SimpleBooks is not just any company secretarial service; it’s a dedicated partner that simplifies the process of business incorporation, compliance, and smooth operations. Over the years, they have built an impressive customer feedback loop. As a result, their unique insights about the industry and the opportunities to disrupt it were priceless. Finally, the founders were solving a problem they themselves faced. These reasons led us to lead their first investment round. This is their story in their own words.
Our mission is to equip customers with knowledge and help them navigate complex processes with confidence. At SimpleBooks, customer engagement is pivotal in shaping our products and overall business strategy. We recognise that our customers’ requirements are diverse. Compare registering an import and export business with setting up a company and the vast difference between the two situations. By actively engaging with our customers, we uncover these unique needs and contexts to tailor solutions.
Another of our core strategies is our educational approach. It has earned us the prestigious number 1 spot in Sri Lanka’s company registrations. Today, we cater to SME compliance needs from company registration to bookkeeping, payroll management, and legal services through our online platform, SimpleBooks dashboard.
Our journey began in 2016 when a co-founder sought to register a business and encountered the frustration of a lack of relevant online information. Navigating company registration and compliance processes felt like deciphering a witch doctor’s spell due to scarce and convoluted online information. Due to this, small business owners often resorted to unnecessary expenses on expert services.
We recognised the need for clarity and simplicity, so we founded SimpleBooks to solve this problem in the company secretarial space. Since then, we’ve been empowering entrepreneurs to thrive.
SimpleBooks has achieved this transformation by adopting three unique strategies
1. Creating exceptional content:
Unlike industry norms that prioritise landing pages and credentials without reducing process complexity for potential customers, we invest time and resources in educating our customers and promoting simplicity and transparency in their business registration process. We’ve created a series of high-quality, easy-to-understand short videos that guide clients step-by-step, using a storytelling approach. Additionally, we expanded our content to cover other essential topics like taxation and legal compliance. These well-produced, informative videos empower our customers with knowledge, making their journey smoother and more informed.
2. Leveraging social media for lucrative leads:
To reach a broader audience, we utilised our YouTube channel to host content videos while focusing on blogs, targeted keywords, and strategic email marketing to generate lucrative leads. This social media strategy has significantly expanded our reach, attracting entrepreneurs who benefit from our resources.
Our educational approach not only built a strong following but also established trust and credibility, providing us with a competitive edge in the market. Our channel now has over 350,000 subscribers and generates 1 million views a month. It also has become our number one source of leads.
3. Simplebooks dashboard
Working with over 4500+ companies, we recognised a significant opportunity to enhance the user experience for startups struggling with traditional company secretary services in the region. A traditional secretarial service is stifled at this stage of growth due to the complexities, context specificities, and information-heavy nature of the work. They need more human resources and additional office premises for growth. However, we understood that technology could help us overcome these limitations, allowing us to scale our services rapidly without compromising an integral factor in our ongoing success- the deep connection we have with our clients,
This is why we created the Simplebooks dashboard – our digital platform. Drawing from the collective expertise and vast knowledge supporting 4500+ SMEs, we provide custom solutions through this platform while maintaining our stringent service standards. Chatbots ensure customers don’t wait for human support, offering swift assistance when needed and tutorial resources developed based on user feedback to help customers get the best out of the platform.
Expansion plans
Recognising similar pain points faced by other company secretarial services, we seize the opportunity to offer the SimpleBooks dashboard as a white-label solution. Our vision is to empower and transform the industry by extending the benefits of our dashboard to all secretaries, starting with Singapore as our first target, followed by India.
Our competitive advantage supporting our expansion plans is that our solution uniquely bridges the gap between the back and front end (secretaries and businesses), smoothly and seamlessly, setting us apart from other global products in company secretarial services. Data from supporting a large SME base and our customer-centric process strengthens our competitive stance, for both simplebooks and shopbooks in our expansion plans.
Our journey at Simplebooks is a testament to the power of education, transparency, and technological innovation. By focusing on providing high-quality educational content, leveraging social media, embracing technology, and putting our customers at the heart of everything we do, we have managed to become the market leader in secretarial services in Sri Lanka in a short period of 7 years. We actively listen to our customers and refine our solutions, to remain relevant to the customer segments we support. We are committed to reinventing our offerings every single day to stay ahead and provide the best possible service to our clients. These are the reasons for us being very confident and excited about our growth plans!
