Why Rico makes sense for consultants and their clients

Planners use Rico for similar reasons Accountants use Xero - it removes manual work that isn’t worth a professional consultant's time.

It’s standard in the industry to charge by the hour, which means there’s an incentive to continue doing repetitive manual work at a client's expense instead of adopting technology.

This might make sense in the short term for some, but it doesn’t make sense for applicants. We see this changing as more value becomes available through technology. As we saw in the accounting industry with Xero, the industry made adjustments so using technology made sense for both consultants and their clients.

Rico helps increase the value to applicants by:

• optimising the quality of applications

• providing a better understanding of planning issues and responses

• minimising processing times through Council

To account for the hours saved that can’t be billed for, we see consultants making slight adjustments to their own billing by:

• Including the per-application cost of Rico as a line item/disbursement

• Charging a fixed-priced for reports/assessments, such as an assessment of environmental effects report

Consultants also find the following benefits beyond time savings:

• Reducing training costs and review work for senior staff on projects

• Saving unbilled time spent developing and maintaining your own templates

Overall, Rico can improve the level of service and competitiveness of consultants offering to clients. Slight adjustments in billing account for the cost of using software in a bill-by-the-hour industry. Wider benefits of the software provide further value to consultants and develop systems that make their businesses more scalable.