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By Alex Vuchnich, CPA, CFE -

With the New Year just starting many practitioners will be looking at what they want to accomplish in 2009. I have the opportunity to work with many firms that look to leverage the value-add approach to increase their firms value to clients and consequently their firms revenues and profitability. However, many firms will fail to achieve this goal in 2009 because they will not establish quantifiable goals for measuring their success in implementing the value-add approach. Now is the perfect time to establish these goals for tracking progress and identifying the activities that will result in success. A great online tool for tracking goals and milestones is Life Tango [3]. Although geared towards professionals and non-professionals alike, it provides an excellent tool for keeping track of your progress towards both personal and professional goals. Here are some goals to consider for expanding your value-add services and implementing the software tools that you will need to achieve your goals.

• Select X number of clients to deliver/market new services to.




• Meet or contact each client X number of times more per year to discuss their business and what you can offer them.




• Adopt and obtain any necessary training for one new service line during the year.




• Obtain X hours of training on new software/technology tools that you can leverage to better serve your clients .




• Use a newly implemented software tool or application that has fallen out of use X more times this year over what you used it last year.