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Reinventing the accounting and tax profession: From compliance to advisory
Tax & Accounting
2 | Reinventing the accounting and tax profession: From compliance to advisory
Chapter 1: Introduction Looking beyond compliance
Research continues to show that compliance work is no longer valued as highly putting pressure on fees and practice profitability. Practices are looking to provide new services, such as advisory, to achieve new growth. At the same time, practices still must cope with new regulatory, accounting and reporting requirements, such as Making Tax Digital (MTD), driving the need to make the process more efficient with digitalisation.
Gartner1 defines digitalisation as using digital technologies to ‘change your business models and provide revenue growth opportunity.’ The move to digital goes beyond just using digital data and software. It is a chance to change your processes and an opportunity to create new services.
According to survey research conducted by Wolters Kluwer in conjunction with Kelley Market Research2, cloud technology is the key to reaching a firm’s full potential. Firms that reported growth of over 10% in revenue year on year have already adopted cloud-based solutions enabling them to move into new service areas. With compliance work contributing between 0 and 3% of revenue growth, advisory services are predicted to produce between 30 and 40% of revenue growth in the next few years.
The accounting profession is transforming at a rapid pace, abandoning age old processes and experiencing a shift in mindsets. Digitalisation is disrupting the status quo with automated tools taking on compliance work that was, until now, the mainstay of many practices. Practices will need to consider expanding their services to remain profitable and relevant.
This combination of events has left practices across Europe thinking about how they can protect their existing compliance revenues and grow their other service revenues to secure their future.
In this whitepaper, Wolters Kluwer will give you the advice and steps you need to have the confidence to take your practice on a journey from compliance to advisory. While the change seems complicated and daunting, these will be the steps that build a sustainable future for your firm in this ever-changing profession.
3 | Reinventing the accounting and tax profession: From compliance to advisory
Wolters Kluwer conducted a survey across more than 700 practices and more than 400 businesses in six European countries between March and June in 2018. An additional 55 accountants were interviewed across the countries.
Research shows that many accountants in European countries offer value added services, some of which are directly aligned with their core services and some adjacent to these. 33% are planning to extend the services they offer as well as looking to grow the number of clients they provide existing services to.
For the purposes of the survey, advisory services were defined into two categories. The first is aligned advisory services which are closely related to or reliant on existing core compliance tasks. Adjacent tasks are not directly related to the core compliance task but can be provided as add on services.
A slightly higher proportion of the accountants surveyed provide advisory services that are aligned to their core services, but there are still a significant number that are providing adjacent services. The results also showed that many practices that do not currently provide advisory services are planning to expand into this area in the future.
The evolution of the advisor Remaining competitive in a disruptive market
Self-proclaimed ‘Digital Darwinist and Evangelist’ founder of strategy consulting Neuland, Karl-Heinz Land3 says the theory of evolution hinges on the choice between ‘adapting or failing’. Put simply, it is a period of the survival of the fittest. Digitalisation has thrown accountants into that period of evolution.
This is not a new concept as the accounting profession have had to constantly react to changing legislation and client requirements, however there is a greater sense of urgency. The difference today is that more governments across Europe are driving new digital data policies which are speeding up this change but also creating opportunity for market disruption. In the UK, MTD has been a catalyst for this sense of urgency.
What’s more, new disruptive firms with younger accountants are entering the market, using automated tools to complete more work in less time, thereby reducing costs with the capacity to undercut traditional practices and remain profitable. Technology enabled firms have more time to build strategic relationships with clients based on up-to-date information while software automates the repetitive tasks.
Furthermore, clients’ needs are changing. They are looking for greater collaboration and more proactive services that they place higher value on rather than compliance tasks. Many younger, tech-enabled clients can already complete themselves using the software now available. Businesses across the board are trying to manage complex growth and regulation challenges and need advice to help them navigate these challenges.
4 | Reinventing the accounting and tax profession: From compliance to advisory
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Tax planning (what…if..)/simulations
Forecasting
Alerts on tax legislation changes
Regular reporting – Dashboards and snapshots
Financial planning/wealth management
Corporate finance (assistance on raising loans)
Client analysis/health check
KPI (and alerting on bookkeeping)
R&D tax credits
Benchmarking
Aligned advisory services
Adjacent advisory services
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Business setting up services
Company secretarial (appointing directors)
Probate
Strategic reviews/company restructuring
HR (virtual HR), onboarding, recruitment etc.
