Service-based businesses are facing increased pressure to streamline workflow, improve client relationships and stay ahead of technology. At the recent Accounting Business Expo, our Principal Simone joined a panel of industry experts to discuss how business owners can balance strategic change without compromising the quality and confidence of services delivered. We’ve discussed some of Simone’s insight below.
Bringing to the table the perspective of an industry-leading regional accounting Firm, Simone firmly believes the right balance between the best team and best procedures is paramount to business success. Having the right people in the right positions helps to ensure business culture and quality of work. However, you must have procedures and technologies in place that ensure efficiency, communication and management of expectations.
On Inefficiencies – developing blueprints for your services:
Simone believes inefficient workflow and management is often a result of a task not being considered in elements, and the process of allocation to different people not being clearly thought out. Simone emphasised that the first step to effective workflow is to map out each step of a particular job with your team – develop a blueprint of what your team considers to be the most important steps for a task (for us, this will vary between things like advisory jobs, tax planning or year-end work). It is then important to consider which level of staff should be allocated to each task. Simone said this is about the best use of resources – knowing which tasks her accounting team should handle, versus her administration team, and ultimately, her own time.
Technology tip: Simone utilises practice management software that automatically allocates tasks to each staff member. Daily updates are sent to staff to ensure they are aware of new jobs. In the case of using multiple software solutions within your business, ensure they can integrate with each other to allow consistency of information and prevent double handling of information.
Technology or manpower?
For Simone, real people doing real jobs will always be indispensable. However, technology should be utilised for things like repetitive tasks (like task allocation, data matching and transcription services). This allows staff to use their time in the most valuable way. Business owners should, as much as possible, ensure they are readily communicating and engaging with clients. It is crucial the owner/manager is aware of each client’s circumstances, niche business practices and obligations, so that they can clearly map out each job for each client and allocate this within the staff team.
A part of a business owner’s role in communicating with the client is to be transparent on turnaround times. Simone suggests implementing a job scheduling procedure, where clients are asked at the start of each financial year to select a month in which they wish their year-end work to be completed. This sets out deadlines for clients to send their information in, as well. Simone finds this naturally spreads the workload out over the next 11-12 months, and also ensures the client is best positioned to have their work ready (such as not expecting them to be preparing information during their busiest month). Technology that tracks the progress of jobs against the expected completion date also enables you to communicate any changes to the plan with clients as quick as possible.
Technology tip: Simone uses her practice management software to set up these jobs in advance, enabling her team to track the information required, and once marked as received, have it automatically sent to the responsible accounting staff. The system tracks time for each job and provides a daily update to each staff on the next tasks, due dates, allocated hours, time budgets and so on. These are all crucial to ensure Simone can communicate expectations to her clients on timeframes and the cost of services provided. Simone encourages people to use AI or other technological solutions where possible for repetitive tasks to make the most effective use of staff time.
Embracing Learning Styles:
Education-driven services rely heavily on being able to embrace a person’s learning style. Simone considers it important to understand how a client learns or interprets information. Do they do best with written information they can process and analyse themselves? Do they need a visual aid to understand the information? Do they prefer an audible approach where you talk on the phone, over Zoom or in-person to explain information? Without identifying this, you risk the client not understanding the information at hand, leaving them potentially feeling out of touch or control with their business and not preparing them to proactively better their business. Take the time to train your staff to recognise and embrace different learning styles.
Technology tip: ensure your practice management software enables information to be delivered and recorded in a variety of mediums. Simone has developed management reports that incorporate graphs and other visuals to explain data and information. She also believes it is important to make a note of what works best for each client.
Interested in strategies to improve your workflow and management systems? Our advisory team is here to help you. Simply contact us on (02) 4990 3775 to organise an advisory meeting.
