Transforming Your Accounting Services Personnel

Get the staff-specific benchmarks that have been proven to help successfully launch Client Accounting and Advisory Services (CAAS).

It's likely that during traditional accounting appointments, you may have shared advice on how to cut costs or boost savings with your clients.

But, what would happen at your firm if you began monetizing that advice?

And to take it one step further: What would happen if all qualified accounting professionals at your firm began monetizing that advice?

($$$$$$$$...)

At its core, that's exactly what a Client Accounting and Advisory Service (CAAS) does:

• Solves a specific need of a client
• Is then optimized, scaled, and marketed to similar clients to maximize margins

While the prospect of establishing a numerical number per advisory service is exciting, and the gains limitless, firms that neglect specific planning benchmarks will consistently be outpaced by their competition...and in some cases, may not even make it to launch.

Find out what those benchmarks are, and the importance of firmwide involvement with them, by downloading our new eBook, today. 

Excerpt:

Section 2: Key Components of a Learning Organization

Studies done in the past pointed to end users that were not provided comprehensive training taking up to six times longer to get to the same level of proficiency as properly trained users.

These studies found that training on documented best practices also reduced the number of inefficient/bad habits that inadequately trained users often picked up along the way as they are trying to “figure things out.” This further highlights the importance of creating a comprehensive firm-wide training effort. Becoming a learning organization with an advisory mindset requires firms to make a conscientious effort to identify and educate firm personnel on best practices, application capabilities, and advisory skills, which can be done with the following process:

1. Identify Expertise:
The first step towards developing advisory skills is identifying existing expertise within the firm.

This is done by discussing previous engagements where your personnel has assisted a client with improving their accounting information delivery or streamlining a business process. We suggest you pay special attention to services performed within existing niches where the firm would be able to leverage the experience gained towards similar clients.

The other component of identifying expertise deals specifically with the applications the firm utilizes, which make up the firm’s “tech stack.” Start by creating a listing of all the applications supported in the firm and for clients, and then identify the firm’s expert(s).

These application champions will be tagged for educating other firm members as well as further exploration and education of that application’s capabilities.

2. Identify Need:
The next step is to identify training needs, which will be the basis for the firm’s learning curriculum. 

Advisory, rainmaking, and project management skills are discussed below and should be included in the training curriculum along with the technical requirements for the applications that make up the firm’s technology stack.