Due diligence and forensic accounting
Software selection, training and IT audit
GDPR
Insolvency
Virtual FD/CFO
Business risk assurance
IT Audit
Percentage of practices currently offering advisory services
5 | Reinventing the accounting and tax profession: From compliance to advisory
Aligned advisory services
Adjacent advisory services
Regular reporting - Dashboards and snapshots
Benchmarking
KPI (and alerting on bookkeeping)
Financial planning/wealth management
Client analysis/health check
Corporate finance (assistance on raising loans)
R&D tax credits
Forecasting
Alerts on tax legislation changes
Tax planning (what…if..)/simulations
0 5 10 15 20
0 5 10 15 20
GDPR
Virtual FD/CFO
Strategic reviews/company restructuring
Business risk assurance
Due diligence and forensic accounting
Software selection, training and IT audit
Insolvency
HR (virtual HR), onboarding, recruitment etc.
Probate
Company secretarial (appointing directors)
Business setting up services
Percentage of practices planning to offer advisory services
6 | Reinventing the accounting and tax profession: From compliance to advisory
Future-proofing your practice: Why advisory?
A significant number of accountants are still using Microsoft Excel to provide forecasting and reporting services. There are tools on the market that will link to cloud-based accounting solutions and automate forecasting and reporting significantly reducing the time required to generate these.
44% of accountants included advisory services in their standard fee, with 50% still billing these services on a time basis. Only 24% indicating that they sometimes bill based on the value of the work. With automation, billing based on the time will eventually result in reduced fees and lower profits. Many accountants indicated that their goal is to move away from being valued for time to rather being valued for their financial and tax expertise, and to bill accordingly.
With that in mind, why are so many practices across Europe turning to advisory services to future-proof their practices?
Who better to advise a client on how to improve their profitability, forecast growth and build a strategic narrative than their most trusted advisor, their accountant. Advisor have the intuition, experience and resources to make a tangible difference to a client’s bottom line, and ultimately, to increase the value of their businesses.
Advisory services will play a critical part in the evolution of practices as they face the growth challenge head on. Practices who have already begun thinking about an advisory model have seen first-hand the financial and professional rewards for their practices and their clients, as well as improved client and employee retention.
Compliance services are viewed as low valued necessities and don’t necessarily create real advocates for their practice. Adding value that produces tangible outcomes is a business model that builds relationships and brand reputation.
Companies looking at strategic growth will need to navigate the changing economic conditions as well as adapt to the new regulatory changes. In an ever-changing legislative environment, they will look to the experts. Accountants can help guide clients by filling the role as a proactive coach.
Closing the rulebook on old methods
24%
44%
50%
44% of advisors include advisory services in their standard fee
50% of advisors bill for advisory services on a time basis
24% of advisors bill for advisory services on the value of the work
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Chapter 2: Making Tax Digital - A catalyst for digitalisation
MTD is an opportunity to review your current processes with a clear objective, to automated as many processes as possible. By using the right strategies and implementing the latest digital technology, your MTD preparations could catapult your practice ahead of the curve with future-proofed processes.
Why stop with your tax compliance processes? Adopting automation throughout your practice will take the strain off processes that are taking time and running the risk of manual error.
Document management is another area where you could unlock time for new services. Digital document management is vital for driving efficient processes and water tight compliance.
Embracing digitalisation will enable your business to look beyond compliance and provide more value added and advisory services and grow your business.
There has never been a stronger drive to embrace digitalisation in the tax and accounting profession. MTD has become a catalyst for a change of pace. MTD is HMRC’s initiative set to make the UK tax system one of the most efficient and effective in the world. It is a golden opportunity to embrace digitalisation and boost efficiency and customers support.
8 | Reinventing the accounting and tax profession: From compliance to advisory
86% of all accounting and tax tasks can be automated using existing technology.
Chapter 3: Confidence to embrace advisory
You will need to accept that the role of your practice will change from providing data entry and box checking to providing value added services. Billing by the hour will no longer be an option, and the price you will be able to charge for compliance will be forced down by fully automated firms who go above and beyond expectations with business advice that clients are calling for.
