenses was the only other tip that was more important.

Work Smart!

Using Ezymigrate’s Templates

Ezymigrate now comes with template functionality enabling you to create, use, and edit templates. This saves you time and improves productivity as you can effortlessly reuse the templates as often as you like. You can create and use templates suitable for several key communication points with your clients, including at the invoicing and receipt generation stages.

·      Letters – many letters you send as an immigration advisor contain a similar structure and content. To make this communication faster you can now create letter templates. Whenever you email a client you can use the templates to help you draft the email, saving you time and maintaining consistent levels of professionalism.

·      Contracts – with Ezymigrate’s template functionality, your days of copying and pasting contracts to ensure accuracy and consistency are over. Just create a contract template (or several contract templates), and use them as required. Our template editors even allow you to add images and logos.

Create as many templates as you like

At Ezymigrate create/save templates in your preferred language

·      Accounting – the template functionality is now a key element of the Ezymigrate accounts section. For example, you can add multiple bank account details to the system and use them as required when sending invoices. You can also create invoice and receipt by using those templates which are sent as automated PDFs. You can even create multiple versions with different content and information so you can send the one most relevant to a particular client. This saves you time as you no longer have to write and rewrite the information every time you send an invoice or receipt.

You can also create balance templates according to visa type and stage. This helps you provide a better service to your clients and more efficiently adhere to this key IAA requirement. You can update them as required, and can even apply multiple balance templates. Once you have created them, they are available to use at the click of a button.

At Ezymigrate create balance templates that suits your business needs.

As you can see, the team at Ezymigrate works hard every day to improve functionality and make your job easier!

Ezymigrate’s templates are available for you to use immediately, and you can adapt them to suit the specific needs of your business. Once that is done, however, they take seconds to use, with unique information automatically populated from the Ezymigrate system. This ensure your business processes – whether that is communicating with a client, sending them a contract, or handling your accounts – is completed as quickly, efficiently, and accurately as possible.

Think about the number of things you do to convert a lead into a client, prepare a case for that client, and then submit a Visa application. Now imagine completing that process in half the time – and in a more organised and efficient way.

My background and experience is in Human –Computer Interaction, so I always approach the task of designing new applications by getting involved with the people who do the tasks we are trying to improve.

Ezymigrate is the perfect example – we met with immigration advisors at all levels of the industry, from very large firms to those that are small and agile. We demonstrated prototypes and early versions of the system but most importantly we watched them use it, identified the issues, listened to their stories, and got an understanding of their needs and values. Some of the most valuable insights came from the smaller immigration professionals, as the pain points they experience with paperwork and businesses processes are often more acute.

I watched them using tools like MS Office – the same tools they have for 10 years or more. Tasks like searching for a client’s email record in MS outlook, or going through folder after folder to find a particular document, are all common. Maintaining separate dairies for to-do lists and keeping file notes is normal too. The common thread through all this is few of the processes are interconnected.

I used the information gathered from these hundreds of hours spent with immigration advisors – those at the sharp edge of the industry – and used the knowledge to craft and mould the features and functionality of Ezymigrate. The Harvard Business Review call this design thinking. It requires “empathy with users, a discipline of prototyping, and tolerance for failure”.

                   Digital Transformation of NZ Immigration Industry

With Ezymigrate we did not set about designing new ways of doing business for immigration professionals. Instead we redesigned your current processes to make them easier, better, faster, more rewarding, and more efficient.

It had to be done in a way that focused on business needs and human values however, as much as it was focussed on tech.

• Human values: – an easy to use and beautiful system that doesn’t require training or maintenance. The system cannot be painful to use, and it must reduce the administration burden on staff.
• Business Needs: – meeting Immigration Adviser’s Authority (IAA) requirements, sales and marketing needs, accounting needs, central database needs, internal office communication requirements, and employee needs
• Technology: – utilising the latest technology by creating a Microsoft Azure cloud based system that is cheap, secure and can be operated from any where in the world. Ultimately, it must bring an immigration professional’s complete office into the palm of their hand.

The result of our design thinking is the state of art product called Ezymigrate. It brings Immigration Consultants 1990s-era business processes up to the cutting edge of technology.

      NZ Immigration consultant sitting at Cutting edge of Technology

To borrow an analogy: we didn’t design the wheel – we put a big engine on top, luxurious leather seats, and satellite navigation to make the wheel better.

 Here are some practical examples of the journey: 

1. Immigration consultants enjoy a centralised database system, where their client’s complete file is easily retrievable. That includes emails, notes, SMS messages, documents, and checklists.
2. We developed an automated email system to adhere to the IAA rules about keeping clients informed. Client emails are automatically stacked in their file with zero administrative effort.
3. We automated the record keeping of invoices and payments after observing how time consuming that process currently is. We enhanced the invoice and receipt system, and we integrated with Xero so invoices can be processes there too.
4. After watching several immigration advisors go through the laborious process of downloading, saving and emailing in order to send documents to clients, we created a separate client portal. Clients can now quickly and easily access and update their own files. 
5. We care about your sales targets so have incorporated a potential client feature with reporting system.
6. Through reminder system you can reach out to your old clients and bring them back. In addition, PPI letter dates are no longer your headache, as Ezymigrate looks after them for you.
7. You can operate your office from anywhere in the world, as we understand the importance of access and communication.

And the best thing about the system is that it is always evolving. We never stop listening, observing and learning to make Ezymigrate better. That’s how you move an industry from 1990s-era business processes to the cutting edge of technology.