5 Essentials for Transforming Your Accounting Firm into a Success!

Every accounting firm wishes to succeed in the industry. This is the reason they leave no stone unturned when it comes to growth and scalability of their firm. However, with fierce competition in the accounting market, moving up the ladder of success is no easy. It not only requires firm owners to devise unique accounting firm growth strategy but also comply with the changing market conditions. Especially when it comes to incorporating the use of the latest technology.

So, let’s get started and figure out the top trends that help a business succeed in the true sense.

5 Essentials Accounting firm Growth Strategy

1. Leadership

• Vision and Alignment: Every business comprises of multiple leaders at different levels. It is imperative for all leaders to have a single vision and align the practices of different operations to achieve that goal in an efficient and timely manner. Without a shared vision, meeting company goals and satisfying clients is a difficult task to accomplish.

• Specialization: Since more and more customers are demanding personalized solutions against their accounting problems, it is estimated that nearly 80% of the revenue in the accounting industry will come from specialized services in the form of multiple advisory services to fewer clients in the future.

• Innovation: There is no denying that innovation is best brought into play by leaders. However, one should not underestimate the potential of other employees in the firm as well. People who have a passion for their craft are the ones who can actually lead their accounting firm towards innovation.

2. Talent

• Organizational Structure: In the past, organizations were structured in a particular way only. This included partners and leaders at the top level, managers at the mid-level, and employees at the bottom level. It is crucial for businesses to have a structure that allows adequate training to employees as per their needs, leading to equal opportunities at all levels like decision-making against the adoption of new technology, assessing outsourcing opportunities, and more.

• Unconscious Bias: It is a common scenario amongst organizations where people can be seen as being biased against others with respect to their experience, age, race, gender, and more. Firms need to streamline their compensation, promotion, and recruiting processes to enable leaders to eliminate this problem, leading to a diversified team that is more engaged and innovative.

• Communication: There is no denying that technology has enhanced communication, especially when it comes to interacting with foreign clients. However, within an accounting firm and also with clients in the geographical reach, one should consider interacting face-to-face with respect to the problems, careers, performances, goals, and more.

• Digital: In today’s age, it is vital for an accounting firm to go digital. This includes the digitalization of every process apart from accounting ones like onboarding, wellness programs, performance management, and more. This not only leads to positive development but also provides feedback in real time.

• Learning and Training: Customer and market demands are always changing, and in order to meet them with perfection, relevant and upgraded skills are needed. This is only possible when firms provide regular training with respect to continuing professional education (CPE), soft skills, technical skill upgradation, and more.

3. Technology

• Robotic Process Automation (RPA): When you have an enormous amount of data gathered from blockchain, IoT, APIs, you will see maximum use of RPA. With tools like Bot-as-a-Service, Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS), Microsoft Flow, etc., RPA becomes even more effortless. Automating back-office accounting tasks helps firms to a great extent, and in the coming times, it is going to be a must for every firm.

• Internet of Things (IoT): By 2020, 5G will be one of the most important elements of the digital age, making more devices come online. This means more data will flow online from cars, shipping containers, thermostats, etc., making the accounting processes truly streamlined. This is an effective accounting firm growth strategy that can help you achieve success.

• Blockchain: As per the Emory University and Aprio study, in 2019, there was an increase of 62% in blockchain investment. This technology is likely going to be the mainstream one by 2025. Look for informative and educative tools for employees to incorporate its usage in the accounting process and reap the associated benefits.

4. Process

• The Collaboration of Process and Technology: As discussed earlier, keeping compliance with the new technology trends is imperative for businesses to streamline the accounting processes in the present scenario. However, it is essential to optimize and improve the processes for efficient collaboration with the new technology to avoid any technical issues.

• Strategic Continuous Improvement: For continuous improvement, firms need to have an adequate strategy in place. This includes having an outside perspective to view challenges and offer unique solutions, a group of industry professionals for discussing accounting challenges in a practical way, and a trained person for taking care of the internal processes and proposing initiatives for improvements.

• Consistency Focus: Without consistency, efficiency is not going to bring any benefits. In order to leverage existing and new technology, accounting firms have to be consistent with their processes. Leaders need to understand that they need to put personal preferences aside and choose the ones that best benefits the firm.

• Operational Processes: Operational processes such as purchasing, employee and client onboarding, and billing need improvement for efficient working of the overall accounting process. It is important to look for inconsistencies and loopholes in the same and work upon them to enable them to add to the whole working efficiency.

• Process and Upskilling: When you improve the processes, you are actually expanding your team’s potential to perform higher-value tasks. If 50-80% of steps are reduced in a process, the focus of the team should be diverted to perform value-added activities, and for this, it is equally imperative to train and upskill them

5. Growth

• The Intersection of Business Development and Marketing: In the current scenario, it is imperative to collaborate business development with marketing efforts so that they complement each other and win more clients. Right from the lead generation process to deal-closing, the entire process must be integrated and consistent.

• Transitional Calls-to-Action: If you can solve the problem of a prospect or client, your transitional CTA will succeed. The simple reason is that these call-to-actions are the last step to reach you, and if you have impressed your clients and prospects, they will surely reach you.

• Clear Messaging: Promote your brand with a concise, crisp and clear message on the benefits your firm has to offer. People will come to you if you are able to understand them better and make them understand yourself.

• Marketing Automation: It is available in the form of social media and email drip campaigns to reach target audience. With an email drip campaign, your firm can nurture the leads by providing regular and valuable information. On the other hand, social media automation helps in scheduling and generating posts based on blogs, articles, and other content.

• Sales Training: The sales department is the last platform that can win or lose a client. So, it is crucial that appropriate training to the salespeople can help them communicate. When your team is able to understand client’s accounting problems, they provide the best solutions. This leads to customer satisfaction and eventually turns a prospect into a client.

Conclusion

This brings us to the conclusion that there can’t be a single accounting firm growth strategy to achieve success. Multiple factors lead to the success of an accounting firm. So, it is imperative to streamline the in-house processes, stay ahead of the competition, win and retain clients.

Do you wish to lead your firm towards success, but unable to streamline accounting process? Join hands with Cogneesol, an outsourcing accounting services provider, and focus on business growth. Get in touch with us at [email protected] or give us a call at +1 833-313-3143 for free trial today!