Compliance work requires retrospective review, looking back at past results and making calculations based on past decisions. Advisory services on the other hand is a forward-facing perspective, to make predictions and give business advice based on expertise and previous results. Furthermore, accountants will need to shift from contact on a ‘once a year mentality’ currently shared by both clients and accountants. Thanks to easily available data in the cloud all year round, there is an opportunity to add value to your client’s bottom line. Ongoing communication opens the conversation to discuss additional services and with resulting growth to your practice.
Next, the move from compliance will require practices to take a step back from what is believed to have brought growth in the past - day-to-day operations and compliance tasks - to concentrate on strategy, business development and business alliances.
The move from compliance to advisory requires a serious mindset shift. Before you can even consider the types of services to offer, you will need to embrace this change, a possible re-education of your staff and a new business strategy.
Ultimately, the choice is to build a valuable and resilient firm or decline. Research conducted by McKinsey states that 86% of all accounting tasks can be automated using existing technology.4 The choice to stay the same is limited in a market dominated by a new breed of accountants taking a proactive approach.
Automate what you can Most, if not all, practices will evolve. What will set one practice apart from another is customer experience. You will need to take proactive steps to find what differentiates your practice from the next and importantly what experience each of your client’s value.
Start by freeing up time by proactively deciding what processes can be automated and where efficiencies can be found. Results are proving the pioneers right in their proactive approach to automation. Data shows a direct correlation between firms migrating to cloud technology and productivity, increased profitability and employee and customer satisfaction.5
With all growth initiatives, the path from concept to implementation is never straight forward. It requires a change in mindset where firms are no longer selling minutes in a day, but an outcome and forecasts based on decisions.
86%
9 | Reinventing the accounting and tax profession: From compliance to advisory
• Analyse your net profit margin and your practices’ strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities.
• Analyse how the advisory function can fit into your practice and how it will fit into your overall growth strategy.
• Consult your senior leadership team on how you can add the advisory function into your practice and what revenue projections you are expecting from it.
• Appoint a project leader, ideally a partner or a change ambassador who can drive through the new venture. This person needs to have enough time and resources allocated to them to allow them to succeed.
• Get the right people in the right roles with enough capacity to take on the challenge. Assess whether additional training needs to be sought for key staff members. Find out more about this in chapter 5.
Steps to success This step-by-step guide will help your practice navigate the changes ahead.
Step 1: Plan
If offering an advisory service for clients is a new venture and a new revenue opportunity, it’s important to develop and refine a clear roadmap and business strategy.
• Define and refine a process for the advisory function. How will suitable clients be identified? How will you track the growth of clients and the performance of the advisory function?
• Address your capacity. How can you make your practice more efficient? Can you use software, or do you need more staff? Automate what you can and go from there.
• Evaluate how you’ll charge for the advisory function.
• Develop a clear marketing plan.
• Set clear targets and some specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic and time- based goals. The practices that successfully introduce an advisory function are the ones with a solid plan with targets.
• An example target could be: the advisory income from the first 12 clients will equal 50% of your compliance billing to them.
• Make the plan accountable. To make sure that the plan is delivered on time, ensure that it is clear who is accountable for delivery.
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Step 2: Listen
Listening is the most powerful tool in business. You can’t grow your clients’ business if you are unaware of needs and goals for growth. Choose three clients to work with take some time to really understand their priorities, hopes and potential blockages for success. Asking the right questions is critical to unlocking your client’s needs.
Some suggested areas for discussion include:
• Analyse their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in addition to a SWOT analysis of competitor companies.
• Discuss future goals of the company, regulatory and technological change, risk management, succession planning, funding management and staff retention.
• What role do you play in your business?
• What trends are you seeing in your business this year, versus last year?
• How are you performing against budget expectations this year?
• What is the biggest business success you’ve had in the last 12 months?
• What are your KPIs for this year and how are you tracking against them?
• Are you dispensable? Are you able to take four weeks off work?
• Have you thought about selling the business or retiring?
• How much do you think the business is worth now?
• When is the last time you surveyed your clients to find out if they are happy with your service and what areas they would improve?
• What are the things about your business that keep you awake at night?
• If I could do one thing to help you right now, what would it be?
• If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you do now?
