Accountants Newsletter

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Accountants Newsletter
Issue 1
Getting tough on your business efficiency
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Physician heal thyself As the accounting sector
increasingly seeks to protect itself by moving
into the wider market of business advice, its
remarkable how often the simplest of business
themes are not applied to their own firms.
Perhaps its easier to lift the drains on other
businesses than it is your own practice.
Whatever the reason, times are sufficiently tough
without accounting firms making life
unnecessarily difficult for themselves and yet
thats what so many appear to do. See if this
sounds familiar you know what the business
problems in the practice are but there simply
isnt time to address them properly. A pervasive
meetings culture sucks up time and money
without producing decisions and action. In fact,
theres hardly time to call a meeting to discuss
it because everyone is already booked up in
meetings. The dominant theme is fire-fighting
too few people chasing too many details on too
many activities. Some of the key money-makers
trapped behind a mountain of paperwork, while
they could and should be spending crucial time
with clients and prospects. And outside the
front door, local niche players chipping away at
your client base, and clients increasingly
demanding extra value. What would an outsider
say about your practice? The administrative
burden The truth is that these are endemic traits
of professional service firms. Their success
over time brings growth but growth means more
time on bureaucracy,
and less time doing the things the senior
partners want to do. And the result? A
compromise, where the key partners are struggling
to stay close to the client work, while failing
to do it the justice they used to manage but are
also tackling the administrative burden, with
neither the appetite nor perhaps the experience
to do an expert job. Honest assessment Recognise
the picture? There are examples of it
everywhere, and its nothing to do with peoples
technical ability to do their jobs. It needs a
moment of reflection and honesty its not
impossible to deal with, but these issues are not
going to fix themselves.
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The commercial damage Without structure clarity
and focus you will never maximise your
commercial potential. Not only will the staff be
dissatisfied, they wont be able to deliver
proper value to clients. And if your people are
too busy or too hamstrung to deliver what your
clients want and will pay for, your business is
in trouble. This means that you need to
establish the basics the kind of clarity that a
new business has indeed, that your practice
probably had when it started. Start off by
setting out the firms real business priorities
what precisely are you good at, and going to
focus on and how are you going to make sure you
get it done, and done well? If these are not
fully articulated, most subsequent efforts will
fail. Then identify the sources of inefficiency
your staff will tell you, but so will your
clients (including the ones you lost in recent
months). Establish the impact of these
inefficiencies how much re-work is necessary?
How much duplication goes on? How much
superfluous activity that makes no money? How
many meetings poorly run and absorbing valuable
client-facing time? In every case your gears are
slipping. Where the buck stops The most
important assets in the firm are your people.
But are these being used properly? Are they
being focused on the right activities the ones
that are profitable, and win new business? If
there is poor direction or ambiguity in the way
your people are managed, they will never deliver
the commercial value they could. This means two
things using the right people on the right jobs,
and ensuring that the
job gets done. If people dont know where the
buck stops, and who is accountable for what,
there will be muddle, duplication and a serious
risk of dropping the ball. Establish clear
remits for each senior person, and cascade this
downwards. And as a rule of thumb so often
forgotten people should be paid for doing the
things that deliver the firms priorities and
make the firm money. Time to change Why do so
many accounting firms struggle with this?
Because its easier to do what theyve always
done. And thats never an answer.
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• Summary key questions for your firm
• Has a meetings culturestarted to develop?
• Is there too much fire-fighting going on?
• Is there some doubt about where the firms
  strengths really lie, and what it should be
  focusing its efforts on?
• Are the key people being used properly on
  client-facing and profitable activities?
• Have you properly investigated the ways in which
  you could be more efficient?
• Have you asked the staff about inefficiency?
  Have you asked the clients?
• Are people getting paid for activity that makes
  the firm money?

• In Future Newsletters
• Using IT properly making money from Management
  Information
• Cross-selling your services and avoiding the
  typical pitfalls for Accountants
• Successfully launching a new office and
  understanding how clients buy from a new
  Accountant
• Improving your client contact staying relevantly
  in touch
• Using research properly understanding your
  client base and the gap in your local market
• Nurturing your key assets technical and personal
  development for staff

About Mungo Dunnett Associates Customer loyalty,
relationships, marketing, sales and service are
being wasted because companies cannot determine
their monetary value. We deliver four things
that are vital for businesses, but are typically
difficult to accomplish 1) A clear
understanding of where your profit lies
2) The creation of lasting and profitable
customer relationships 3) Clarity for
your business 4) Efficiency for your
business We are not career consultants we are
experienced line managers, accustomed to
delivering results under pressure across a range
of professional services firms. Our focus is on
ensuring that our clients activities are geared
towards the areas that are most commercially
valuable, and that they are getting the maximum
benefit from the investments they have already
made, across their operations, IT, servicing,
sales and marketing. For further information
visit our website at the address below.
Mungo Dunnett Associates 9 Ormidale Terrace,
Edinburgh EH12 6DY Tel [phone] Email
info_at_md-as.com Web www.md-as.com