With the advent of online accounting, advanced technology, and working in the cloud, the philosophy around working with accounting clients has evolved drastically. Operations have moved to paperless. Technology for both accounting and business processes that introduce collaboration, digitization, electronic information exchanges and more presents an uncanny ability to do more with less.
More firms are switching to value-based, flat-rate monthly fees rather than charging accounting clients by the hour. In this process, firms are discovering that the more efficiently they run, the more they can grow, while presenting a client with best representation experience.
The first step to enabling this is to tackle inefficient workflows within your firm. By taking the time to streamline these workflows – and achieving a higher level of effectiveness – your firm opens the door to success and pleases clients with your top notch efficiency.
1. Identify Your Firm's Main Processes and Functions
Dig deeply into your accounting firm and its processes and document the results. What are the primary services you offer? What is the scope of processes that support those services? How many are there? Which processes have the biggest impact on the firm? You don’t have to tackle every process in the firm, just the ones that will yield the biggest results.
2. Chart Current Processes
Once you select the processes you’d like to improve, flowchart the current workflows.
Here are items you will want to take particular note of:
- How many firm members are involved with the workflow.
- The number of client touch points happening within the process.
- Key deliverables and how they map to each step. These will be the steps that cannot be compromised. One example would be the separation of duties when it comes to reviewing and paying bills.
- The most inefficient steps. If you look through your flowchart, which steps take the longest or demand the most resources? Which ones take too long to complete?
This evaluation process helps you discover your firm's most important client representation steps. And by pointing out inefficient workflow steps, it identifies a blueprint for potential technology needs.
Finally, you must recheck all of your assumptions. As mentioned above, collaborate with firm members to identify weak spots. Ask them what they would like to see introduced to do their jobs more efficiently. I find that those closest to the work being done are the best sources for coming up with ideas on better ways to do things.
3. Measure Results
Common metrics include:
- The time it takes to complete an end-to-end process.
- The time it takes to complete components of a process.
- The cost of completing the process in terms of hours, supplies and money.
- Staff variances.
- The reliability of data – how predictable is the outcome?
More specifically, consider the time it takes to enter a bill, research a transaction, classify a payment as an expense type or key in data into your accounting system or tax software. These numbers will provide a sufficient “before” picture of the process. Many firms don’t take the time to define and capture metrics and, that means they are already behind on efficiency efforts.
4. Validate Your Results
Once you capture these numbers for measurement, you need to validate the processes with involved employees. Don’t assume that the processes you mapped out are 100 percent accurate.
Consider as well, during this part of the evaluation, if all client touch points are actually required. You may have extra steps that your clients (and employees) don’t appreciate or think efficient. Take the time to validate the processes from the point of view of internal and external operations.
Following these four steps should really help any accounting firm provide a much more efficient customer representation experience.
As an added bonus, we would like to share the link to this webinar presented by CPA Practice Advisor that is coming up on Tuesday, July 11, 2107. The webinar is free and is titled, 6 New Habits of Highly Effective Audit Teams.
Please share this post and the link to the above free webinar on your social media pages so that your fellow accountants can join you in creating a more efficient client representation experience.
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