Here are some suggested questions:
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Step 3: Differentiate your advisory services
The key question you’ll need to answer for every client is, “Why they should use your business advisory services, what’s in it for them?”
One way to show the long-term value of your advisory services is to offer to value their business. With this valuation in hand you can use it as a stepping stone to discuss how to grow that figure.
Often a sale price estimate turns out to be beneath your clients’ expectations, giving you the opportunity to upsell more services. The gap in expectation vs reality will focus your clients’ mind on discussions around growth planning and will create an urgency to act on your recommendations. Alternatively, if your client is looking to raise funds, you could offer them a pre-lending assessment to help them understand their options for finance. Accountants will need to develop a keen eye for upselling opportunities in the first phases of changing to advisory services.
The key is offer them advice on how they can hit their growth targets based on their current financial situation and how you can bridge the gap between where they are now to where they would like to be in the future.
Experts6 say there are certain tools an advisory firm should never be without:
• Business valuation software
• Scenario-planning software that allows me to run ‘What-if’ scenarios
• Administrative tools that allow you to offer your clients resources like checklists, workbooks, spreadsheets and apps
• Budgeting and cash flow forecasting programs
Step 4: Growth planning
The art to developing your advisory service offering is to start with one service offering and don’t take on too much at once. Taking on too many services at once will hamper the customer experience, and first impressions matter. Pick one or two services that are aligned to services you already offer and create the training and mindset change needed for that.
Once you can implement and review your plan, look at new initiatives that could have the biggest impact to your clients’ bottom line.
Use software to help you create a model with tools a client can access to improve profitability and cash flow. Work out a plan around their objectives and agree a time frame. Build in regular accountability meetings so growth goals don’t slip from the accountability time frame.
Good news will always spread, and your practice will attract both new clients and new talent. Marketing your growing practice will secure both. Find out more in chapter 6.
Step 5: Get results
Being able to quickly demonstrate the value and validity of your advisory services to your clients is critical to success. Offering a business advisory service is about developing long term business relationships. For the relationship to flourish your clients will need to see results.
It will be up to you to ensure that your client acts and gets results. You will need to create a certain set of metrics to measure results and stick to them throughout your services.
Set up a schedule of regular contact to ensure that your client stays on track. You’ll have to act as a business coach and mentor. Continually bring your clients’ attention back to goals, the gap between where they are now and where they want to be, and their strategy for bridging that gap.
12 | Reinventing the accounting and tax profession: From compliance to advisory
Step 6: Exceed expectations
Advisory services give you the opportunity to build deep strategic relationships with clients, partnering with them to keep them on track with the growth plan. Use your knowledge of your client’s business to help them with succession planning, HR, IT - the opportunities are endless.
Have a system in place to suggest a six-monthly review on wider business priorities. To maximise the most out of these sessions, ensure you have the in-house expertise to help or you are aware of some qualified expertise through your referral network.
As your relationship with your client develops, so will their trust in you, your understanding of their business, and your predictions for their business. Over time, look for opportunities to help clients with more and more of their business needs.
Exceed expectations is the surest way to grow portfolios with existing clients.
Step 7: Invest in marketing
Now that you’ve developed a system, refined it and got quantified success from your programme, take the time to market your advisory services to other clients and beyond. While it will be a quick win to offer your new advisory services to existing customers, getting new customers to understand your advisory offering may be a challenge.
Start with marketing your advisory practice to existing clients using testimonials and case studies. Your next challenge is to market your advisory service to new clients. Try these marketing tips:
• Ask your existing clients for testimonials. A brief case study together with quotes is always powerful. Video can be much more impactful than the written word.
• Develop messaging that positions yourself as a trusted specialist advisor and use social media, your website and email newsletters to disseminate that messaging.
• Get actively involved in the industries and communities that generates most of your work – attend events, pitch to speak at conferences, establish your brand as a thought leader or trusted advisor and sponsor community initiatives.
• Build up your profile with key influencers and build a referral programme.
• Continually make your clients aware that you can help them predict the financial implications of business decisions in advance forward-facing discussion.
• Hold an online seminar and use online advertising to grow your network.
With a plan in place, the next question is to decide how to put a price on advisory services in a profession that is used to time-based billing.
