For rating practices, growth is often measured by new instructions, expanding portfolios and securing relationships with new clients. But what if some of the most valuable opportunities are already sitting within the portfolios you manage?
For over 25 years, we've seen first-hand how business rates inaccuracies and overpayments can go unidentified for years, often hidden within complex billing and valuation records.
For your clients, investigating these issues could mean recovering overpayments and reducing unnecessary costs. For your practice, it presents an opportunity to expand your service offering, generate additional revenue and strengthen existing client relationships.
The opportunity is compelling, but historically, accessing it has been easier said than done.
Winning new business will always be important, but there is a strong commercial argument for making more of existing client relationships.
Whether onboarding a new client or managing an established portfolio, looking beyond current liabilities could uncover valuable opportunities to recover additional business rates overpayments and deliver meaningful financial savings for clients.
For rating agents, this creates scope to broaden their services and demonstrate ongoing value, rather than waiting for clients to identify issues.
However, identifying these opportunities across large or complex portfolios is rarely straightforward. Reviews require considerable time, specialist knowledge and resources, often without any certainty that an investigation will lead to a recoverable overpayment.
So how can rating practices expand their offering without increasing their workload and overheads at the same rate?
Access to information is only part of the challenge. The real value lies in knowing where to look and determining which findings are worth pursuing.
A discrepancy in billing or valuation records does not necessarily indicate an error or justify a refund. Each case must be assessed against the relevant circumstances and legislation, with appropriate scrutiny and supporting evidence.
Advances in data analysis can help identify patterns and highlight possible inaccuracies across extensive portfolios, but technology alone isn't the answer.
Combining intelligent analysis with specialist validation creates an opportunity to make reviews more targeted, reducing time spent investigating unsuitable cases and allowing rating agents to focus on credible findings.
The aim isn't to replace professional expertise, but to make better use of it.
For rating practices looking to grow, expanding their service offering shouldn't necessarily mean employing additional analysts, committing more resources or handing client relationships over to another provider.
We recognise that many rating agents want to maintain complete ownership of their clients and the services they deliver. The challenge is finding ways to access specialist intelligence and identify more opportunities while keeping that relationship firmly in their own hands.
This is exactly the thinking behind our latest development at Inform.
We're bringing together two established areas of our business: our advanced software capabilities and our specialist historic business rates audit and overpayment recovery expertise.
The result is inform:audit, a new platform designed to help rating agents uncover validated savings opportunities across their client portfolios, without the need for extensive manual research.
By combining intelligent data analysis with specialist validation, we're making it easier for rating practices to identify opportunities, pursue additional work and deliver greater value, while maintaining complete ownership of their client relationships.
To find out more about inform:audit, contact us at info@inform.services.
