There is no question Thomson Reuters’ UltraTax CS is one of the most preferred tax and compliance tools for firms worldwide because it optimizes workflows, enhances client communications, and ensures error-free calculations. Its integration with the cloud platform overcomes the limitations of traditional IT infrastructure, giving UltraTax a more flexible, secure, and scalable environment.
However, with a plethora of UltraTax hosting providers, tax firms often find it challenging to select the right one, which leads to issues such as vendor lock-in, inaccessibility, lag, and data breaches.
This article was designed to help you choose the right UltraTax hosting provider by explaining the key factors to consider before making a decision.
The first step toward shortlisting a hosting provider is research. With the proliferation of online platforms, it is easier to gauge the provider’s reputation. Moreover, you can also analyze the pros and cons of each to shortlist the ones that match your priorities.
Try visiting trusted review sites like G2 to analyze a provider’s customer feedback, service standards, and reliability. Moreover, there are various online community platforms with genuine customer discussions on the provider, which will help you identify the recurring issues. You can also request the provider for genuine customer testimonials or try to connect with them directly.
Customer support should also be high on your checklist. During the tax season, when every minute counts, it is imperative that any issues of remote users, regarding access, performance, or storage, are handled swiftly and efficiently.
Hence, you must shortlist only the providers that offer 24/7 customer support, 365 days a year. Furthermore, they must be capable of deploying diverse modes of communication, including chat, phone, bot, and email, to facilitate interactions. You must ensure that the level of support, including response times and average resolution time (ART), is clearly guaranteed in the SLA to ensure compliance.
Lastly, inquire whether 24/7/365 customer support is included in the pricing plan or if the provider levies premium support charges.
Then there’s the data center that hosts your UltraTax. It should be a Tier 4+ data center, as they implement 2N+1 redundancy for fault tolerance. Moreover, these data centers have advanced security controls to prevent unauthorized access and unforeseen accidents.
Moreover, you must ask the provider about their data center locations. You must select a provider closest to your location to ensure seamless remote accessibility.
And when it comes to pricing, this can be tricky due to multiple tiers and features. As such, you must check all parameters carefully before evaluating a provider’s pricing. If there is any confusion, you must get clarity from the provider. Ask the provider clearly about hidden charges to prevent surprises in the bill.
Create a matrix to map the features and other factors (such as experience and reliability) with the offered pricing. Based on this, you can evaluate each provider’s ROI rather than only considering pricing as a factor.
Business continuity is also crucial during the tax season, as any major downtime can cause irreparable damage to your firm. Therefore, you must pick the UltraTax hosting provider that implements a reliable Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan. A BCDR guarantees uninterrupted operations, even during major security incidents and natural disasters.
Moreover, they must provide an automated backup solution to prevent cyber threats, such as ransomware and phishing. Backup solutions also help you recover files instantly in the case of accidental deletions. However, you must inquire whether a BCDR and backup are included in the pricing plan or if the provider is levying extra charges.
Any minor disruption in your cloud service can affect client work, delay important accounting tasks, and impact your firm’s reputation. That is why uptime should be one of the primary requirements when choosing an UltraTax hosting provider.
Most UltraTax hosting providers offer a minimum uptime guarantee of 99%. However, it is better to shortlist providers that guarantee 99.99% uptime, as even a small difference in uptime can significantly reduce service downtime over the year. For accounting firms, this means more reliable access to UltraTax, client files, and other hosted applications when the team needs them most.
Also, make sure the uptime commitment is clearly included in the provider’s service level agreement, as it gives your firm stronger assurance of service availability.
Cloud providers offer diverse services. For instance, a provider can offer public cloud services for UltraTax at a nominal cost, where the cloud environment is shared by multiple clients. Given the confidential nature of tax data, it is recommended to opt for an UltraTax hosting provider that offers private cloud services.
In a private cloud, you get dedicated access to the UltraTax cloud server, which offers better performance. Moreover, it adds an extra layer of security to UltraTax and the data.
Finalizing an UltraTax hosting provider by analyzing its features, services, and pricing on paper can be deceptive. You cannot evaluate a provider’s services objectively without experiencing them yourself. Hence, you must shortlist providers that offer a free trial of their services to get a better understanding of their USPs and limitations. Moreover, the free trial must include all the services and features that they would otherwise provide.
Remember, choosing an UltraTax provider is a long-term commitment because it can be complicated to change providers frequently. Hence, analyzing the service providers must be your primary focus after you decide to transition to the cloud. Selecting the right provider not only optimizes current operational productivity and minimizes immediate costs but also helps you create a future-ready tax firm with advanced infrastructure and upgrades.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Sangeeta Chhabra, co-founder and executive director of Ace Cloud Hosting, is a leader and innovative entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in the IT sector. She has positioned the company as a leading global provider of IT and managed cloud services, celebrated for its QuickBooks hosting tailored for the accounting sector, managed security services, Desktop as a Service, and public cloud offerings for SMBs and enterprises. Under her leadership, Ace Cloud Hosting was honored as the Best Outsourced Technology Provider at the CPA Practice Advisor Readers’ Choice Awards 2023, among other accolades. Beyond her professional successes, Dr. Chhabra is a passionate advocate for women’s empowerment and is committed to fostering an inclusive environment at Ace Cloud Hosting.
Photo credit: Thomson Reuters
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