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Chapter 4: Putting a price on advisory services
For some, moving away from hourly billing can be daunting. For others, it can be liberating to move to a fixed fee structure that is agreed with the client upfront. There is less chance of scope creep and a clear understanding of the objectives and targets of each client at the outset.
The first step is to internally decide what value to place on services and expertise in the business. Once you have decided on a pricing model, the next step is to review existing client’s pricing agreements and how they can be adjusted.
For some clients, changes to fee structures are not easy conversations to have, others will welcome the certainty of a pre-arranged fixed fee. Fixed fees make customer experience and showing good value even more important than ever. You will need to have a frank conversation with your client to take them over the new pricing structures and the new services that your firm can offer them
Lead with information and expertise when having these pricing conversations. If data is relevant, compliant and up to date, account managers are empowered to have frank conversations with clients that add real value, such as forecasting business growth.
Conversations around business growth and new pricing agreements are empty without valuable information.
The challenge facing accountants in this rapidly changing profession is how to replace the revenue lost from compliance work that is no longer valued highly as it once was. Billing by the hour is no longer an option when clients can clearly see that automated processes are replacing time consuming tasks.
As you move into a new arrangement with your client, be clear on the prices, expectations and services from the start. One way to ensure neither the practice nor the client deviates from the original agreement is to find out what services the client would be interested in and what they are willing to spend. Following that, you can prioritise services they will need based on your pricing package and their budget. Make sure the clearly defined service options are available to clients, particularly when there is opportunity for growth further down the line.
For clients to accept a pricing model based on knowledge and expertise, it will be important to get the right and desirable talent on board.
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Chapter 5: Becoming your client’s business coach
A business coach with a full history of data can make predictions and advise clients on ways to increase profit. A developed relationship, empathy, understanding, teamed with the thorough understanding of financial data as an advisor, your client’s business can be taken to the next level. To do this, you need to bring on board the right skills.
Getting the right skills onboard
When the decision is no longer a case of whether to implement change, but rather how to gear up for it, you will need to differentiate your firm using two assets: software and employees. Forward thinking big practices in the UK have said the initial driver of change was the need to increase efficiency.
The profession needs to be ready for a change in the accountant’s role, moving from the traditional services of looking back at data retrospectively to having forward facing conversations with real-time data. The shift to advisory services means using the data that technology provides to build businesses.
Accountants are perfectly placed to act as both problem solver and business coach to a business owner. Accountants understand their client’s financial status and can give projections for the future. This is particularly so with clients who have been with practices for a while, there is a history and strong relationship. Prioritise these clients when considering who to approach first with the new service offering.
Building a workforce that is open to this change and hungry for technology is important. Some practices are looking for tech-loving accountants with expertise in the profession and a passion for new ideas and innovative tech solutions.
These partners say they are now more interested in a prospective candidate’s receptiveness to change and their character, in addition to their skills in the profession. Advisory services will include knowledge on how to use new technology to help clients get what they want. These candidates have been called technologists.
This is just another way to describe a generation of digital natives, otherwise known as millennials. They are not motivated by the same goals that other generations are. For them, an app-driven culture is the norm and the office space culture should be driven around those people.
While millennials fit into the 20 something age group, many leading-edge accountants have adopted the traits of millennials by building a practice engaging with these people. Your staff will need to understand and adopt the same tech driven mindset.
15 | Reinventing the accounting and tax profession: From compliance to advisory
Millennials will bring a new energy to practices, see gaps and inefficiencies that can be cleared by automation and ultimately be more in touch with the generation that follows them. What’s more, millennials will dominate your client base and will look to work with a core accounts team that they can relate to.
According to recent research from Bloomberg,7 by next year ‘Gen Z’ will comprise 32% of the global population compared to millennials, who will number 31%. Born in 1995 or later, these 7.7 billion people have begun to enter the workforce, with the oldest amongst them likely to already be several years into their careers.
Modern accountancy and tax firms are multi-generational and will benefit from the strengths of both youth and experience. Just as millennials have brought new expectations, technical and cultural points of view Gen Z’s will have their own wish list of expectations.
Gen Z expect to be able to communicate with clients frequently, easily and efficiently. What this generation really wants is the ability to work virtually with clients from a single place. These are visual spaces where both they and clients can log in and communicate and exchange documents easily throughout the year.
Gen Z’s also expect that AI and other forms of automation are here to take on the mundane and repetitive tasks, which will ultimately make their jobs more satisfying.
