Inside TydeCo’s Approach to Client Success

A Conversation with Debbie Denler, Customer Success Manager at TydeCo™ Client advisory has changed.

So has the way firms deliver it. Debbie Denler has seen that shift firsthand—from overworked teams and one-size-fits-all models to tailored scopes, tech integrations, and team structures built for reliability.

As Customer Success Manager at TydeCo™, she’s helped shape a model that evolves with clients—without burning out the team behind the scenes. In this interview, Debbie shares how TydeCo™ stays responsive, reduces risk, and builds stronger client partnerships along the way.

Debbie: Over the last decade, outsourced accounting has changed dramatically. When I first started, there was no work-life balance. The big push was to work as many hours as you could, build clients by the hour, and push yourself to exhaustion.

However, there’s been a huge shift in recent years. A lot more people are now working from home, and that has become not only more acceptable but also a trend. With this shift, there’s now a bigger focus on work-life balance. While we’re here to support our clients, meet their needs, and hit deadlines, we also understand that the team has personal lives and is human.

Another big change we’re still experiencing is the retirement of many baby boomers. We’re losing a lot of subject matter experts—people with decades of experience. This is creating a boom in outsourced accounting and opening up opportunities for less experienced accountants to step into those roles and become the new subject matter experts.

The third significant change has been the evolution of outsourced accounting itself. It used to be more about basic bookkeeping, but now we’re fully embracing technology. We’re focused on doing things better, faster, and more efficiently, with less manual data entry and fewer errors. Clients are really starting to embrace this change. I believe leveraging technology is going to be huge moving forward.

Debbie: For each client, we meet with them before we engage and find out what their goals are, what their pain points are, and how we can customize our scope of work to fit each client’s needs. Not every client is the same, so we want to really customize what we’re doing for them so they find value in that.

We also have these team workshops where we have our senior manager lead the call with our controller and assistant controller that works on each client account. They look for efficiency improvements, tech automation, and they really look at the scope of work to see if we’re continuing to meet the client’s needs and are we continuing to grow with them to meet their goals as they change.

We also request a lot of client feedback. We meet with clients and ask them, “How are we doing? What’s working well? What’s not working well? And what can we improve upon?” We take that back and look at our processes to see how we can create a better client experience for them going forward.

An important piece we have is each client has a manager who is constantly in the background. They review emails back and forth between the client, ensure we’re meeting client goals and deadlines, and will jump in and call the team together and the client if any issues arise. They’re really there to ensure a smooth process with the client.

Debbie: The biggest way we try to mitigate a single point of failure is our team approach. Each client gets an entire team. They’re assigned an assistant controller who handles day-to-day transactions and bank reconciliations, a controller who is their main point of contact and reviews the monthly financial statements, and a manager who ensures quality control and customer satisfaction.

We interact with the client through a group email for every client. When the client emails the team, they CC the group email, and when we reply, we also CC the group email. This ensures that all three team members are in the loop about the client’s needs and deadlines.

If someone on the team wins the lottery and quits their job to buy a yacht, the other two team members can jump in and take over. There’s no loss of client information, goals, or deadlines. All of that is documented in a program called Flowcast, which keeps track of tasks, due dates, and assignments, ensuring continuity.

Debbie: For each client, we’re constantly evaluating our processes to identify what manual tasks can be automated. We automate a lot of tasks in accounts payable, credit card and expense management, and payroll integrations.

If we can’t get a direct integration between the software, we look for third-party apps that can create those integrations for us. The goal is to reduce data entry, manual tasks, and the possibility of errors.

Debbie: We stay ahead of trends by having a technology committee that continuously looks at third-party software that we can integrate into our clients’ processes to automate tasks, reduce manual data entry, and minimize errors.

Our technology committee demos the software and identifies if we have any clients who would benefit from this new service.

We also have a lot of CPAs on staff, and they regularly attend professional continuing education. So when there are changes to accounting rules and regulations, they’re here to share it with the rest of the staff.

Additionally, we have some industry specialists on staff. We have a non-profit specialist, law specialists, and specialists in software such as Sage Intacct. These specialists assist with team trainings and help keep everyone updated on current trends, software changes, or updates that might be relevant.

We also like to attend industry conferences. It’s a great space where we can stay on top of trends, software updates, and meet with our peers to see what’s going on in the accounting world.

Debbie: All of our staff, we have certified in the various software they’re using. Sage Intacct certifications, QuickBooks, Xero, all staff are certified and they keep those up regularly.

We also believe in continuous improvement. So with our continuous improvement, we have internal team workshops where our senior manager will lead the client team, the assistant controller and the controller, and they’ll review the financials for quality, look for any third-party apps we could integrate for an efficiency improvement, and we’re also looking at our clients’ goals and detailed scope of work and whether that’s still valid.

We also host monthly training sessions. So each month we have a different topic for the outsourced accounting team, and we will have one of the specialists on the cast team lead those topics, whether it’s Sage Intacct reporting, advanced Excel, just various topics for the team.

Debbie: I think my individual leadership approach sets the tone for how my team is going to behave, communicate, and interact together.

First, I like to be approachable. I like to get to know my team as individuals because we’re all humans first. We all have families, hobbies, and things we enjoy doing outside of work. So, I make an effort to understand who they are beyond just their work role.

Second, I lead with kindness. I know that at the end of the day, we all show up to work wanting to do a good job, and nobody wants to show up and be a menace to everyone. I keep that in mind, and I make sure to praise successes. When someone is doing an amazing job and has reached a goal, I always make sure to reach out and congratulate them. I tell them, “I’m so proud of you!”

I know that, many times, we get so busy with work that we forget to acknowledge people for doing great work. Praising both small and big wins really encourages them to continue in that direction.

When it comes to building trust, I like to create a space where my team feels appreciated and can openly express concerns, whether it’s work-related or personal.
When we give constructive feedback, it’s important that the message is delivered in a way that they can hear it. I always think that kindness is crucial when delivering constructive feedback, so they don’t take it personally. The goal isn’t to beat someone up for a mistake but to learn from it. We look at the mistake and figure out what measures we can put in place so it doesn’t happen again, and we are more successful the next time.