Finding ways to attract both generations will come down to adopting an attractive workplace culture.
What will make you more attractive to millennials and Gen Z’s, both staff and clients:
• Build up a reputation as a good employer and show new staff this.
• Be ground breaking, early adopters and leading edge in your approach to migrating to a cloud-based practice.
• Build a modern workspace with new modern décor and tech friendly spaces.
• Establish core values and goals for both the team and incorporate personal goals.
• Show good career progression and brainstorm with your millennial staff what they think it will take to succeed.
• Provide flexible working hours and if possible, flexible working spaces. Millennials and Gen Z’s can connect from anywhere and would appreciate the ability to work from home.
• Empower the tech-natives on your team to create social media content and marketing assets for the practice. Millennials will have different ideas about the unique selling points of the practice, attracting the right kind of audience.
• Automation is key, wherever and whenever it can make a process easier and more efficient.
Where does a young workforce generation with a new tech driven energy fit into the move from compliance to advisory? Firstly, these tech natives will find efficiencies and new ways of working that generations before them would not. Secondly, they attract a target audience that every practice wants. Lastly, they will be the accountants of the future and part of your own succession planning.
An effective marketing strategy will be integral to attracting both this target market and staff to your practice.31%
32%By 2020 Gen Z will comprise 32%, and millennials 31% of the global population
16 | Reinventing the accounting and tax profession: From compliance to advisory
Chapter 6: Marketing a digital advisory firm
• Know thy audience
Help your clients find you by prioritising your coverage. Using every inch of data you have available, understand who your ideal lead is and plan your marketing efforts to what they want to hear and how they want it. Clients expect information, relevant to their needs right here, right now. With an abundance of information at their fingertips, they demand answers as quick as possible.
• Update your website
In today’s interconnected world with the world at your fingertips and millennials dominating the workforce, there is no excuse for an outdated or unattractive website. Potential clients will stop engaging with your practice if the website is outdated and lacks content.
Marketing your practice is no longer merely about getting new clients in a fast-paced interconnected world, it’s about maintaining presence, building credibility as trusted advisors and establishing your desirability with partners and new staff.
• Get social
Social media is a place to build relationships, showcase what makes your practice different, build relationships, build credibility and establish your brand amongst a millennial target audience.
• Maximise on the inbox marketing
Emails are more than just a way to communicate with clients but also a way to share and publicise your thought leadership.
• Return on objective
Measuring return on investment with content marketing in mind is an outdated evaluation method. Rather consider a return on objective which is to consider the purpose of marketing in mind.
Good news travels fast and your practice’s reputation will be built on the back of good customer experience. Therefore, the customer experience should be at the heart of any advisory strategy.
Start with the basics of marketing with several steps:
17 | Reinventing the accounting and tax profession: From compliance to advisory
• Awareness
The prospect doesn’t know your firm exists. Thought leadership content should lay down the foundational trust and build the grounds for relationship. This messaging will do the ground work of establishing your credibility as a firm with thoughts worth sharing.
• Consideration
The prospect considers the unique selling points of the firm and the services the firm offers as well as the pricing. Product and service messaging must be clear and discoverable.
• Evaluation
The prospect then evaluates the firm based on proof points which should be visible and searchable on the firm’s website. These include testimonials, case studies and awards.
Getting a busy team in a practice to take time out of their day job to contribute to the marketing activities of the firm will be a challenge at first without a process. But frame it in this way: marketing and building long term relationships with clients are one and the same thing. Marketing brings together the very best of their work and your firm will attract the right prospects at the right time.
Short term marketing solutions will not build a sustainable future, it should be part of the advisory buying cycle. Content marketing showcases that your firm is a forecaster with significant experience to give.
• Adopt a content marketing approach
Thought leadership and content marketing is the strongest tool in a practices marketing arsenal – it is a way to showcase your firm’s knowledge and insight and provide regular content for your practices social account to publish and give your site a higher ranking.
Content marketing builds that foundational level of trust with a prospect before they become a client. Successful firms involve the entire team, establishing expert voices beyond just that of the partners. Let prospects know exactly who they will work with, not just a brand but a practice of experts they can relate to.
The important part is to always begin with the customer, the person, what are their needs and their pain points. The aim with each piece of content is to give prospects the feeling that you are their type of firm, with their interests in mind and with valued business advice worth trusting.
• Always include a call to action
Most prospects only have time to skim through your messaging with so much more to occupy their attention. Your marketing message should make it easy for them to make their decision by suggesting what action they should take next from this content. The call-to-action should be specific, the fewer the better.
The key is also to understand what messaging is required to support all three stages of the funnel. Just as when a partner meets a client for the first time, trust is earned over time.
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Chapter 7: Migrating to a digital firmIf your practice hasn’t yet successfully harnessed the power of digital technology, it is missing out on its ability to grow revenue by adding new services, its profitability and how successfully your practice can adapt to compliance changes. Digital technology has revolutionised the accounting profession and will continue to do so.
Automation not only will improve the efficiencies in the practice but allow for more time to build strong relationships with clients. Migrating to a fully digital firm will improve the quality and the efficiency of the data your practice must work with.
The move to a fully digital practise with a full set of advisory services should go in a cycle of:
• Delivering great services
• Incorporating great tech to continue delivering
• Use great tech to extract better quality data for analysis
• Using all the above to give a great customer experience
Your successful migration to a fully digital firm will depend on how proactively your firm can transition your clients who are not using online software.
The benefits of going digital:
• Better planning, greater foresight
• Minimises manual input and human error
• Greater visibility with all data being held in one central location
• Greater collaboration with your clients
• Automation is the key to growth
• Quicker results
• Allow data to flow easily from clients bookkeeping software when preparing accounts and filing returns
• Save time and effort by letting digital software take the strain
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How Wolters Kluwer can help you Wolters Kluwer helps practices improve their efficiency, navigate change and adhere to the needs of regulators and customers alike. By combining our expert knowledge with our passion for developing future forward technology, we are global leaders at meeting the needs of our customers.Wolters Kluwer is constantly researching how to better meet the needs of customers as they face today’s challenges. Using the research in the Europe wide survey, Wolters Kluwer aims to fully understand the market dynamics and drivers and deliver an offering based on key feedback.
Our developers are constantly hard at work to provide software and tools to accountants to enable them to enhance existing and offer new advisory solutions to their clients, protect and generate new income streams. We are dedicated to finding collaborative solutions to add to our suite to help our customers future-proof their business for the change that lies ahead.
Positioning your new advisory services and transitioning clients online will require more time spent with clients. This increased client time is an opportunity to build relationships and find out what services your client will find value in.
Managing the change in the practice will require clear communication internally and with clients and a step by step plan to implement.
• Step 1: Define your goals
• Step 2: Set your strategy and achieve buy-in with your team
• Step 3: Develop a digital plan
• Step 4: Effectively communicate
• Step 5: Deliver the plan
• Step 6: Review how to get the most out of your digital plan
1 Gartner definition of digitalisation taken from www.gartner.com 2 Practice Growth Whitepaper, Wolters Kluwer UK, 20183 Interview with Karl-Heinz Land on Haufe 4 McKinsey Quarterly, July 2016, Where machines could replace humans - and where they can’t (yet)5 Practice Growth Whitepaper, Wolters Kluwer UK, 20186 Mark Holton from SmithInk7 Bloomberg - Gen Z Is Set to Outnumber Millennials Within a Year
Sources
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Unlock time and drive greater efficiency with CCH Central and CCH OneClickEmbracing digitalisation is one step to achieving growth and unlocking time; integrated digitalisation further deals with your growing pains and drives efficiency.
To keep up with the demand, integrating your accounting software into a single suite of best of breed products will drive the efficiency your growth is looking for. Automating daily operations and time-consuming tasks like data collection and workflow management enables your current staff to work more efficiently and unlock time for advisory services.
CCH OneClick is a secure set of cloud tools, accessed in one place and fully integrated with CCH Central so you can connect, communicate and collaborate with clients – anytime, anywhere, on any device. Advisor and client workspaces are connected so you truly collaborate, in a secure way, for messaging and document exchange. Proactive support for compliance processes while being GDPR-compliant and MTD-ready.
CCH Central redefines software integration. Get a complete picture of your clients and your practice, share information effortlessly and improve client service all within a central database. These are the tools that will enable your move to adding advisory services to your offering.
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